Champagne Essentials
Vintage image sourced from Black History Album
I love Champagne. Love the wine, love the place, love the people, love the stories. I am completely biased when it comes to Champagne, but I still hope this tasting helps you sort through what is marketing fluff and what is actually true about these wines. And as always, I hope it helps you discover your own preferences and favorite styles of Champagne.
Stuff to know
For a region whose acreage is 68% smaller than Bordeaux, there are a shocking amount of “owners” in Champagne. The vineyards here are broken down into more than 278,000 little parcels, each of which is owned and managed by one of more than 16,000 “growers.” Being a grower doesn’t exactly mean that you’re out there managing your patch of vines though. Many growers own vines but hire managers to take care of the vineyard work, funding their Paris lifestyles without ever having to get their hands dirty, or so the local joke goes.
But really though, most growers choose to sell their grapes, usually to Champagne “houses” (or maisons, for the French), which own just about 10% of the vineyards but sell roughly 70% of all Champagnes. The houses focus on the expensive process of producing and selling Champagne and collaborate with growers to secure their grapes each year. So most of the Champagnes on shelves are made by companies that own few, if any, actual vines. Before the 1950s, almost all Champagnes were produced this way.
Today, there are more options, and there are acronyms on Champagne bottles’ labels that give you information about who made the wine and what their relationship is to the vineyards. Unfortunately, the meanings of these acronyms aren’t the easiest to decipher, especially considering they’re all acronyms for French phrases. An attempt at de-coding what you’re drinking:
NM: Négociant-Manipulant
“Manipulant” has nothing to do with being manipulative. It refers to making, marketing and selling Champagne. The key word here is négociant, which means that the producer bought some or all of the grapes for their wines. Negotiated for the grapes, if you will. Almost all Champagnes sold outside of France are made by NMs, or “houses.” There are 370 houses in Champagne, and many have brand names you’ll recognize: Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Dom Pérignon, Taittinger, Bollinger, Ruinart, Louis Roederer, Krug, Laurent-Perrier, Mumm, Pol Roger, Piper-Heidsieck, etc. etc. etc.
RM: Récoltant-Manipulant
This is the acronym used for “grower Champagne,” which has become trendier and therefore more accessible outside France in recent years. An RM on the bottle indicates that the person who grew these grapes also made the wine. In other parts of the wine world, it might be called “estate” wine. Growers often sell grapes to the houses on top of making their own wines. It’s also easier for a grower to choose to become organic or biodynamic than it is for a house, since they own the vineyards themselves. That doesn’t mean all grower Champagnes are organic, just that they’re more likely to be. There more than 4,000 RMs, with a few names that have achieved cult status: Jacques Selosse, Egly-Ouriet, Larmandier-Bernier, Laherte Frères, Pierre Gimonnet, Agrapart, Vilmart & Cie, De Sousa and Pierre Péters as a few examples.
CM: Coopérative-Manipulant
These are cooperatives of growers whose members also make and sell their own Champagne. The best-known cooperative is Nicolas Feuillatte, which produces more than 10 million bottles of Champagne each year. There are other cooperatives of varying sizes though, including some whose production is large enough for international distribution like Devaux, Jacquart, Mailly, Le Mesnil, Pannier and Palmer & Co.
These 3 types of producers above are the most common, though there are a few others that might pop up on occasion:
RC: Récoltant-Coopérateur: A grower who takes their grapes to a cooperative to make a Champagne, which the grower then sells themselves under their own label.
SR: Société de Récoltants: A group of growers, usually related, who share resources to make the Champagne, which they then sell as one or more brands.
ND: Négociant-Distributeur: A company that buys finished Champagne to sell under their own label.
MA: Marque d’Acheteur: This is a brand name created by a supermarket, restaurant or retailer who purchased Champagne to sell under their own exclusive label.
If you’d like to know more about the process by which Champagne is made, check out Sparkling Wine Essentials.
What to look for in this tasting
Champagne is funny in that there’s a tendency to think of it as bubbly and forget that it’s wine. It’s often glamorously depicted in flutes or coupes, but those glasses are actually terrible for wine-smelling. And since smelling is how we taste, we might as well save the money and pour something cheaper in the glass if we can’t smell it.
Knowing that Champagne is first and foremost a wine deserving of glasses that let you stick your nose in, let’s talk about what you might taste. Common descriptors range from brioche and toasted hazelnuts to lemon zest, oyster shells, berries and golden apples. There’s a huge range of flavors that you might taste, so stick your nose in and enjoy. And don’t forget the finish, or how long the wine’s flavors remain on your tongue. A great Champagne will just linger longer. Ideally with flavors you love.
