BUBBLES QUICK & DIRTY

Once in a while, even in my current dotage, I get invited to something. This time it was a tasting of grower-Champagnes in which four small and ostensibly “competing” distributors united to fly the flag for farmer fizz.

It was odd to taste the wines without concerning myself with their costs. It was also odd, but familiar, to do the trade-tasting thing after many years of being able to immerse myself in the samples I receive. This time it was superficial, as these things have to be, and all I could write were glancing sketches. Not to mention I had to battle with the egregious garlic smell of the yum-yums the venue put out. But it was better to have done it than not to have done it, and I only ask you to regard the notes as hypotheses, less “how the wine was” than “what the wine might well be, maybe…”

I tried for a logical order but once the crowd arrived that was impossible. The good news is that most of the wines were very good; only a small few were meh and a good-sized group were excellent, even stellar. I must say, and I’m abashed to say it, that the best wines were from the Skurnik contingent, and among those the very best were from my (old) portfolio, but that’s as it should be. Gray eminence that I am, I had several decades to hone my plate and my sense of what made for an elegant and many-faceted portfolio.

It’s a heady time in Champagne – apart from the commercial doldrums and the inconveniently bizarre climate. As the new generation of growers starts to comprise the majority, there are both more good growers than ever, yet also more misguided ones. Importers need to discriminate, and they do, somewhat unevenly.

I was pleased to see DIEBOLT-VALLOIS on the table, as I only taste them occasionally even though Isabelle Diebolt-Vallois is married to Jean Paul Hebrart, whom I represent(ed) and who’s become a friend – both of them. I was also happy how good the wines were, the basic NV generous and expressive and the Prestige racier and more mineral. I had the highest hopes for the top cuvée, the Fleur de Passion, but following the precision and chalkiness of the Prestige, the Fleur struck me as obtrusively woody. If my friend reads this she’ll cluck her tongue ruefully at me, having heard many of a discussion between her husband and me about his wood-aged wines. Mind you, the Fleur is made to age, and some time in its third decade the wood will have receded and the wine will realize its destiny.

A Côte des Blancs grower called MICHEL GENET offered the promise of Chardonnay from Grand Crus, yet a few of the wines tasted steely from what I surmised was disgorgement malady, yet (alas) the dates didn’t appear on the label. I expect the wines are better than they showed on the day, but a wine called MG BB Spirit, their basic NV, was a 70-30 assemblage of the current vintage – also not shown, damn it – and the one before. A steel-vinified wine from seven plots in Chouillly, despite going through malo it showed spiky and angular – a reliable marker of disgorgement stress. The MG BB Vintage (2019) was also high-toned and steely for that usually clement vintage. I’d love to taste it when it’s showing correctly. After all, a wine from 65 year old vines in a single site in a tasty year ought to be lovely.

But I shall also observe that Chouilly is, in my view, a “lesser” Grand Cru compared to its neighbors, at least when the commune is seen as an entirety. Several among the lieu-dits are certainly elite, but they don’t classify sites in Champagne. And in common with all my opinions, this one is hypothetical pending evidence that prompts me to change my mind.

It was a pleasure to taste JOSE MICHEL again, as I hadn’t

encountered the wines from the new generation, which were sprightly and only a little “modernized.” The 2016 Special Club was a delicious highlight of the tasting.

The same goes for the usually reliable BRUNO PAILLARD, whose wines were smart and classy and light footed. The 2014 Blanc de Blancs (Oger and Mesnil) was stellar – is it the currently available vintage, I wonder?

In general, as Champagne inventory moves more slowly through the pipeline, a number of wines are available that have that most precious of attributes – time on the cork. I wondered at the excellence of several NV wines that had never tasted so good, until I saw they were old disgorgements, by which I mean in the 3-6 year range. The merchant is frustrated but the ultimate buyer benefits.

The Aube grower JEAN LAURENT offered typically pliant Aube wines atypically complex. This was true across the range, and this looks like a worthwhile address.

I’d like to have had more fun with PERSEVAL-FARGE because I like and respect the importer, but with one exception these were merely decent middle-of-the-road wines. The domain looks interesting from their website, which alas has an excess of fluff and a dearth of useful information. Yet one wine stood among the highlights of the day – the so-called Terres de Sables, which they describe as a “wine of great softness” but which I found to show character, animation, and imprint.

Which brings me to the Skurnik group, and first to the wines of GAMET, which arrived after I had retired. I’ve tasted them twice (but only “tasted”) and each time I’ve been well pleased; these are entirely satisfying wines if a small step below the very best. Mind you, I only tasted the two “entry-level” wines, and at that level these were of standout quality.

Two wines outside “my” group were the NV from VERGNON (in Mesnil) which was classy and incisive, and the prestige cuvée from DOYARD which was, let’s say, woodier than I prefer.

That leaves a group of excellent NVs, one from AUBRY (current inventory), though that grower’s Nombre d’Or was (for the first time I can recall) annoyingly “natty.” Two “mature” disgorgements of NV wines – from GOUTORBE and GEOFFROY were lip-smackers. LAETITIA BILLIOT’S wines were diverse, the NV troubled from recent disgorgement while the Rosé  

was explosively fruity enough to survive virtually anything.

Beyond these, what ought to have been spectacular was indeed spectacular. HEBRART and VILMART above all, astride an impressive showing from CHIQUET, whose current NV is as smart as ever, even subjected to being tasted right after Hebrart’s 2018 Special Club. Nicolas Chiquet has a second Club bottling these days, a single-site wine from (Grand Cru) Aÿ, which was unsurprisingly excellent.

Finally the 2015 Special Club  from GIMONNET was entirely gorgeous, but when I nursed a glass for fifteen minutes the underlying (and in this case slight) grassiness of the year grew discernible. Goes to show the wisdom of tasting slowly, but also that it cannot pertain to a function whose purpose is essentially pragmatic – to decide what (or whether) to purchase.