
Connoisseur: Champagne, Anyone?
Intellectually stimulating and beautiful to drink, Champagne is no longer clinging to staunch traditions. The category is now exploding in radical new ways.
For collectors and quick-to-pop connoisseurs, there’s never been a better time to focus their energies on Champagne. Quality has shot up dramatically in the last 15 years, with industry players and pundits all betting on the benefits of a more diverse expression of terroir across the entire region.
Fancy a vintage, rosé or single varietal to drink throughout a meal? Increasingly finessed examples of Champagne from small grower-producers (those who don’t sell their grapes to the big houses but instead focus on their own boutique labels) means the list at your local restaurant is showing more divergence than ever, with extra-dry, low-pressure and low-dosage styles also playing a starring role. Even major houses like Bollinger, Krug, Louis Roederer are bottling better Champagne than they have in decades.
Case in point, Dom Pèrignon. This past October, big daddy D partnered with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s estate to produce artful holiday packaging for its 2015 vintage release. This means Basquiat—the renegade Brooklynite credited with elevating graffiti to the realm of high art—has joined the ranks of artists like Björk, David Lynch, Jeff Koons and Karl Lagerfeld who have all been tapped previously to deck out the curvy black bottle.

Midnight revellers queued down the block in New York’s East Village to enjoy Basquiat’s mastery at The Brant Foundation—and a night of free-flowing Dom. It was another highly considered collab in a world of high-brow hookups. Yet the embracing of the artist’s manic style only underlines how much this luxury lynchpin has changed. Champagne today criss-crosses the social spectrum, and while demand continues, beneath the gloss and glamour of 21st-century spin, the variety is going back to its roots.

The real revolution in Champagne is happening under the feet of makers, where earthy experimentations are the order of the day. Big houses like Krug and Louis Roederer have been shaken up by individual visionaries like Anselme Selosse who came along and overlaid a more Burgundian-type philosophy over the tightly regulated region. Since the grower-producer category exploded, it’s radically shifted perceptions away from the idea that Champagne is all about the label, to get people talking about what’s inside the bottle.

And in tiny wine bars, top hotels and trendy restaurants, you can dine out on once-obscure drops from fantastic producers like Egly-Ouriet, Larmandier-Bernier, Berêche et Fils, or Vouette et Sorbee to savour wines you simply couldn’t buy 10 years ago. Master of Wine, Ned Goodwin, believes Champagne is one of the most exciting categories of wine on earth right now, evolving faster than any other scene. “The grower revolution has been around for a while. But in terms of the quality, I mean: wow!” he says, shaking his hair from his eyes.
As this bona fide wine expert explains in his charismatic rapid-fire style, makers are breaking free of stereotypes to truly showcase their own backyards, and are on a mission to share not only their unique terroir but also their own family’s quiet corner of culture. “They’re striving to create wine that is properly demarcated not only by the way they are crafting it but by the geologies and the mesoclimates it represents.”
If the 20th century was about terrific winemaking, then the 21st century is about the vineyards; specifically, the health of the soil and the commitment to crafting wine in the vineyard, not in the blending room. It’s quite a shift for a region that’s been obsessed with luxury marketing and formal dinners at stuffy manor houses. Today you’re more likely to see a trending winemaker photographed in overalls next to their horse or chicken coop, sprouting about their biodynamic methods, as you are to find one standing in a Michelin-starred kitchen in a bow tie.

Progressive producers like Chartogne-Taillet from Merfy, Cedric Bouchard in the Côte de Bars, Laherte Frères from Côteaux sud d’Épernay and Ulysse Collin from west of Congy in the Côteaux du Petite Morin, on the very southern tip of the Côte des Blancs, are gaining worldwide recognition. Tourism to the region, as a result, is exploding. But the end consumer is the real winner, with more to explore than ever before.

As wine critic Nick Stock points out, tiny labels are better placed to share their wares because of the trust the wider public have developed in the Champagne category.

And while a softening of the general luxury market has occurred over the last five years, intriguing, mood-lifting new experiences are still being prioritised by punters. Moreover, a new generation of winemakers are shedding light on the diverse terroir that lies beneath Champagne so we can taste so much more that we would ever have dreamed could be possible.
Jump to:
God Father of Soil – meet Charles Philipponnat
Speaking Volumes – How Jacquesson Has Secured It’s Place in History
Them The Rules – A Modern Guide to Drinking Champagne
Ladies First – Meet The Women Heading Up the Industry’s Leading Houses
Pick of the Bunch – Know the Top 5 Champagnes today
Now That’s What We Call a Bar Crawl – The Planet’s Top Spots for Good Fizz
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Courtesy of Patricks

