“Too much of anything is bad,” wrote Mark Twain, “but too much champagne is just right.” Drinking champagne is like finding money or listening to an early Ramones record—there isn’t really a down side. I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t like it. So I’m puzzled that a great many passionate wine drinkers find so much champagne so contemptible. Take a look through blogs, books and other written matter from folks who admire natural winemaking and the notion of terroir—the ones I’m most likely to be reading these days—and you’ll find pages of animated discussion about farmer-sourced bottles, especially from obscure and fashionable producers like Anselme Selosse and Cedric Bouchard. What you won’t find is hardly any mention of champagnes bottled by the grandes marques—the region’s major labels—that buy most of the grapes and bottle the majority of the wines. The assumption among these otherwise discerning drinkers seems to be that big house champagnes are fit for little more than gifting at Wall Street office parties and pouring down young women’s backs in Eurotrash nightclubs on the Côte d’Azur, preferably out of a jeroboam. Terry Thiese, who brings in one of the largest grower champagne portfolios, refers to big house product as “lowest-common-denominator pap served up by the mega conglomerates in the ‘luxury goods’ business.” In The Wines of France (2006), the more circumspect Jacqueline Friedrich writes of grower champagnes: “Not only are they cheaper—the price of a grower’s top wine often compares favorably with the price of an entry level wine of a big house—they are usually better….Whiskey lovers might compare them to single-malts in a world of blended scotch.” The big houses get knocked for high yields, shoddy viticulture, indifferent winemaking, volume that runs into the millions of bottles per year, pernicious business practices, and worse.  In turn, the grandes marques liken themselves to the famous houses of Cognac; the art of champagne, in their telling, lies in the blending of dozens and sometimes hundreds of still wines from vintages going back decades. The growers, they aver, are limited to a few colors in their palettes, since they work a handful of vineyards and don’t have the facilities to keep older reserve wines. (The reality, of course, is more nuanced: Roederer and Henriot, for example, are just two houses that practice immaculate viticulture, while growers like Raymond Boulard and Jacques Diebolt happen to be masterful blenders. More significantly, the relationship is generally liked on both sides and remains inextricably symbiotic: growers depend on the houses for their livelihood while the houses depend on the growers for their grapes.)

I’ve long been curious to find out what the acrimony is about, and there’s no time like the holidays to get sodden with bubbly. This winter, I decided to taste wines from 16 houses most likely to be stocked at the local Liquor Mart, and see how they fared. Importers and publicists provided most of the bottles. To fend of insanity and cirrhosis, I passed on rosés and anything retailing for more than $75 (if you regularly shop for bottles in the three figures, or sit on the board of a large urban museum, you probably get your wine information from the Robb Report anyway). An author, a brewmaster, a blogger, and a half-dozen folks working for importers and retailers here in New York tasted 14 of the non-vintage brut champagnes with me a in a single blind tasting; I didn’t mention the bottles’ big-house provenance until we’d finished. Generally I abhor writing tasting notes, those dismal potpourri satchels of adjectives. I dislike, too, sampling more than five or six wines in one sitting—the experience is like watching two dozen trailers for movies you’d like to see in their entirety—but these proved efficient ways of trying to unravel more than thirty champagnes. We tasted the rest of the wines in smaller groups. Though I received several demi-sec bottles—vinified in the sweeter style common before Louise Pommery’s brut began to catch on in London in the 1870s—I discovered that I simply don’t enjoy them, though the ones from Piper-Heidsieck and Pol Roger struck me as the most palatable. The dollar amounts listed reflect street prices from the better stores; thanks to the innovation of our financial services community, they are lower than they’ve been in years.

Brut Non-Vintage Champagnes

Piper-Heidsieck ($33): Primarily Pinot Noir.  Ripe, big-framed, tropical. One taster picked it as his top wine, admiring the fruit and finesse; others found it too rich. Something about it brings to mind midwestern debutantes sunning on a private beach. Well-made but maybe a bit ingratiating.

Henriot Brut Souverain ($39): Dry, worldly, filigreed, elegant, with real complexity and length. Nearly every taster listed this as a favorite. Wonderful.

Deutz Brut Classic ($34): Brooding, firm and leesy, with dark grapes predominating, though some tasters found it disjointed. To me, classy and involving, like Julie Christie circa McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Gosset Brut Excellence ($35): Crisp, young, pleasant and dry. Not complex, but quite satisfying.

Taittinger Brut La Française ($38): Mineral, chalky, leesy, lingering. A few tasters found it a touch sweet, but most agreed it was lovely. Terrific winemaking.

Pol Roger Brut Réserve ($34): Supple, yeasty, balanced, with great freshness. “I could get drunk on this,” someone blurted out. They meant it in the best way. Excellent champagne.

