Bobler/Bubbles

19 November, 2001

You sabre champagnes, don't you?

Today I have cut the neck of one of our champagne bottles with a true sabre.

You could perceive this as a rather, violent way, but in fact it is just about as historic as champagne itself. It was the hussars of Napoléon who invented the method. Not that many years after the development of the bubbly beverage really took off.

Napoléon - coming to speak of him - always made a visit in Épernay when he headed towards a new campaign to get supplies from a good friend called Moët.

New knowledge on our bottles
The close encounter with the sabre has also led to several until this moment unknown qualities of our bottles.

For instance they are strong - all champagne bottles are, they must stand a pressure of six bar at least two years - but apparently not all are that strong.

It is rather easy to recognize the joining on the neck of the bottle. This is the weak point of a champagne bottle, so this is the place to hit it hard.

The bubbles don't leave the bottle in no time, even you treat it in this rather rough way.

It is also a question of age and grape variety. The bubbles are typically less aggressive, when the champagne is a bit older, and our bottles happen to be rather venerable for the price. At the moment we sell vintage 2001, which presents you with three years for free. Since the bottle is not more expensive than those, that has only matured the necessary 15 months.

Finally, according to Alain, the grape variety also matters. Pinot Noir typically produces bigger bubbles than Chardonnay.

And the sabering of the bottle? Off the cork in one go, of course.

Faster than a cook's knife
Now when I have actually tried to sabre with a true weapon, I note, that it is a lot faster, than the cook's knifes, we have been using at parties until now.

I even think it is a lot less dangerous with the sabre... we have seen several examples of friends who spends a lot of time moving the knife up and down the neck of the bottle, until the cork finally comes off.

Everybody with just slight experience from a kitchen knows, that you are much more likely to cut yourself on blunt knifes than on sharp ones.

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Champagnisation

Regularly I am overwhelmed with wry smiles and small or big shrug's of shoulders when friends tell me, how they are very aware, that the cava or crémant they drank last saturday as the appetizer before a three course menu in good company of course was not real champagne.

That you are not allowed to call sparkling wines from other regions than Champagne for champagne is known by just about everybody who drinks wine.

YSL and champagnebrus
And maybe it is not too dramatic that Yves Saint Laurent was not allowed to call his latest perfume for Champagne as it happened some years ago. But when 100 old soft drinks can not keep their own name of Champagnebrus, it makes some people smile. At least a in some areas rather anarchistic people as the Danes.

And the latest work of the CIVC - the organisation that amongst many other things also defends the word champagne all over the world - will probably not make it easier to remain serious.

Even I suppose, in this game you choose either not to move or to shoot on whoever, whatever that moves. In the champagneworld branding is just about everything, and the fierce defense is part of it.

The colour champagne
Lately the lawers now have problems with a certain colour, named champagne by the trendpeople, that make up the names of the latest fashions and their colours. Now, this notion is not completely new anymore, but it is rather new, that it oocurs - now for the second time - in a dictionary from Hachette, one of the big publisher's in France (2005 and 2007-edition).

As if the fashion world is not already a big mouthful, Hachette in the two editions also defines the word "champagniser" as the proces, where you add sugar and yeast to a clear wine to let it fermentate a second time in the bottle.

A simple and good definition of the methode champenoise... However, it is a notion that you are not allowed to use on sparkling wines that originates from other places than Champagne. Which is also why the CIVC does not like to see the word "champagniser" used to designate the proces of creating just any sparkling wine like the definition in the dictionary.

Champagnisation
I suggest to introduce the word "champagnisation".

Definition: A at times rather rigorous defense for an originally geographical name, that later has come to designate products from the area of the same name, typically a product of high quality.

How would the lawyers of the CIVC react to that, I wonder?

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16 November, 2001

Hip hip Cremant

The sparkling vines from Alsace recently turned the first sharp corner in life. In 30 years the crémant of the region has established itself as the secondbiggest producer of French AOC-bubbly. And the sparklers now make up one fourth of the total sales of AOC-vines from Alsace.

The biggest producer of fizz is still champagne, and there is quite a distance from the 25 milllion annual bottles of Alsace-sparklers to Champagne, where the annual production has passed 300 million bottles. Or between the 10 percent sold for exports of Alsace to the 40 percent of Champagne. But, this AOC of the French extreme East is also a lot younger - and with an accordingly smaller marketingbudget - I presume.

Price differences
Quite often the price of a bottle of wine speaks for itself. With prices in a range between five and 10 euros per bottle a crémant d'Alsace costs less than half of a cheap - which does not mean bad - bottle of champagne.

