It was an indulgent but daunting prospect. I scrubbed my taste buds and said
sorry to my liver — I was about to embark on four days of tasting some of
France’s finest champagnes, with the people who make them. Could I even tell
the difference between Tesco cava and Krug’s finest?
Helpfully, the party included our very own “wine guide”, author Robert Joseph.
The landscape of Champagne under lowering November skies was not going to
distract us for long. Imagine chalky Hampshire downland, carpeted in
vineyards, with greyish mist lying in the valleys. Beside each patch of
vines you see a stone sign with the name of the company whose bottles the
grapes will end up in — Lanson, Krug, Deutz and the rest.
We checked into the Hotel Castel Jeanson in Ay, a village near the regional
capital of Reims. Ay is an eerily quiet place where the action happens in
silent cellars 40ft below ground. The hotel was once a press house, where
Mumm squeezed grapes during the harvest. Now it is a hospitable three-star
place run by Nicole and René Goutorbe. The Goutorbe family are also one of
the region’s up-and-coming producers at their winery just over the road. We
got through eight of their offerings at one sitting. The Cuvée Tradition,
which costs about £10 a bottle and has a tinge of raspberry flavour, would
make an excellent party champagne.
But no dawdling at the hotel. Each day was to include tours of champagne
makers rarely opened to the public. There would be technical briefings on
the ins and outs of malolactic fermentation and layered corks — and learning
on the job about the best champagnes to go with different types of food.
Take seafood mousse, if possible cooked by a Michelin-starred chef and served
in the private dining rooms of a bubble baron with a glass of Philipponnat’s
own sharp-tasting, all-chardonnay Grand Blanc — poured for you by Charles
Philipponnat, head of the family business.
Serious indulgence requires education and our tasting sessions were part
gluttony, part seminar. Joseph took us through the essentials. Open
champagne by holding the cork and twisting the bottle gently. The sound
should not be a City boy pop, but a gentle release of gas — nun’s fart is
the noise to aim for.
The glass should be wide in the middle and narrow at the top, so the smell
does not dissipate. The worst type is tall and narrow, filled to the top and
taken straight from a detergent-filled dishwasher.
Serve at 10C. To pour champagne, hold the bottle with your thumb in the base
and fingers spread around the side, then tilt gently, filling the glass as
far as the widest part.
Then, thankfully, on to the smell and the taste. Sniff, sip, swill, suck in
some air and gurgle, spit or swallow — what do you detect and how long does
it last? The flavours range from the fresh, dry, appley Salon at one end of
the scale to the rich, mouth-filling Bollinger at the other.
The range of tastes is down to the blend of grapes used and the minutiae of
the production process. Champagne is mostly composed of chardonnay and pinot
noir, sometimes with their more plebeian cousin the pinot meunier thrown in.
Generally, the fresher the taste, the more chardonnay is included and the
more the taste hits the front of the palate. The richer the flavour, the
more pinot noir in the mix.
Champagne is a highly processed, branded product. A bottle of non-vintage
Krug, for example, should taste the same whichever year it is produced.
Given the variability of harvests, consistent styles can be reproduced only
by blending numerous wines.
