Falstaff Magazin International 01/2021

wine / CHAMPAGNE The

wine / CHAMPAGNE The hills in Champagne are mostly gentle slopes. < THE GRAPE VARIETIES Today, three main grape varieties dominate Champagne: Pinot Noir which is prevalent in the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Bar, Chardonnay which reaches its most unique expression in the Côte des Blancs and Pinot Meunier, which dominates the Vallée de la Marne. While other grapes are permitted, too, like Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Arbanne and Petit Meslier, they are rarities. All three main grape varieties give something special to Champagne: Pinot Noir gives body and structure, Chardonnay gives freshness and salty depth, Pinot Meunier UNTIL 2010, THE VILLAGES WERE GRADED INTO A SCALE. THE BEST VILLAGES, A TOTAL OF SEVENTEEN, WERE REGARDED AS GRAND CRU, AND FORTYTWO AS PREMIER CRU. gives a certain fleshiness to the body, fruit and a hauntingly smouldering aroma. Most Champagnes are blends of all three varieties, but there also are blanc de blancs, made from Chardonnay alone, which express the sleekness, freshness and chalky depth of Champagne. Then there are blanc de noirs, made from the red-skinned grapes Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier which are richer and rounder. Whether a Champagne is made as a blend, or a single varietal wine is no indication of quality but a stylistic choice. In fact, the art of blending is what makes Champagne what it is. Photos: Rohrscheid/Comité Champagne, Luca Bruno / AP / picturedesk.com, Shutterstock 30 falstaff winter 2021

Above top: a typical Coquard wine press, designed to press whole bunches of grapes very gently. Above bottom: special cuvées on a pupitre, or riddling rack. THE MAKING OF CHAMPAGNE What sets winemaking in Champagne apart is that all grapes are hand-harvested so that the whole bunches can be pressed very gently. In fact, only an exactly governed percentage of the soft-pressed juice is allowed to become Champagne. This ensures that there are no bitter phenolic compounds and it also allows red-skinned grapes like Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier to be pressed so quickly and lightly that the juice is pale and can be made into a white base wine. The grape juice is then fermented into still wines: some Champagne houses use only stainless steel tanks for fermentation, others use only wooden barrels, some use a mixture of both. Some houses ferment at cooler, some at warmer temperatures, some houses allow the base wines to go through malo-lactic conversion that turns the sharp malic acid in the grapes into softer lactic acid, others avoid this. But whatever a Champagne house does, it ends up with a great variety of base wines from different grape varieties, from different vineyards and different villages. Some wines are used to make this year’s blend, others are held back as reserve wines. Older reserve wines from previous vintages that have been aged for a number of years may be added to this year’s blend, to even out vintage and quantity. But blending is key in Champagne. It requires the winemakers to know their vineyards and the fruit that comes from them. VILLAGE CHARACTERS Today, there are 320 villages within the Champagne appellation. Until 2010, all these villages were graded into a scale, < winter 2021 falstaff 31