The champagne brands of independent winegrowers typically are sold at prices starting at 12-13 euros. They are less charged with the prices of heavy marketing than their more exclusive collegues from the caves of Belle Epoque-palaces and Tudor-pastiches of Épernay og Reims, and thus cost only half.

But there is still a big difference between the crémant and the champagne. So what do you get for those extra euros?

Make the most of your terroir
Terroir, I suppose is the main thing you can never change. Your grapes will always be grown in a certain environment when it comes to soils, exposion and climate. In Champagne the chalky soils are praised because it enables the vines grown there to suck the minerals, which contributes to the taste. In Alsace you find a bit of everything: Granite, gneiss and at places also chalk.

The vines grown are Pinot Blanc,Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Riesling and Chardonnay, that is all white grape-varieties, where two thirds of the grapes for champagne are actually - surprisingly to many - red grapes. In Alsace you may find their more rare rosé crémant as well, it is made from Pinot Noir-grapes.

The more accurate conditions can be studied at the government authority that controles the AOC's: The INAO

Where it comes to production method, a crémant is made in the same way as a champagne: The methode champenoise. Even you are not allowed to call it so outside Champagne, the process remains the same: Grapes are picked by people, not machines, the second fermentation takes place in the bottle after yeast and sugar is added, and after the prise de mousse - the creation of the bubbles - the content spends a while aging in caves.

You can blend your basewines - that is your still wines made from different grape varieties - for a crémant as well as a champagne, but the unique style of using reserve wines from other vintages for your cuvée is unique for Champagne.

Lagring sur latte
Produktionsmetoden er ellers den samme: Methode champenoise. Selvom det ikke må hedde sådan udenfor Champagne. Mennesker - ikke maskiner - høster druerne, den anden gæring foregår i selve flasken efter tilsætning af gær og sukker, og efter prise de mousse - hvor boblerne dannes - lagrer flaskerne en tid i kældre.

Maturing sur latte
Aprt from that the method of production is the same: The methode champenoise. Even you are not allowed to call it so outside Champagne, the process remains the same: Grapes are picked by people, not machines, the second fermentation takes place in the bottle after yeast and sugar is added, and after the prise de mousse - the creation of the bubbles - the content spends a while aging in caves.

There are not the same requirements when it comes to aging sur latte. The Alsace-crémant must age at least nine months and a champagne at least 15 or 36 months depending whether it is a vintage or not. And the aging is expensive, because you have already had all expenses, and not yet seen even a shade of your money back.

The length of the sur latte-proces is interesting. The dead cells of yeast talk with the champagne, and this develops more complex aromas. You divide them into three levels, where the grapes contribute with the first, the fermentation with the second and the aging with the third level. The longer the conversation, the bigger the contribution from the third layer in the final product. That is a more complex wine, which is excactly one of the elements of some champagnes, praised by champagne-aficionados.

Finally, as you may know prestige can never be sold to expensively, which they are quite aware here.

Golden potatoes
In Denmark they do not buy that one. So far. It is interesting to compare the sales statistics for the crémant d'Alsace and champagne. Amongst the top 7 importers of crémant d'Alsace, Denmark is actually the only country that buys as much crémant d'Alsace as champagne.

Export numbers of the crémant d'Alsace-region, 2005:

(The number in the paranthesis is the export of champagne to same country, same year).

Belgium/Luxembourg: 1.480.000 bottles (3.555.697),
Germany: 1.267.000 bottles (3.179.665),
Denmark: 271.000 bottles (267.318),
The US: 141.000 bottles (7.855.631),
Sweden: 133.000 bottles (446.627),
The Netherlands: 87.000 bottles (845.970),
Switzerland: 71.000 bottles (1.521.737).

Most wine regions of France produce their own crémant.

No doubt it is connected with the fact that the other Alsace-wines are already very popular, and Alsace has also been a big destination for Danish holidaymakers for a long time. But the popularity is of course also linked with the price. Now, I do not know if it makes sense to use the rule of potatosales to conclude anything about champagne, which is a very different type of product. But I will do so anyway.

In Northern Europe the main parameter to sell potatoes is price, in Southern Europe it is quality. You can put it like this: In Denmark potatoes must be cheap to be sold. In France they have to look good.

I wonder if the rule does not apply for sparklers as well. In Denmark you typically drink three bottles when the French would drink one, and this one bottle will at least for still wines always be of a better quality.

But no matter what is better and who decides what is best, people's tastes in sparkling wines differ quite a lot, so I am convinced, that there are buyers for everybody. No matter name, price and complexity.

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13 November, 2001

Final leaves

When the leaves are gone, it is easier to spot the structure of the plant.

The colourful final of autumn is now more or less a thing of the past. In many vineyards the interlacing branches are naked by now.

