Three Versions of the Same Wine... Or Is It?

It’s sometimes assumed that the more lees aging a wine receives, the better off it is. While tasting this morning with Gilles Dumangin of J. Dumangin Fils in Chigny-les-Roses, he pulled out an instructive pair of bottles for us to sample. They were both the same wine, Dumangin’s 1994 vintage, and both dosed at the same level (12 grams per liter). The only difference was that one was disgorged in 2000 and the other in 2002.

Eight and six years, respectively, after their disgorgements, the two wines were very different, and not in a way that I expected. The bottle disgorged in 2000 was developed in flavor but still lively, with firm acidity and balanced notes of cream, butter toffee and dried fruits. It was a delicious example of a well-matured champagne, and one that I enjoyed drinking. The later-disgorged bottle, however, felt much less fresh, with ponderously honeyed, caramelly flavors that made it tiring to drink, and the acidity was much less prominent.

Now, a comparison of only one bottle of each, especially with 14-year old wine, is prone to variability, and you could attribute the latter bottle’s advanced maturity to cork variation or other perturbations common to wine. But Dumangin has consistently experienced the same results, and specifically opened these two bottles to demonstrate this to me, emphasizing that choosing the time of disgorgement is critical to the way a champagne develops. “We’ve realized that when you disgorge the wine when it’s very young, it stays fresh for a long time afterwards,” he says.

What is perhaps even more interesting is that he’s re-releasing the 1994 now as a Vinothèque wine, but offering it as an Extra Dry! I thought that I’d initially heard wrong, and later took the above photo as proof. It’s common that people dose old wines less, but hardly anyone would suggest dosing an old wine more. Yet the wine is delicious, and at 17 grams per liter of sugar, it’s hardly a sweet wine. In fact, it tastes less sweet than some so-called brut NVs out there, the dosage giving it richness of body and texture and expanding the flavors much in the way that a Riesling Kabinett is often more fragrant and aromatically complex than a Riesling trocken. “I tried 12 different dosages, from zero to 24 grams of sugar per liter,” says Dumangin. “We tried blind tastings with our oenologists, looking for the dosage level that developed the aromas of old wine the best. It happened to be at 17 grams.” I always say that each wine finds its balance at a different level, and this wine seems perfectly happy where it is. A terrific and thought-provoking experience.

Redefining Champagne

More words on the proposed redefinition of the Champagne appellation, this time by Roger Cohen in today’s New York Times.

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about this lately (almost exclusively from Americans, by the way — maybe we’re just the most cynical of the world’s wine drinkers). As regular readers of my blog will know, I am not disturbed at all by the expansion. I believe that the issue has been explored with thought and care, and that it has the possibility to relieve some pressure on grape pricing and supply without negatively impacting the overall quality of champagne (particularly the ones that you and I drink). I also prefer the word “redefinition” to “expansion”, as the latter is misleading: the outer boundaries of Champagne are not changing at all. It’s an exploration of the terroir within the current Champagne area to find out if there are suitable parcels of equal (or possibly even better) quality than what already exists.

Cohen makes a good point defending the project against those who scoff at this as merely cashing in by the greedy Champenois: this project was initiated back in 2003, and the first drop of champagne from any new parcels won’t be made until at least 2020, meaning that the entire process will take a minimum of 17 years. Hardly a timescale suitable for pandering to the masses, and in fact, it’s one that could possibly mean that the new plantings won’t even be ready until after the current boom cycle is over. So I think it’s clear that this isn’t simply an attempt to make a quick buck (which is impossible with champagne anyway).

