A Golden Age for Champagne

New Year’s Eve again. This time the real Millennium.

It’s hard to believe that it was just a year ago that unscrupulous wine distributors were flogging the rumor that there wouldn’t be enough Champagne to go around.

Not enough Champagne? Quel catastrophe! If that’s all we have to worry about this New Year’s, we’re in better shape than I’d thought.

This year, with a practice Millennium behind us, cooler heads are prevailing. The official beverage of the bubble economy is officially in good supply. And, thanks to a string of excellent vintages through the mid-1990s, the Champagnes in current release and in the pipeline are virtually all top-notch. For Champagne lovers, the future is off to a good start.

It’s an unprecedented situation. Never before have there been so many Champagnes of such high quality available for the choosing.

And there’s something else we’ve never seen before: an amazing array of Champagnes made entirely from Chardonnay. These come under the heading blanc de blancs--white of white, which loosely interpreted could mean the essence of Chardonnay from vineyards growing in pure white chalk.

This new abundance of blanc de blancs is no accident. The excellent wines coming to market now have been a long time in the making. For centuries, Champagne was known for its Pinot Noir, both still and sparkling. Dom Perignon worked primarily with Pinot Noir in his groundbreaking work with bottle fermentation during the late 18th century, and until recently all of the greatest Champagne cuvees were predominantly Pinots.

That changed in the late 20th century, when the Champagne community began to focus almost maniacally on refining viticultural techniques to maximize the potential of its Chardonnay vineyards. The results could be seen in the late 1980s and have accelerated through the ‘90s.

Fortuitously, the perfection of the region’s Chardonnay also coincided with a shift in consumer preference toward lighter, more elegant Champagne. That was signaled most prominently by Pommery’s 1986 release (from the ’79 vintage) of a stunning new prestige cuvee called “Cuvee Louise” (to honor the firm’s founder, Louise Pommery). “Cuvee Louise” embodies the swing toward Chardonnay in the floral freshness and minerality of a blend that is mostly Chardonnay from the Pommery vineyards in Avize and Cramant, with a nice dollop of richer Pinot Noir working like theater lights to enhance the overall effect.

*

Not surprisingly, the most brilliant new Champagne of the 1990s was a blanc de blanc: “Amour de Deutz,” introduced in ’99 (from the ’93 vintage). It’s a ravishing blend of Chardonnay from diverse vineyards in the Co^te des Blancs and the Montagne de Reims that balances airy freshness with the luxuriant creaminess of aged reserve wines in a style typical of its parent house, Louis Roederer. It is represented as the Champagne of love, but in a rare convergence of marketing and truth it actually gives a good impression of love itself--a sublime liquid bubbling just at the point of becoming lighter than air and wafting away.

Take that, Pinot Noir.

The Champagne names most Americans know belong to a handful of large negociant houses, such as Moet & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot, which until recently called themselves the Grands Marques (literally “big brands”). The neegociants produce some 80% of Champagne, although they only grow about 20% of the appellation’s grapes.

While luxury bottlings such as Dom Perignon, Cristal and Veuve Clicquot’s “Grande Dame” remain blends of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, there are many blancs de blancs among the great Champagnes from these houses. Outstanding examples come from Roederer, Pol Roger, Salon, Delamotte, Ruinart, Tattinger’s “Comte de Champagne” and Deutz. “Mumm de Cramant” and Krug’s “Clos de Mesnil” are wines from specific locations expressing the chalky minerality and delicate white flower fragrance of Chardonnay from Grand Cru Chardonnay villages in the Co^te des Blancs.

Eighty percent of the grapes that make Champagne come from independent growers, and some 3,000 of those growers also make their own wine. Even the largest of these grower-producers are minuscule compared to the negociants, but their wines are typically bolder and more intense than those from the big houses.

These Champagnes are tailor-made for palates attuned to California wines. They tend to be ripe, boldly-flavored expressions of particular areas, usually from mature or very old vines. There are some ravishing beauties among grower-produced Champagnes.

Gaston Chiquet’s Blanc de Blancs d’Ay is a spectacular example. The village of Ay has long been famous for its fine Pinot Noir, but there are sun traps in its hills where Chardonnay ripens to a rare lusciousness. Chiquet’s Blanc de Blanc shows this sumptuous beauty in a gracious style, like the swirl of a velvet robe.

Pierre Gimonnet “Fleuron,” largely from 80-year-old Chardonnay vines in Cramant, is another outstanding example. Others currently available in the U.S. include Jean Milan “Terre de Noel,” Pierre Peters, Larmandier-Bernier “Vieilles Vignes de Cramant,” J. Lasalle and Jacques Selosse’s barrel-fermented Extra Brut.

Of course, blanc de blancs is just one end of the Champagne continuum. At the other end are pure expressions of Pinot Noir. These days wines made entirely from Chardonnay outnumber all-Pinot Noir cuvees (most blancs de noirs include some Pinot Meunier). But Champagne made entirely from Pinot Noir is far from rare.

*

Rene Geoffroy Brut Rose de Cumieres is perhaps the salient example, a glorious limestone-grown Pinot Noir. Its brilliant crimson hue and crystalline flavors match the New World palate’s orientation toward intense fruit character, but not at the expense of elegant style. Although not as seductively engaging and complex as some of the great blanc de blancs, it is an exaltation of Champagne terroir through a noble variety.

Rene Geoffroy and his son, Jean-Baptiste, go to considerable trouble to produce this astonishing Brut Rose. It is actually a sparkling vin gris that’s made the old-fashioned way, by judiciously stealing juice from the wooden tanks in which their highly regarded Co^teaux de Champenois still Pinot Noir is fermenting. This is a unique expression of Cumieres Pinot Noir that could only be made in small quantity from exceptional vineyards farmed with such a wine in mind.

Of course, most Champagnes are, and always will be, finely balanced blends of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. But for those of us who appreciate the stunning beauty of Chardonnay in its rarest and most sublime form, voila: The great age of blanc de blancs Champagne is upon us--just in time to toast the real millennium.

*

Smith is writer-at-large for Wine & Spirits Magazine.