View 2013 Champagne Catalog - Michael Skurnik Wines

mean exactly what they say, but we should at least bear in
mind, when someone says how dry his wine is because he
uses little or no dosage, that his base wine may have had a
dollop of its own sweetness.
Another gratifying thing was to see the growing sense
of activity among the growers in the region itself. There’s
the 3rd annual tasting with the theme “Winegrowers
continue to revolt in the name of Champagne’s terroirs!”
being held in Aÿ. Eighteen growers will take part, a virtual
who’s-who of the hotties: Agrapart, Bérèche, Chartogne,
Doquet, Geoffroy, Goutorbe, Laherte, Tarlant among
others. Such a thing would have been unheard-of back
in 1997, but now there’s an ignition of enlightenment.
And Champagne, forever the most moribund of regions,
is now among the most interesting.
And there are more growers than ever on the U.S.
market, 178 in 2011. That’s a lot of growers, pal. And
the market-share for this cunning little category is 3.43%.
Still, when I started this Quixotic thing in 1997, the share
was 0.62%, so we have traveled a distance.
I opened my existing Champagne catalogue and saw
I’d written a desperate note; “Must we talk about residual
sugar any more?” This is the inevitable downside of the
Champenoise entering the current.
This year was the year-of-the-dosage-trials, as growers
let me further in to their process. I am touched by the
collegial gestures of trust. I also have strong opinions
on this question, or better said, one strong opinion. It’s
simple and seems self-evident, until you contemplate how
infrequently it is applied.
Wine should be balanced. Different wines are
balanced with different amounts of sweetness, and a few
are balanced with little or none. The 4g/l of a Lallement
Rosé would simply not work with Margaine’s Rosé, but
it’s perfect for Lallement. Other examples abound.
But why does this even need to be said? This is
kindergarten wine understanding! But, sadly, a commonsense
proposition like this one is mortally threatened by
an obtuse and dogmatic insistence that drier is always
preferable. And this idea is just stupid enough to be
speciously seductive, and a lot of otherwise sharp cookies
were seduced.
So I was hugely encouraged when two growers shared
their dosage trials with me, because these were two who
seemed at risk of slipping down the rabbit hole whereby
dryness was forced into their wines as proof of purity. I
watched them return to reasonableness, and was happy.
Less dosage is not always better. It doesn’t make
your wine more honest, more pure, more transparent,
more sophisticated, or more honorable; it just makes it
more dry. Among the many dubious things we owe the
big Champagne houses is that they’ve poisoned the well
by making their commercial bottlings treacly-sweet in order to
mask the deficiencies of the base product, or because they
presume their “market” wants the wines sweet. And so we all
believe that less sweetness is more desirable. First we let them
dupe us, and then we duped ourselves.
Less sweetness is more desirable under two
and only two circumstances in Champagne: one, the
wine tastes better that way; two, the drinker happens
to honestly dislike sweetness in his Champagne. (We’ll
leave aside for the moment the sweetness he accepts in
myriad other things...). You cannot determine these
things until you taste. Can you imagine someone saying
“I ate a lot of fritos when I was a kid, and now I just
can’t stand the taste of salt in anything.” Somehow it’s only
sugar that inspires these theological disputes.
Tom Stevenson recently published an article in
World Of FineWine in which he said – someone finally
said – that Champagnes with less than 6 grams-per-liter
(g.l.) wouldn’t age well. I’ll revisit this subject when I
write about the many shades of “Brut” a little later on.
I am also willing to accept the truism about
the blender’s art. Blending is certainly an art when
done well, though this doesn’t address the matter of
whether and when it’s necessary.The fact is there isn’t
a single decent Récoltant who sells the Négoce his best
grapes! Rather the opposite. And for any single Négoce
who truly practices the “blender’s art” there are two dozen
who’re dumping a lot of mediocre fruit into one big tub.
There’s a fragile balance of power in Champagne. The
Houses need the growers to supply them grapes. Many are
abjectly dependent on their network of cute little paysannes.
The growers claim to need the Houses to act as flagships,
furthering the good image of Champagne throughout the
world. Publicly the Houses put on a tolerant face as regards
the growers. Privately... well, you see.
One grower with whom we discussed the “ethics”
of marketing grower-Champagne said “We ourselves
are really not in a position to criticize the Grandes
Marques, because they break new ground for Champagne,
open new markets, and eventually we get our small share
of it too. We’d never have the ability to do that on our
own; we’re too small. Look, we taste around, we know
very well how mediocre their wines are, but we need them.”
“It sounds like you also need us,“ I observed,” to fight
this fight for you, to say the things you know but can’t say.”
“Exactly,” came the reply.
Champagne Fleury was threatened with a
lawsuit because the label on their Rosé bore a certain
resemblance to Perrier-Jouët’s Fleur de Champagne
(never mind the Fleury was a Rosé, in a clear bottle,
unlikely to be mistaken for PJ’s wine except by the colorblind),
thus invoking trademark-protection issues, PJ’s
having effectively trademarked flowers apparently. I can
only imagine how threatened they must have felt by the
100 cases of Fleury Rosé rampaging through the American
market. But still, zero-tolerance and all that. Around the
same time I learned that Clicquot was suing a sparkling
wine producer in Tasmania who had the temerity to use
a yellow label on their fizz. Perhaps the Houses should
collectively trademark VOWELS, so that the growers
would have to call their wine “Chmpgn.”
Introduction
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