Age-old questions

Consumer understanding of vintage Champagne can be somewhat vague. Jane Parkinson asks key figures from the region how to go about improving the public’s knowledge and for their take on the past decade’s best years

THE VINTAGE VOTE

What is the best vintage in Champagne since 1998 and why?
 
Lanson: “At the moment 2002, because this vintage seems to capture both power and finesse. However, such a choice only has value at this moment as all the vintages are constantly evolving over time and, as such, some of the more recent vintages are yet to express their full complement of qualities.”

Veuve Clicquot: “Without doubt 2002 is already the most interesting vintage in the last 10 years for VC. The Veuve Clicquot Vintage 2002 was launched in the middle of 2007 and this wine always shows a delicate and fresh elegance balanced by a wonderful strength. Its ageing potential is great and we’re sure we will have lot of good tastings with this wine over the next 15 years.”

Perrier-Jouët: “Personally I [HD] like the 2002 vintage, the next release for the Belle Epoque vintage. At the beginning of 2003, we tasted some excellent still wines. We were charmed by the freshness and complexity of the Chardonnay wines: so well structured and with such a nice length.

Franck Bonville: 2002 and 2006 are our two best vintages in the last 10 years. 2002 was powerful and elegant with a great aromatic complexity. 2006 is a perfect balance between sugar and acidity. This vintage is fresh and expresses a high grade of minerality and complexity. It is also a vintage which can be kept for a long time.

Bollinger:  In my view  the best vintage post 1998 (and we did not make 1998) is the one we are just releasing – 2000.

Nicolas Feuillatte: “The best vintage in Champagne is 2002, as all constituent elements had come together to signal a great year. The weather was ideal and greatly beneficial to the development of the grapes. Volume and quantity were spot on for this harvest. The grape bunches from all three varietals were healthy and of good quality, with an alcohol/acidity balance. It was a great harvest, with all the right ingredients to make an excellent vintage cuvée, such as the Nicolas Feuillatte Blanc de Blancs 2002.”

Moutardier: “2002, which we’re in the middle of selling at the moment, is a great vintage, nicely balanced and delicate. We use a modern style of Pinot Meunier, which has a much lighter, fresher profile than the older style they used to use in Champagne. This is reflected in the ageing structure, as the wine now carries on much longer.”

What were conditions like in your vintage of choice and what are the characteristics that make it in your opinion a better vintage than any other in the last 10 years?

Nicolas Feuillatte: “2002 shows great promise as a vintage. Despite two terrible enemies (downy mildew during the spring and botrytis cinerea towards the end of August), the weather started to improve just before the harvest. A very rare phenomenon then occurred – the grapes began to concentrate on the vine in the few days prior to harvest. By harvest time, the berries were healthy with an excellent level of maturity.”

Bollinger: “Following a mild winter, Spring 2000 was very favourable to vineyard pests, namely mildew and grapevine moths.  Hailstorms damaged more than one third of the appellation’s surface area but abundant rain interspersed with sunshine thankfully allowed exceptional growth over the summer months. The harvest started on 11 September in the southern Aube and on 20 September in Aÿ, and ended on 10 October for all of Champagne. The average yield was 12,460kg/ha, making this a moderate sized vintage. The average alcohol level for Bollinger was 10.1% with an acidity of 7.4g/l.”

Veuve Clicquot: “2002 was a perfect year regarding weather conditions, enjoying lots of sun throughout and specifically, a dry summer with just enough rain when the vines needed them, and the benefit of dry and sunny weather all through the harvest. The grapes were very healthy, beautifully ripe and, due to an ideal concentration, the balance between structure and acidity is perfect. At Veuve Clicquot, we love vintages with such balance as they are a wonderful reflection of our style.”

CONSUMER APPRECIATION

Are the public educated enough about value for money regarding vintage Champagne and what can be done to get this message through to consumers?

Bollinger: “One problem in Champagne is the confusion between cuvée de prestige and vintages. La Grande Année is Bollinger’s expression of a given vintage. And it happens to compete in the area of the cuvée de prestige. The best way to communicate the exclusivity of La Grande Année is via education: Grand and Premier crus, wood barrels, extremely strict selection of the barrels, only produced in the finest vintages, selection of fruit that shows greatest capacity to age (taking into consideration acidity, structure, fruit definition), maturation under natural cork. We don’t ‘declare’ a vintage or decide ahead (on commercial grounds) on a quantity of bottles for a  given vintage. At Bollinger we taste, assemble and the resulting volume is what is available for sale.”

Moutardier: “Absolutely not. The frequency with which vintage Champagne is produced now is far higher than ever before because the climate is picking up. As a result, there’s much more vintage Champagne on the market, but the people who make it aren’t actually communicating this. We now produce about 15,000 bottles of vintage Champagne out of a total production of around 250,000 bottles, so it’s only a very small segment of the market. Those special bottles which everyone talks about only account for about 15-20% of the Champagne market. At Moutardier, our vintage Champagne is not a lot more expensive than our normal Champagne. Some consumers like it and some find it heavy going. Even in northern France, there are people who don’t dare to drink vintage Champagne with their roast chicken, so perhaps we could make more noise about using vintage Champagne as an accompaniment to food.”