The bizarre thing about Cohen’s article, however, is that he chooses to present the Champagne redefinition issue as an antithesis to globalization and the pressures of international taste, bemoaning the “Californization” of wines such as Chianti and Rioja as they embrace banal uniformity and praising Champagne for not succumbing to our “instant-gratification world”. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that point in and of itself — I agree with him that Champagne is to be lauded for its sense of restraint and commitment to quality regarding this issue. Yet I — and mind you, nobody loves champagne more than I do — even I might hesitate to promote Champagne as a champion of the resistance against globalization and consumer-driven bandwagons. Champagne can be as market-driven and manipulated as anything else, and it has certainly changed its appearance over the years in response to consumer demand. It started out as a still wine, after all, and in its sparkling form it was initially derided by wine connoisseurs much in the way that we might scoff at, say, wine coolers. Even when it became largely a sparkling wine, it was very sweet, catering to the tastes of the day (this is why the designations Sec and Extra Sec are actually sweeter than Brut), and the dry style only came to prominence in the 20th century, as the market began to prefer drier wines.

Today, one could argue that the style is in fact changing again to accommodate consumer demand, as dosage levels are dropping and a bone-dry or Extra Brut style is quickly becoming all the rage, whether or not the wines can harmoniously support that style. Of course, there are terrific examples of non-dosé champagne, and I’m an enormous fan of these wines. But as it was with Germany in the late 1990s (the effects of which linger to this day), I’m beginning to think that many people today insist on dryness at all cost, which can result in some pretty raspy and imbalanced wines. It will sort itself out, naturally, but my point is that champagne is as susceptible to market pressure as any other wine, even if this isn’t on full display regarding the expansion issue.

Dosage: Liqueur vs. MCR

The subject of dosage is a sensitive one, not only in terms of quantity, but even what sort of substance is used to dose a champagne. The standard practice of dosage is to make a liqueur d’expédition, dissolving either cane sugar or beet sugar in a quantity of wine and adding this to the bottle after disgorgement. Recently, however, many producers have switched to a product called MCR, which has sparked a bit of a controversy.

MCR stands for moût concentré rectifié, or concentrated and rectified grape must. The majority of MCR comes from the Languedoc, and sometimes from even farther away, but it’s processed to such a highly neutral state that I doubt that the region or even the grape variety makes a difference at all. Its neutrality, in fact, is the primary reason for using it, and many top growers are preferring it over traditional liqueur, including Larmandier-Bernier, Diebolt-Vallois and René Geoffroy. Geoffroy switched completely to MCR about four years ago, after extensive series of comparative blind tastings, and Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy is very pleased with the results, citing not only its neutrality but its superior freshness as primary factors. “The traditional liqueur has a tendency to oxidize more quickly,” says Geoffroy. “MCR is better at preserving the character of the original wine.”

Not everyone is convinced, however. To begin with, for some people the liqueur d’expédition is an important part of the “finishing” of a wine, especially for major houses such as Billecart-Salmon or Louis Roederer, both of whom put a great deal of care into aging the reserve wines used for their dosage. Also, some people contest the idea of MCR’s neutrality, saying that it contributes an unwelcome character. “MCR is a little syrupy,” says Raphael Bérèche, of Bérèche et Fils. “It’s [the European Union] that tells us to use MCR, in order to absorb all the excess wine.” An additional argument used by many partisans of liqueur is that employing wine from the Languedoc or elsewhere, even in a neutral and concentrated form, is contrary to the idea of terroir. On the other hand, those who favor MCR can point to the fact that the sugar in liqueur is even more foreign, as it doesn’t even come from grapes!

My verdict? I used to think that you couldn’t taste the difference one way or another, but I’ve found that you sometimes can, especially if the dosage is above extra brut levels. If the wine doesn’t have enough body, MCR does feel slightly syrupy on the palate, which is starting to bother me more and more. On the other hand, if the wine has depth and richness of fruit (think Diebolt or Geoffroy), or if the dosage is very low (think Larmandier-Bernier), MCR works out perfectly fine. I do think that it integrates with the wine in time, and the differences are usually pronounced only at the beginning, right after disgorgement. In fact, if you live overseas, by the time the wine gets sent to you across the ocean you probably won’t be able to tell one way or the other. But it’s an interesting argument nevertheless.

Dosage on the Label

Speaking of putting more information on the label, brooklynguy raised the point yesterday about revealing the amount of dosage. I agree with him — I enjoy seeing this information, and it’s useful to me. But I can see why producers wouldn’t want to do it. It’s even more fraught with danger than putting the disgorgement date on the label.

