C is for Champagne (naturally)
There are lots of detractors out there who say that champagne without the fizz is just a poor white wine. Sour grapes, I say. Is curry without the spice boiled meat? Is a blue box without a white ribbon Tiffany's? Where is the comparison? It’s not even a case of apples and oranges (not that either fruit gets involved in any event) and leave Hattori Hanzo out of it. Completely.
The point about champagne is that it makes you slightly dizzy very quickly and you can drink quite a lot of it without falling over. My record still stands at 22 glasses or 4 bottles plus 2 glasses set at last year’s Linklaters annual party at Claridges. November 2003. I’m in no mood to break that record any time soon.
My first bottle of champagne was a vintage Dom Perignon from the mid-1980’s - I cannot remember the year but our favourite chef (then still at cooking school) had a barbecue by the beach and I was instructed to grab a bottle (any bottle) from her fridge. By the time we realised my mistake, the fizz had been poured into paper cups. C’est la eau de vie.
My next bottle was in some ways more memorable. I was writing freelance for a lifestyle magazine and was asked to preview a caviar festival. The chef asked me if I thought the oscetra would go with Krug and I had to say I’d never had the two together (actually, I’d not had either but I didn’t want to sound like the spotted youth that I was). He demanded a bottle be brought up for me immediately and I have been in love with that particular amber nectar ever since.
You might think things would have gone downhill since but that has certainly not been the case - thanks in large to David and Hallie (as well as their then four-year old daughter), I have learnt a few important lessons when it comes to the fizzy stuff. One, that price is not necessarily a guarantee of quality. Two, small bubbles good, big bubbles bad. Three, the best champagne are the ones that they keep for drinking locally.
In practical terms, this means that if prices are about the same, the lesser known stuff will always be better provided you know what you are buying. So take the Billecart-Salmon or the Pol Roger instead of the Veuve Cliquot and never, ever get Moet et Chandon. Exceptions to the rule (there always are a few) are the Laurent Perrier and I’ve always been partial to a flute of Bollinger (especially the RD).
Grapes. There are three - the Chardonnay, the Pinot Noir and the Pinot Meunier. Basic rule is that Chardonnay gives you flowers like primroses, violets and dandelions in the nose and a light citrus note on the palate. Pinot gives you butter cookies on the nose (remember Kjeldsens’ butter cookies in the blue tins?) and tastes like lightly toasted almond oatcakes with fizz (if you can imagine that). Unless you buy a Blanc de Blanc (in which case it’s pure Chardonnay) or a Blanc de Noir (when it will be pure Pinot), most champagnes will contain all three grapes in varying proportions.
The French have a saying - that there are no good wines or vintages just good bottles of wine from a vintage. This is more true of champagne compared with any other wine. Think of each bottle of champagne as a microbrewery in its own right. Each bottle has to be turned, sugar has to be added and finally, the plug of yeast sediment has to be disgorged. Mechanisation has made the process much more consistent and constant but this still produces greater variation than stuff simply tapped from a cask and bottled.
I’ve often been asked if sparkling wines which cannot be called champagne are any good. A few years ago, I would have said that between a £9 Mumm Cuvee Napa from California and a £14 supermarket own brand, save the £5 and buy some smoked salmon. In fact, I’ve had some Roederer Estate from Napa which smells like Crystal, tastes like Crystal, even feels like Crystal - and I paid $35 in a restaurant for it. Now, prices have bounced all over the place and I have paid as little as £13 for Laurent Perrier - also, the Tesco own brand stuff is very, very good at £12.
At the other end of the market, there simply isn’t anything you can compare with, say the latest of the greatest I have tasted, a Taittanger Comtes des Champagne 1996 (courtesy of the friendly London office of an American law firm). Past triumphs have included gems from Roederer and LP from the very, very, very good 1990 vintage (see earlier blog on birthday wines). You would not want to drink anything else.
The point about champagne is that it makes you slightly dizzy very quickly and you can drink quite a lot of it without falling over. My record still stands at 22 glasses or 4 bottles plus 2 glasses set at last year’s Linklaters annual party at Claridges. November 2003. I’m in no mood to break that record any time soon.
My first bottle of champagne was a vintage Dom Perignon from the mid-1980’s - I cannot remember the year but our favourite chef (then still at cooking school) had a barbecue by the beach and I was instructed to grab a bottle (any bottle) from her fridge. By the time we realised my mistake, the fizz had been poured into paper cups. C’est la eau de vie.
My next bottle was in some ways more memorable. I was writing freelance for a lifestyle magazine and was asked to preview a caviar festival. The chef asked me if I thought the oscetra would go with Krug and I had to say I’d never had the two together (actually, I’d not had either but I didn’t want to sound like the spotted youth that I was). He demanded a bottle be brought up for me immediately and I have been in love with that particular amber nectar ever since.
You might think things would have gone downhill since but that has certainly not been the case - thanks in large to David and Hallie (as well as their then four-year old daughter), I have learnt a few important lessons when it comes to the fizzy stuff. One, that price is not necessarily a guarantee of quality. Two, small bubbles good, big bubbles bad. Three, the best champagne are the ones that they keep for drinking locally.
In practical terms, this means that if prices are about the same, the lesser known stuff will always be better provided you know what you are buying. So take the Billecart-Salmon or the Pol Roger instead of the Veuve Cliquot and never, ever get Moet et Chandon. Exceptions to the rule (there always are a few) are the Laurent Perrier and I’ve always been partial to a flute of Bollinger (especially the RD).
Grapes. There are three - the Chardonnay, the Pinot Noir and the Pinot Meunier. Basic rule is that Chardonnay gives you flowers like primroses, violets and dandelions in the nose and a light citrus note on the palate. Pinot gives you butter cookies on the nose (remember Kjeldsens’ butter cookies in the blue tins?) and tastes like lightly toasted almond oatcakes with fizz (if you can imagine that). Unless you buy a Blanc de Blanc (in which case it’s pure Chardonnay) or a Blanc de Noir (when it will be pure Pinot), most champagnes will contain all three grapes in varying proportions.
The French have a saying - that there are no good wines or vintages just good bottles of wine from a vintage. This is more true of champagne compared with any other wine. Think of each bottle of champagne as a microbrewery in its own right. Each bottle has to be turned, sugar has to be added and finally, the plug of yeast sediment has to be disgorged. Mechanisation has made the process much more consistent and constant but this still produces greater variation than stuff simply tapped from a cask and bottled.
I’ve often been asked if sparkling wines which cannot be called champagne are any good. A few years ago, I would have said that between a £9 Mumm Cuvee Napa from California and a £14 supermarket own brand, save the £5 and buy some smoked salmon. In fact, I’ve had some Roederer Estate from Napa which smells like Crystal, tastes like Crystal, even feels like Crystal - and I paid $35 in a restaurant for it. Now, prices have bounced all over the place and I have paid as little as £13 for Laurent Perrier - also, the Tesco own brand stuff is very, very good at £12.
At the other end of the market, there simply isn’t anything you can compare with, say the latest of the greatest I have tasted, a Taittanger Comtes des Champagne 1996 (courtesy of the friendly London office of an American law firm). Past triumphs have included gems from Roederer and LP from the very, very, very good 1990 vintage (see earlier blog on birthday wines). You would not want to drink anything else.
posted by porcorosso at 11:17 PM
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