Lanson: “Champagne Lanson recently undertook an extensive qualitative research project with specialist agency Firefish, during which we probed Champagne drinkers as to their knowledge of brands, styles and key terminology. With regard to vintage, the reaction was that it is seen as ‘a stamp of quality’ and a ‘superior drink’ to a normal cuvée, but the specifics (grand cru sites, increased ageing, not guaranteed each year) are poorly understood. The overall conclusion was that the consumer wanted to understand more about Champagne in general, but this needs to be in language they understand and can use among their peers. As such, Champagne Lanson will be working ith trade influencers and consumers to communicate the unique taste, heritage and style of Lanson and the facts behind these differences.”

Veuve Clicquot: “For sure, most consumers are not familiar or educated enough about vintage Champagne. The house communicates a lot regarding their NV wines, the house flagship and also the wines very well known to consumers. For vintages, there is a real need to continue and increase our communication regarding their unique taste experience and their potential for ageing. Veuve Clicquot focuses heavily on our vintage expertise and introducing consumers to vintage Champagne. For example, a few years ago we launched our Rare Vintage 1988 and our Rare Vintage Rosé 1985 to encourage consumers to experience even older wines than they may have had the opportunity to do before.”

Mumm & Perrier-Jouët: “Even if Champagne knowledge is different from mature markets to emerging ones, we still have to increase the penetration of vintage cuvées among Champagne consumers. Stop the bling-bling and focus on your product and its intrinsic quality, a luxury or premium brand is first and foremost a product with undisputable quality. Vintage Champagne or prestige cuvées are good means to support that speech. To achieve that goal, you have to make them understand why a vintage Champagne is more expensive than a non-vintage.                                                                                                  

“At G.H. Mumm and Perrier-Jouët we put in place a strong set of tools to explain those objective benefits: special educational programmes that we call ‘Masters Programmes’, two- to three-day intensive courses about our Champagne, open only to our clients. We even developed dedicated educational programmes with chains like Nicolas in France and, of course, wine buyers, sommeliers etc, because they are our first ambassadors to the final consumers.
“We have totally reviewed our general press information in the last two years, focusing a lot on what makes a different vintage Champagne. For instance, we mentioned exact blending, exact dosage and exact ageing, which was not the case before. All those messages have been put on our website. We put in place special tasting programmes with partners to make people really taste the difference and finally we have changed the format of our tourist cellar tour, instead of five minutes of tasting at the end of the tour we have decided to make tasting a minimum of 15 minutes, with different options like a comparative tasting between brut and vintage.”

Nicolas Feuillatte: “Consumers are not well educated on vintage wines in general as there is so little communication on the subject. For Champagne, it is slightly different as the decision to declare a vintage is only taken if the harvest is optimal. Therefore, it’s entirely up to the winemaker to decide whether a certain harvest is good enough to become a vintage.”

Are the drinking dates of vintage Champagne misunderstood?

Lanson: “We believe most consumers are led by what is available on the market, so the brand owners and retailers have the responsibility to ensure that the vintage they’re putting onto the market is drinking at its peak – to do anything else is potentially damaging for your brand. As Lanson is a non-malolactic Champagne, we age our wines considerably longer than the minimum requirements – around six years for Gold Label Vintage, as we feel that by following the traditional vinification method our wines gain more complexity with increased time in cellar. We’re currently still selling Lanson Gold Label 1998 as this wine is tasting wonderful with the added richness and complexity of age – a good few years older than other vintage wines currently on the market. This wine was recently awarded five stars in a Decanter magazine tasting – such endorsements prove useful for the consumer when making a purchasing decision.”

Moutardier: “We keep our Champagne for at least three years, but vintages are coming along more frequently and younger than ever before. This is because of the climate and also winemaking conditions are optimised to produce lighter, brighter, fresher wines. People like to sell Champagne more quickly than they used to. We have enough 2002 to sell for the rest of the year, then we’ll probably move onto the 2004.”

Mumm & Perrier-Jouët: “Yes, the concept of ‘drinking dates’ is difficult to understand in Champagne. As Champagne makers we are supposed to deliver for a market that wants ‘ready-to-drink’ products for immediate consumption. This is the big difference with the wine business in which sometimes you ask your consumer to wait many years. Whatever the Champagne, vintage or non-vintage, our mission is to deliver a product that we consider at its apogee. Then it is up to the consumer to wait (or not), but this is not mandatory to enjoy it; something that is not the case with other wines.”

Veuve Clicquot: “Dates are not misunderstood, in fact it is very simple: vintage Champagnes are drinkable when the maison decides to launch them. However, we must communicate more clearly regarding ageing potential. Many wine lovers like to age Bordeaux and Burgundy wines, so there is an opportunity for us to give them more information regarding the potential ageing for our vintages.”

Nicolas Feuillatte: “For superior cuvées, seven to 10 years of ageing is required, in order to let the wine really take full possession. Then you can drink it as soon as you buy it or you can decide to wait for three to four years, provided that you are able to store it under the right conditions, and that you are willing to wait!” db