A day like this one with rain and rough weather is quite similar to what is just another Danish day in November: Grey, windy and wet. It works on putting the last withering yellowish leaves to the ground.

Time to tidy up
In the vines more and more people work again. They mainly tidy up. Spread horse dung or wooden chips. They remove plants with disease. We ought to do the same soon.

Last year Alain trimmed the ill Meunier-vines completely, whilst I carried the branches to the track on the side of the vineyard. Quite a lot of exercize since we have 36 rows, two thirds are 200 meters long, and I could only carry branches from one plant at a time.

This year Alain want to burn the branches directly in the brouette instead of making a big fire in the end. He even wants to find a used barrel to weld another wheelbarrow. Doing it this way he can work alone.

Diseased branches can be burnt straight in the brouette.

Some has resumed the pruning. When all the leaves are gone, the vine is regarded as lying dormant, and you may begin. Others think it is better to leave the vine in peace a while before you work with it again.

Maintaining the ability of pruning
In the end what matters more - after the last leave has fallen anyway - are your own needs and your possiblities of meeting them. For instance, if you have employees you want to keep them occupied with something all the time... or if you have little time - like us - you may have to start early to be able to finish on time.

I think our idea is to hire somebody to do the pruning. But we will have to do some of it ourselves anyway, because there is quite a lot of restoration in the new plot.

At the moment the plants follow neither one nor the other model, they are somewhere in between. On the long term this is not acceptable and also not very smart, since you in this way do not get the advantages of any system: The Cordon de Royat with its old wood, that supposedly gives interesting flavours to the grapes and the Vallée de la Marne, that is fast to prune.

Anyway, I will have to maintain my abilities of pruning now I have worked so hard to obtain them. Our neighbour - who has 36 years of experience in the vines - regularly reminds me that if I do not practise I will forget. A bit like riding a bicycle. Once you have learned it for good, you will never forget, but you have to maintain it a bit in the beginning. I do believe she is right.

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10 November, 2001

Buy bubbles in your (British) Aldi

Supermarketfizz is as good or even better than wellknown branded champagnes. Says
Egon Ronay after having blindtasted 30 champagnes.

Mister Ronay, a bit of an institution in a British, gastronomical connection, even says that it would be a mistake to buy a champagne just because it is a known name. The supermarket bubblies are with prices between 14 and 18 pounds a lot cheaper, and they stay the course.

So maybe champagnelovers should pay a visit to the local Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer or even the German harddicount store, Aldi, next time they are crossing the Channel.

Now on top of the taste there is quite a lot of signalling in a bottle of champagne. So I wonder if it is the same people who buys Tescobubbles and Taittinger or Pommery.

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08 November, 2001

Pernod ready for prestige bubbles

Forget about Krug, Cristal and Dom. Pernod Ricard wants to develop a new champagne one major step above the usual suspect. Moneywise anyway since the newbie as the new member of the flowerdecorated Belle Epoque line of Perrier-Jouët will be sold for about 1000 euros each bottle.

That is rather good-sized for a champagne, that has not spend decades in the deepest caves of very wellknown houses. To add further to the exclusiveness the new Belle Epoque will be made in very limited amount and only sold in the US, Russia and China. Thus making the exclusivity a not insignificant part of the price.

According to several top people in Pernod Ricard, that acquired Perrier-Jouët last year as part of the Allied Domecq group, customers around the world wants better and more expensive brands. This applies for fashion, cars and also for champagne, they say.

Pernod Ricard became the secondbiggest group of wine- and spiritbrands after the purchase of Allied Domecq last summer. However, the the company remains a dwarf in Champagne compared with the giant LVMH, that counts Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin and Krug amongst its assets.

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07 November, 2001

Red wine

Esca-struck vine marked with red paint.

After a walk of kilometres up and down the rows in the vines of Loisy-en-Brie accompagnied by a brush and red paint, we are now able to seperate the diseased vines from the healthy ones.

In the vineyard, that we have taken over by November 1st, approximately 10 percent of the vines carry the Esca. Just like our other plot before the efforts of last year.

Esca is a disease that spreads in many of the vineyards of Europe due to amongst others the global warmning. Only some years ago Esca was not as commonly spread as now where it is rather common to see vineyards like ours with 10 percent diseased plants. Esca slowly kills the vines, and is on top of that quite contagious. Before it was controlled with a chemical that is today forbidden.

Objective: Avoid touching the disease
In 2006 we managed to remove the branches of the Esca-plants before the vendange, where the disease traditionally spreads a lot. This is because you pick the grapes so fast, that you do not always look too carefully at the vine before touching it. And if it is an Esca-carrier this will almost certainly spread the disease further, when you touch the next and healthy plants.