The wines
#1: Non-Vintage Brut Champagne
Almost 90% of all Champagne is non-vintage Champagne, so this one will be easy to find. You’d think this would mean that it’s somehow “lesser” compared to other styles, but that’s not at all the case. Non-vintage just means that the Champagne is made from a blend of wines from multiple years, or vintages. Some producers have tried using phrases like “sans année” (without year) or multi-vintage to avoid using a name that starts with a negative, but the idea hasn’t been broadly adopted. So non-vintage it is.
Almost all Champagnes are blends of wines, even vintage Champagnes. Champagnes are the result of a master blender’s hard work tasting and blending wines long before they’ve undergone their second fermentation and maturation in bottles. For non-vintage wines, a minimum of 15% of the current vintage is used in the blend, though in practice, that percentage is usually higher. Master blenders’ skill allows them to taste what the wines will become, even in their earliest form, to make blends from current and past vintages that consistently showcase their brand’s style. If you’re the kind of person who likes to know what you’re getting time after time, a non-vintage Champagne from a house whose style you like will be an excellent choice as a go-to wine.
Brut is the level of dosage that I recommend here. It’s the most common dosage level, and will give you a clear point of comparison for other styles. To read more about dosage, check out Sparkling Wine Essentials.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternatives: Stick with a non-vintage brut Champagne from any producer
#2: Brut Nature Champagne
Brut nature (AKA zéro dosage AKA non dosé AKA brut de brut AKA sauvage AKA sans sucre AKA brut zéro) is a style of Champagne that doesn’t have any added sugar in the wine. I feel like I can already hear the nutritionists screaming “added sugar?!” Yes, added sugar, and it’s not as dramatic as you think. Most Champagnes are highly acidic wines that can use a bit of sugar to balance things out, just like the sugar in lemonade makes the drink taste just right, though not exactly sweet. What is “just right” is subjective though. Maybe brut nature Champagnes are just right for you.
Brut nature and its many equivalent names indicate that the wine will be bone dry. Austere, even. That said, it might still taste sweet to you, especially if the grapes were particularly ripe when harvested. Riper grapes naturally have more sugar in them, and can taste sweeter flavor-wise, even if the sugar levels in the finished wine are low. To read more about dosage, check out Sparkling Wine Essentials.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternatives: Stick with a brut nature Champagne from any producer
#3: Blanc de Blancs Champagne
White from whites is roughly the translation for this one. Blanc de blancs Champagnes can be made from any of the white grapes that are approved for use in Champagne, which technically means they could be made from chardonnay, pinot blanc, arbanne or petit meslier. But in reality, these wines are almost all 100% Chardonnay.
Chardonnay is planted in about 31% of the vineyards in Champagne, while pinot noir is about 38% and meunier is 31%. The other grape varieties are planted in very small amounts, though there are a few producers who make wines from all 7 approved grape varieties. Most Champagnes are blends of the “big 3” though, so blanc de blancs are differentiated in that they’re only made from just Chardonnay, which gives them a distinctively lean style for you to taste and compare.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternatives: Stick with a blanc de blancs Champagne from any producer
#4: Blanc de Noirs
White from reds is a rough translation of blanc de noirs. So even though a blanc de noirs wine is white, it was made from red grapes, usually pinot noir and/or meunier. We can thank Dom Pérignon for this style of Champagne. He didn’t create the bubbles we recognize in modern Champagne, but he did create a method of pressing red grapes so gently that the skins hardly touched the juice at all, allowing the juice to remain white instead of taking on a darker hue. Many blanc de noirs Champagnes will be just as pale as blanc de blancs, though some might be more golden- or amber-hued.
Blanc de noirs wines are known for being “powerful,” as one would imagine a red wine might be in comparison to a white. The flavors can also be different from blanc de blancs Champagnes, sometimes with fruity flavors like berries and ripe apples, or with smoky, mushroom-y aromas.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternatives: Stick with a blanc de noirs Champagne from any producer
#5: Rosé Champagne
We can thank Veuve Clicquot for modern-day rosé Champagne. In 1818, she was the first to blend a bit of red wine into a finished white Champagne, creating the method that most producers use today. Interestingly, it’s illegal to make a rosé by blending red white into white if you’re making a still wine in France, but if the wine is bubbly, it’s allowed. That legal loophole is entirely thanks to Champagne.
Rosé champagne can be made through other methods, like saignée, where a winemaker leaves grape juice on the red grapes’ skins just long enough to darken, or from co-maceration, in which red and white grapes juices and skins macerate together. But almost all Champagnes are made using Clicquot’s method, since it allows winemakers to have very precise control over the final flavors, structure and color of the wine, every single time.