The first problem is that, as with anything in the world of wine, dosage needs to be put into context in order to be properly understood. For example, one of the considerations is the vintage, or the base year for non-vintage wines (information that is even less likely to appear on a label than dosage): six grams of sugar per liter is going to taste very different in a high-acid vintage like 1996 than in a low-acid vintage like 1999. The amount of reserve wine used, and the type of reserve wine, is also going to affect the balance. You and I know this, and can properly adjust our mental state, but the majority of consumers won’t or can’t adjust their perceptions. A number has a feeling of concreteness and security, and a dangerous misperception that is all too prevalent right now is that a lower dosage is necessarily and automatically better. (And I’m not exempting wine professionals, many of whom ought to know differently.)

The second problem is that getting the correct balance of dosage is not at all a formulaic process. You cannot simply say, “Well, I’ve got x grams per liter of acidity here, therefore I need to add y grams of sugar.” I think of it this way: each wine has its point of optimum balance, which is individually determined by the unique set of characteristics of that particular wine. The trick of a dosage tasting is to find that balance point. As I’ve said before, dosage can fool you very easily, no matter how experienced of a taster you are. (I’ve been in tastings where I swore the 4 g./l. sample tasted perceptively sweeter than the exact same wine dosed at 6 g./l., even after I knew which was which.) Sometimes a wine balances at six grams, sometimes at ten, sometimes at none at all. But each one is different. It’s like taking ten twigs of different shapes and sizes and trying to find the fulcrum point of each. You can’t just measure x number of centimeters and expect it to work for all of them. This is the primary reason why a lower dosage is not automatically better, and the reason why many producers don’t want to reveal the dosage. They just don’t trust us to understand the concept.

Numbers can fool you even in finished champagnes. To cite examples just from wines that I’ve tasted within the last week or so, Françoise Bedel’s Dis, Vin Secret, is dosed at 11 grams per liter, yet it tastes much drier than that due to its extraordinary balance and expression of soil character. Ployez-Jacquemart’s Extra Quality Brut, on the other hand (I don’t mean to pick on them, because they do make wines that I like), has a dosage of only four to six grams per liter, depending on the blend, yet every time I taste it I feel like it tastes much higher.

But to get back to putting dosage on the label, I don’t think it’s nearly as important as the disgorgement date. If a wine tastes balanced, that’s good enough for me. But I admit that I really do like it when producers do it. It’s useful information to me as a taster, and beyond that it also reminds me that this producer really thought about his or her dosage — people who put dosage on the labels are generally among those who obsess over each cuvée, trying to get the balance perfectly right, rather than those who just throw in a knee-jerk amount of sugar every year. I doubt it will ever become a widespread practice, however. It’s just too risky.

Cutting Back on Dosage

There’s no question that champagnes are getting drier, especially those of the top growers and houses. There are three primary reasons for this, at least when talking about young champagne. The first is that people are harvesting riper fruit, due to better vineyard practices. Riper fruit gives more stuffing to a wine, and also higher sugar generally results in lower acidity, meaning that you need less dosage to balance the whole. The second reason is that people are harvesting riper fruit due to warmer weather. Whether or not you believe that global warming actually exists, the fact is that champagne grapes are now maturing faster, earlier and to a higher degree of potential alcohol. The third is simply that dry champagne, especially extra brut or, increasingly, non-dosé champagne, is very fashionable right now.

I like extra brut champagne as much as anyone (as you can see from this photo of some recent things I’ve been drinking), and yet I’m not in the camp that believes drier is automatically better. The issue is not that I prefer sugar or don’t prefer sugar. To me, each wine finds its own particular balance – sometimes that’s at a dosage of three grams per liter of sugar, sometimes eight. Sometimes it’s even (gasp!) at ten or eleven, and yes, sometimes – only sometimes – it’s none at all. To say that drier is unequivocally better reminds me of the German riesling trocken craze around the late 1990s. There is a certain segment of champagne that is moving in the same direction. And yet, there are some absolutely brilliant extra brut and non-dosé champagnes. What are your thoughts?