In its first phases the disease shows as the vine gradually looks more and more emaciated. An Esca-vine has only few leaves, produces few grapes, and those, that there are, look sickly and poor. When the leaves have fallen it is practically impossible to tell an Esca-struck vine from a healthy one. With no leaves there are just the naked branches left, and they look the same.

Alain has been in the two vineyards with a red spray to make it possible for us to identify, which vines we must remove later before the pruning begins. This year there will be no time for the heavy machinery, necessary to dig up roots. But at least we can try to prevent that the the diseased branches touch the tools we will use to prune the healthy vines.

View from the new vineyard in Loisy-en-Brie.

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05 November, 2001

Autumnleaves

Pinot Noir-vines end the season with great autumn colours.

The colours of the vines just do not get any greater than right now in early November. It is time to enjoy if you enjoy green changing into all kinds of red and orange. The show does not last long.

As we drove through the Côte des Blancs today, it was obvious, that the dominating Chardonnay-vines are close to reveal just about everything that is under the summerwall of leaves. Now, the events of the season for Chardonnay normally are some days ahead of the two Pinot, when it comes to the burst of buds as well as the falling leaves.

In some plots just a few withered leaves are what is left of the leaves. In other plots wind or cold temperatures is needed for the last crescendo of the autumn symphony, where the last leaves of the season final fall.

More grapes mature
Where the leaves fall, grapes become more visible. Some rows have never been harvested... when enough grapes to meet the quota have been picked, whatever is left on the vines will stay until the pruning... Many other places the generous sunshine of October has matured more but often rather small grapes.

Grapes that have matured since the vendange late September.

Somewhere between the Grand Cru-villages Avize and Le-Mesnil-sur-Oger an indeed very early bird has alreay begun the pruning. It is easy to recognice the slim column of smoke, that winds its way up from the fire in the brouette. This special type of wheelbarrow, made by an old oil barrel, is used by lots of vineyardworkers to burn branches during the pruning.

Early pruning
Even in a few vineyards in the area of Verzy people has begun to prune. However it is very early, since there are still lots of leaves left on the vines. The plant is lying dormant only from the time where the leaves fall and until the sap starts to rise in March.

However, not everybody has the choice. It all depends how many vines you have and whether you have to do it in your spare time or not.

The brouette.

Traditionally the best pruning is in March, because the plant is bothered less by the action. You should wait at least until the Saint-Vincent, the patron saint of the winegrowers, who is celebrated on January 21st. We will begin to prune after New Year.

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04 November, 2001

Cristal for Posh and Becks

The top champagne Cristal has newly named customers in the people-class. Time will reveal if soccer- and poppounds will turn out more acceptable than American hiphop dollars for Louis Roederer.

It is the favourite gossip couple of the Brits - David and Victoria Beckham - who recently asked to have Cristal rather than the Dom Ruinart that was already put on ice in the hotel suite of the couple. The latest on Posh and Becks fed small talk columns all around the world... here as well... after all it is champagnegossip.

Now, it is not that Dom Ruinart is not a great champagne. The house of Ruinart likes to emphasize that it is the most ancient of its kind in the region, and the Dom happens to be their topcuvée, that is the counterpart of the Cristal of Louis Roederer. But different people, different tastes... this cannot be discussed. Should you do so anyway, you are at risk of ending up on the ultimate hate list of an entire industry before I can pronounce the name Jay-Z.

This is what the manager of Louis Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud, has probably learned after he maybe-maybe not renounced the publicity, that Cristal - originally the exclusive brand of the Russian czars - got for free because of the taste of rapper Jay-Z. I am quite convinced, that the Roederer-manager no matter his personal attitude towards the pop- and soccer-couple will stay quiet this time. Should he be asked.

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02 November, 2001

Growing weeds or vines

Vineyard with grass? Grass field with vines?

An evening in the company of old documents has made Alain order a lawyer for a little trip to the vines. That is, to the vineyard, we have just taken over, because it is in such a pour state. A walk there could give you the idea that it is the juicy green weeds, we grow, more than the rather poor vines.

So next Monday the Monsieur l’Expert will with his own two eyes verify, that the vineyard really is in a very miserable state, and after the verification draw up a document to be signed and stamped.

A document, that will serve as our proof, should the former tenant - we took over the plot on November 1st - get the idea to ask for the amount of money you may be entitled to, when a tenancy stops. But this - amongst other things - is of course linked with the state of the plot.

Not that there is much to doubt, but since we don't want to risk time on any possible discussions, we prefer to be safe. At times it is okay to spend an evening reading old documents. Since this is how you learn such things.

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