What to ask for: Ask by style name
Alternatives: Stick with a rosé Champagne from any producer
#6: Vintage Champagne
In most parts of the wine world, all wines are vintage wines. In Champagne though, less than 5% of all wines produced are vintage wines. In this northerly region, some years’ harvests are just better than others, and when there’s a really good one, produces will make a single vintage wine, where 100% of the wine was harvested during the year on the bottle. Historically, vintage Champagnes have been produced 3 or 4 times per decade, though it’s up to each producer to decide whether a vintage was a really good one or not, so some houses will release vintage Champagnes more often than others, and there is often debate over whether a particular vintage was good everywhere in the region or just in certain parts. Regardless, these wines are - in theory - selected from the best of the best grapes, and only in the best years. Whether they are truly better than non-vintage blends or not is up for debate.
Since vintage Champagnes don’t have any reserve wines in the blend, or wines from other years that have aged longer, it’s worth considering how recent the vintage is when buying one of these wines. All vintage wines are aged for 3 years at the producer’s before they’re available for sale, which is more than twice as long as the minimum requirement for non-vintage Champagnes, but the wines will continue to develop in bottle, so that older vintages will taste markedly different from more recent ones. Figuring out whether you prefer fresher or older Champagnes is a luxury I hope we can all suss out someday.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternatives: Stick with a vintage Champagne from any producer, any vintage
Tasting tips
The eats
Champagne pairs with pretty much everything. Personally, I’d start with snacks like potato chips, popcorn, olives or herbed almonds, followed up by a tater tot waffle bar. Yup. Tater tot waffles and Champagne. I have a particular fondness for anything fried and crispy contrasted with Champagne, and I feel strongly that gussied up tater tot waffles are a brilliant companion. I’ve also visited plenty of hotels with do-it-yourself waffle stations, so why not make a tater tot version? Living in Denmark, smoked salmon, crème fraîche and chives would be go-to toppings. Add caviar if you’re all-in on the splurge. And why not try prosciutto or crumbled bacon, shredded cheddar or arugula? Capers, tomatoes, cream cheese, sliced red onions, chopped dill…I think this is a tasting I need to host ASAP.
The prep
This tasting is going to be a splurge spending-wise. It’s one of those tasting themes where you know it’s going to be a splurge and you just have to decide when is a good time for you to go all-in on it. Think of it as an opportunity for you and your friends to splash out a bit while sharing the costs of experiencing great Champagnes together. To make this tasting more accessible, you can always assign 1 wine to 2 guests, partners or friends, so that each purchase cost is split and the group expands.
Champagnes are some of the most widely distributed wines in the world, but that doesn’t mean there is always huge variety in the producers and styles available. It’s worth giving your guests at least 2 weeks to find their wines for this tasting, since it isn’t always easy to find examples that go beyond the biggest brands.
This is one of those tastings where a bit of extra equipment will go a long way in making the experience better for you as a host. Two items that I highly recommend having on hand:
Ice buckets. With sparkling wines, properly chilling isn’t just about the tasting experience. It’s about safety. Chilling sparkling wines reduces the pressure in the bottles, so that the risk of a rogue cork and wasted wine is dramatically diminished. Taking a few extra minutes to chill: worth it.
Sparkling wine stoppers. If you can swing 6 of these, fantastic. Mine somehow always go missing, so I’m not even sure how many are left in my liquor cabinet at the moment. Once all of your bottles are opened for tasting, bubbles will leak out, flattening the wines. If you put these stoppers on between pours, you can dramatically extend the life of the wine and its bubbles.
I didn’t mention champagne flutes or coupes here, and that was intentional. I recommend using white or universal wine glasses unless you have tulip-shaped sparkling wine glasses. Not only will it save you the money and storage space for extra glasses, it’s actually a better tasting experience, giving you plenty of room at the top of your glass for the wine’s aromas to come through clearly.
This tasting is focused on the best-known styles of Champagne, though there are other styles that could be part of a future extra-fancy Champagne tasting, with late disgorged Champagnes like Bollinger’s R.D. or Jacquesson’s D.T., prestige cuvées like Roederer’s Cristal, Veuve Clicquot’s La Grande Dame or Pol Roger’s Sir Winston Churchill and single vineyard Champagnes like Philipponnat’s Glos des Goisses and Krug’s Clos du Mesnil.
If you’d like to taste sparkling wines other than Champagne to better understand these wines in comparison to their look-alikes, check out Sparkling Wine Essentials.