Delamotte ($42): Pleasant enough, with a distinctly Chardonnay character, but most found it somewhat simple, grapey and brusque.

Lanson “Black Label” ($31): The first bottle had musty, sherry-like flavors that led most to conclude it was damaged. The second bottle was better, with a tasty, super-dry (Lanson undergoes no malo), slightly bitter finish, but the mousse seemed flat and the wine possibly a bit tired, with an unusual phenolic note on the nose. Odd.

Veuve Cliquot “Yellow Label” ($39): Clean, crunchy, saline, maybe a little hollow, but nearly everyone enjoyed it, which surprised some of them once they realized it was Cliquot. Haters beware.

Laurent-Perrier ($35): Another well-liked champagne; citrusy, creamy, with sharp acidity. Appealing but not terribly interesting.

Charles Heidsieck Brut Reserve ($36): Raspberries and coffee, juicy and absolutely huge, but difficult to find the thread. Heidsieck lists the dates of both the beginning (mis en cave) and end (disgorgement) of the wine’s time on the lees, right on the bottle; this one was based on the boiling 2003 vintage. Impressive materials but muddled.

Louis Roederer Brut Premier ($37): “If I had to show someone what champagne tasted like, I’d give him this,” one taster said. Classic nose, full, crisp, bready, appetizing. Structured, long, with everything in place. Near the top of every taster’s list.

Moët & Chandon Brut Imperial ($36): Oddly woody, caramelized nose, canned-fruit-juice cloying on the palate, with a borderline astringent finish. Discombobulated. Almost everyone rated it dead last.

Alfred Gratien Cuvée Classique ($41): First bottle corked. Second bottle was well-liked, with a cedary nose, broad frame, a strange drop of syrup up front, but real delicacy. Barrel fermented. Deluxe and interesting.

Bollinger Special Cuvée ($55): Rich, with dusty dark grapes predominating, elegant, impeccably balanced. Like a freshly-painted cruise ship coming into port. Fantastic as usual, though recent price hikes have made Bolly nearly vintage-priced.

Jacquesson Cuvée No. 733 ($48): The favorite house of Napoleon, who admittedly didn’t taste the 2005 vintage, on which this is based. The first impression is of reticence and extreme dryness—the dosage is a mere 2.5 grams—along with a mouth-filling yeastiness. With air the wine fills out and grows more intense. Painstakingly elegant, agile, and refined. Along with the Henriot, this is the non-vintage brut I’d buy.

Vintage, Blanc de Blancs, Sans Dosage and Extra Dry Champagnes

Piper-Heidsieck ‘00 ($67): Perfectly proportioned, with plenty of yeast, tropical fruit, nuttiness, toast—a serious, superb, expensive-tasting champagne. Impossible not to like and admire. The rich fruit style gives it a Gwyneth Paltrow personality, though Paltrow in The Talented Mr. Ripley, not on that horrid-funny Batali-in-Spain program.

Henriot Blanc Souverain Pur Chardonnay ($45): Out of the bottle, a model blanc de blancs, with that snowy delicacy and green apple aromas. After twenty minutes it grows unexpectedly rich and lingering while retaining elegance and dryness. The bubbles are tiny and gentle and the mouthfeel like the silk in a Charvet tie. The most memorable and delicious sub-$50 champagne I’ve tasted and the top bargain here, by a mile.

Henriot ‘98 ($75): Another appetizing exercise in the delicate yet rich Henriot style, with Chardonnay in the front and Pinot Noir at the back. Lingering and intense, with a billowy mousse, yet a slightly peaky acidity and a cloying cidery note made this, for me, less impressive than the cheaper Blanc Souverain.

Deutz Blanc De Blancs ‘04 ($75): I’m a blanc de blancs fanatic, but the Deutz, while tasting reasonably pleasant, came off as heavy and lacking acidity. Highly drinkable but admittedly disappointing.

Gosset Grande Reserve ($60): A blend of three vintages, the Gosset smelled and tasted like a warm apple pie spiked with berries. That turned out to be too much of a good thing, because there wasn’t enough acidity, structure and sur lie character to pick up the the slack. Vinous, fascinating, but flabby.

Taittinger Prelude ($73): Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Grand Cru villages, from the ‘04 vintage, though it doesn’t say so on the label. Beautifully blended, bracing and sapid. The overall effect is cold, like waking up in a loft filled with a few pieces of modern glass-and-chrome furniture. Refined, delicious champagne.

Taittinger ‘02 ($70): Seamlessly blended in the Taittinger style, with aggressive carbonation, flavors of orange zest and cream, yet the impression is of a very young wine that’s somehow unyielding and soulless.

