BLANC DE BLANCS

Non-vintage, vintage, and prestige Literally meaning “white of whites,” this wine is produced entirely from white Chardonnay grapes and possesses the greatest aging potential of all Champagnes. Blanc de blancs may be made in any district of Champagne, but the best examples come from a small part of the Côte des Blancs between Cramant and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. If consumed too early, a classic blanc de blancs can be austere and seem to lack fruit and generosity, yet with proper maturity this style of Champagne can be very succulent. Given a few years’ bottle aging after purchase, most blanc de blancs develop a toasty-lemony bouquet together with intense, beautifully focused fruit. If the first blend of Lenoble’s nonvintage Cuvée Les Aventures (1990/5/6) is anything to go by, it will be fighting for a place in the top 10 nonvintage blanc de blancs.

I Nonvintage Billecart-Salmon • Boizel • Bonnaire • Gaston Chicquet • Delamotte • Pierre Gimonnet • Moncuit • Joseph Perrier • Jacques Sélosse (Tradition) • Vilmart & Cie • Vintage Billecart-Salmon • Bonnaire • Deutz • Duval-Leroy • Pierre

Gimonnet (Collection en magnum) • Jacquesson (Avize) • Henri Mandois (Chardonnay Brut) • Le Mesnil (Vigne Sélectionnée) • Pol Roger • Louis Roederer • Prestige cuvée Boizel (Joyeau) • Deutz (Amour de Deutz) • Charles Heidsieck (Cuvée de Millénaires) • Krug (Clos du Mesnil) • Ruinart (Dom Ruinart) • Salon (“S”) • Taittinger (Comtes de Champagne)

BLANC DE NOIRS

Nonvintage, vintage, and prestige Literally translated as “white of blacks,” these Champagnes are made entirely from black grapes, either Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier, or a blend of the two. The most famous and most expensive is Bollinger’s Vieilles Vignes Françaises, which is a unique example of pure Pinot Noir Champagne made from two tiny plots of ungrafted vines, which between them cannot produce more than 3,000 bottles, hence the hefty price tag. Aside from Bollinger, few producers have traditionally used the term blanc de noirs, but the Vieilles Vignes Françaises has given it a certain cachet and a few commercially minded houses have begun to cash in on the term (Beaumet, Jeanmaire, Mailly Grand Cru, Oudinot, and De Venoge, for example). Many supermarkets now sell their own-label brand of blanc de noirs. Bollinger inadvertently created the myth that a blanc de noirs is intrinsically a big, full, and muscular Champagne, but it is generally little different in style from the other cuvées a house may produce. If you try Serge Mathieu’s Champagne, you will discover a wine so elegant that you would never guess it is made only from Pinot Noir, let alone that it is grown in the Aube. Pommery’s Wintertime and the Mailly cooperative’s basic nonvintage Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru just miss the cut, but deserve an honorary mention. Another cooperative, Veuve A. Devaux, has just come back on track with its nonvintage Blanc de Noirs, which should make the list next time around if standards are maintained.

I Bollinger (Vieilles Vignes Françaises) • Canard-Duchêne (Charles VII) • Serge Mathieu (Cuvée Tradition) • Moët & Chandon (Les Sarments d’Aÿ)

VINTAGE BRUT

Not more than 80 percent of any year’s harvest may be sold as vintage Champagne, so at least 20 percent of the best years’ harvests are conserved for the future blending of nonvintage wines. Some houses stick rigidly to declaring a vintage in only the greatest years, but many, sadly, do not, which is why we have seen vintage Champagnes from less than ideal years such as 1980, 1987, and even 1984. Most coopératives and a large number of growerproducers produce a vintage virtually every year, which is possible, of course, but rather defeats the object and debases the value of the product. However, even in great years, a vintage Champagne is more the result of tightly controlled selection of base wines than a reflection of the year in question, and this makes these wines exceptionally good value. The character of a vintage Champagne is more autolytic, giving it an acacialike floweriness, than that of a nonvintage of the same age because it has no reserve-wine mellowness. If you like those biscuity or toasty bottlearomas, you should keep vintage for a few years. For those who have read about me trumpeting Henri Giraud’s 1993 Fût de Chêne, despite its ludicrous price (five euros ($6.50) more than Cristal, at the time of writing), I have not tasted another vintage from this producer that comes remotely close to the special quality of his 1993.

I Billecart-Salmon (Cuvée Nicolas-François Billecart) • Bollinger (Grande Année)

• Deutz • Alfred Gratien • Krug • Lanson • Pol Roger • Louis Roederer • Veuve Clicquot • Vilmart & Cie (Grand

Cellier d’Or)

NON VINTAGE BRUT

No wine depends upon the winemaker’s blending skills more than nonvintage Champagne, which accounts for more than 75 percent of all Champagne sold. Although nonvintage Champagnes are not usually the finest Champagnes, they are capable of being so. Their base wine, to which reserve wines may be added, will always be from the last harvest. Most producers make up between 10 and 15 percent of their blends from reserves from the previous two or three years, but some utilize as much as 40 percent, while a few will add much less reserve wine in volume, but from a greater number of much older vintages. Many growers have no reserve wines, thus their nonvintage will in fact be from one year, but of a lesser quality than the cuvée selected for their vintage Champagne. All but the most dynamic coopératives typically make up just 5 percent of their blends from reserves from the year immediately preceding that of the base wine—and they seldom excel.

Billecart-Salmon • Deutz (Classic) • Gosset (Grande Réserve) • Charles Heidsieck (Mis en Cave) • Jacquesson(Cuvée No XXX) • Henri Mandois • Serge Mathieu (Tête de Cuvée Select) Bruno Paillard • Louis Roederer • Vilmart & Cie (Grand Cellier d’Or)

DEUTZ (GM)

16 rue Jeanson

51160 Aÿ-Champagne

The profitability and quality of Deutz suffered from underfunding until Roederer acquired it in 1983. Its resurgence began a little shakily with the 1985 vintage but was firmly established by 1988, when it returned to making very stylish Champagnes. Now on stunning form. Deutz also owns Delas Frères in the Rhône and Château Vernous in the Médoc, and has a partnership with Montana to produce Deutz Marlborough in New Zealand (owned by Allied-Domecq, which owns Mumm and Perrier-Jouët).

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