Beneath them were the NV wines of smaller and cheaper producers from the Champagne region, then the other sparkling wines of France, and, finally – indiscriminately scattered at the bottom of the pile – sparkling wines made anywhere else in the world. If you bought non-French bubbles, it was understood, it meant you couldn’t afford the real thing, and were probably planning to splash fruit juice into it anyway. Times have changed. A new
U
ntil recently, if you wanted to buy a bottle of Champagne or sparkling
wine, your choices were pretty straightforward. There was a clear hierarchy with a very direct relationship to cost. At the apex of the pyramid
there were the top wines, cuvées de prestige, made by the top Champagne houses or Grandes Marques – and just below them the non-vintage (NV) wines of the same houses – Bollinger, Krug, Louis Roederer, Moët & Chandon, Perrier-Jouët, Salon, Veuve Clicquot, and the other members of the Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC).
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generation of Champagne lovers regards the Grandes Marques as old hat, and is more interested in “grower Champagnes” from small but quality-conscious producers such as Jacques Selosse, Eric Rodez, Vilmart, Bouchard and Godmé. More radically still, they are
interested in sparkling wines from other parts of the world. Today, Italy’s Prosecco, Spain’s Cava and the new generation of sparkling wines being made in England are increasingly gaining acceptance as interesting wines in their own right, and not merely as cheap substitutes for Champagne. Many of those wines, not coincidentally, aren’t actually cheap – although none from outside the Champagne region yet commands quite the price of, for example, Krug’s rare Blanc de Noirs Clos
d’Ambonnay, the 1996 or 1998 vintages of which are currently available from Berry Bros & Rudd (BBR) in Hong Kong for HK$15,200 (US$1,900) per bottle. “The best quality non- Champagne sparkling wine is equivalent to good quality non- vintage Champagne in price,” says BBR senior account manager David Jones. “If someone wants to spend HK$400 on a bottle of wine that will show nicely at a party, they are more likely to buy Champagne. It is going to be somebody fairly knowledgeable and interested in wine who is going to spend that on a bottle of English sparkling wine, or aged Cava.”
So how has Champagne acquired its special cachet? A cynic might point to a couple of hundred years’ worth of astute marketing, and that has certainly played its part, but so have the terroir of the region and the high quality of the winemaking. The Méthode Champenoise –
or, in whatever language may be pertinent, “traditional method” as the European Union insists that it be referred to when referring to wines made outside the Champagne region – consists of primary fermentation of the wines, followed by blending, a second fermentation in the bottle, ageing on the lees
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 71
From top: Gramona’s vineyards near Barcelona are renowned for their fine Cava
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