Pol Roger Pure ($61): Sweetness and acidity are balanced masterfully for a no-dosage champagne—you can’t readily tell it apart from a brut. Still, nearly every taster found it uninvolving and thin.

Lanson “Gold Label” ‘97 ($57): The oldest wine here and also the only one with savory secondary flavors; imagine smelling a just-roasted chicken underneath a riot of flowers, honey, oysters, yeast and every variety of fruit. As with all truly great wines, the flavors and aromas come knitted together in a mysterious, non-divisible whole. Every taster chose this as the top wine; I can still taste it weeks later. One of the least expensive vintage champagnes on the market. Superlatives fail me.

Laurent-Perrier Ultra Brut ($65): A sumptuous white-burgundy aroma of hazelnuts gives way to a shockingly dry palate. The mousse is so tight and hard that it feels like you’ve filled your mouth with platinum mesh. More, please. Perversely delicious.

Laurent-Perrier ‘99 ($55): Spends at least seven years on the lees, yet the result is light, pleasant, balanced, short and ultimately innocuous. It tasted roughly the same a year ago. Not a whole lot going on, though I’m not sure why.

Charles Heidsieck ‘00 ($70): If Waylon Jennings were a champagne, he’d be this one. Massive, bombastic, coffee-tinged, with a firmness and creaminess that bring to mind Krug, and an exciting, long finish. Its only shortcoming is that it tastes young, with the flavors still separate; in several years this could be mind-bending. Awesomely fun to drink.

Louis Roederer Carte Blanche ($43): This is an extra-dry champagne, a notch sweeter than a brut, but Roederer pulls it off beautifully. After a whiff of SO2 blows off, the extra sweetness comes through on the nose but not on the palate. The wine is exuberant, full-bodied, Pinot-driven, and fresh. Similar to the Brut Premier but a shade richer.

Louis Roederer ‘03 ($68): Roederer champagnes taste unusually alike, and this is the best of the three listed here. Again, the exuberance of the Brut Premier but with more of everything. Unabashed, with lots of up-front fruit, possibly due to the scorching vintage, but restraint and a leesy fullness keep it appetizing and firm. Well priced for the quality.

Ruinart Blanc des Blancs ($60): My friend Justin told me that whenever someone comes into his shop looking for a bottle to bring on a date, he recommends the Ruinart. To quote Billy Dee Williams, it works every time. And why not? The contents of the clear round flask are discreet, gracious, subtly mineral, and completely delicious. I enjoy it so much I may start using it as a fragrance. A go-to champagne for a number of serious winos I’m acquainted with, myself included, this is as good as ever.

If you’ve read this far, you can probably tell that most these champagnes proved delicious. None, with the possible exception of the Moët Brut Imperial, tasted or smelled unpleasant. I would drink any of them if a glass was put in front of me. In absolute terms, however, most tasters came away somewhat underwhelmed with the entry-level non-vintage bruts, finding some unfocused and simple and, for the most part, lacking soil character. With the higher priced champagnes, things got more interesting.

The experience turned up unexpected discoveries. For one, I was surprised that exposing champagne to air, even decanting, improves it more than even most still wines; bringing it up to a reasonable temperature is just as beneficial. If your bottle has spent a few hours or days in the fridge, open it and leave it on your kitchen counter for twenty minutes. Another surprise is that the marques’ claims of blending for a distinct house profile proved largely true: I can now describe the Taittinger or Roederer style and tell you which I prefer. Comparing these wines to those of the growers gets more complicated. With due respect to Jacqueline Friedrich, grower champagnes no longer cost less—if anything, the reverse may be the case. With the exception of Bollinger and Jacquesson, all the non-vintage bruts we tasted can be found for under $40, something that’s simply not true of champagnes from the better-known growers. The big house wines tend to taste sweeter overall; the growers are leading a commendable trend toward less dosage and a drier palate. Yet the best of the grandes marques make original, delicious wines that taste nothing like “lowest-common-denominator pap.” Even if you drink little more than unsulfured biodynamic Pineau d’Aunis from the Loire Valley, try a bottle of Henriot Blanc Souverain or Lanson ‘97; they’re mineral, bristle with personality, and happen to be bargains. One night, as a coda to a vintage champagne tasting, we opened a bottle of Cedric Bouchard’s Inflorescence La Parcelle 2002, a blanc de noir from an admired grower that retails for about eighty dollars. It was stupendous—vinous and brooding, with striking whiff of chalk—but rather than making the preceding wines appear better or worse, it merely provided another vantage onto the appetizing mystery that is champagne. Which leads me to a cautious generalization: while the best big house champagnes can be more seamless, the best grower champagnes tend to reveal more of the character of the soil. Personally, I’ll continue to drink both. Samuel Johnson wrote: “The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.” Happy holidays.

photo by a whisper of unremitting demand

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