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Champagne’s secret to consistency and complexity
As the ultra-premium wine industry evolves, Champagne and sparkling wine producers are mastering the art of terroir through innovative ageing techniques, Kathleen Willcox finds.
Terroir encompasses the complete natural environment in which a wine is produced. For many, that means soil, topography and climate. But, as producers compete for a seemingly ever-smaller piece of the wine-drinking pie, vintners are managing to extract and highlight more specific terroir aspects.
For sparkling wine and Champagne producers, that sometimes means sourcing grapes from one Grand Cru village or vineyard. Other times, it means showcasing the terroir of their estate or house through the perpetual reserve or solera system of ageing.
How it works
Champagne has notoriously unreliable growing conditions, and a convention of producing non-vintage cuvées emerged to allow vintners to stay in the black during cold years. Typically, a non-vintage Champagne includes the base wine made from the most recent harvest, with additional wines from older harvests kept in reserve.
Traditionally, producers hold back a portion of each wine from a given year and keep it in reserve for the future. Cellarmasters play with proportions of years and grapes, seeking the most harmonious blend for each release.
This tradition arguably reaches its apotheosis in releases like Krug’s Grand Cuvée, a blend of more than 120 wines from a minimum of 10 years.
An alternative system has emerged, with both logistical and gustatory benefits. Dubbed the perpetual reserve or solera system, it allows winemakers to reserve all of their wine in one vessel. It’s a space saver, allowing smaller grower-style houses to pool large quantities of reserve wine into one vessel.
It also allows producers to maintain a consistency of house style from year to year that would be impossible otherwise.
“Scharffenberger has been using the perpetual reserve or solera system, which are terms I use interchangeably because they are so similar, since 1981 when we got started,” says Scharffenberger Cellar’s winemaker, Jeffrey Jindra. “We made six tanks worth of wine and held one back. We added to the next year’s vintage the following year and maintained the reserve by blending all of the years together. Every year, our wines include about 80% of that year’s harvest, and the rest is a blend of our previous vintages.”
The practice never made a splash in the public consciousness the way some new techniques do, says Dave Parker, founder of the rare wine retailer, the Napa-based Benchmark Wine Group.
Champagne Jacques Selosse is often credited as the first house to formally utilise a solera system that is typically associated with Sherry production after Anselme Selosse joined the estate in 1974.
In addition to eventually focusing on Grand Cru vineyards and organic farming, in 1986 (after petitioning the Comité Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne) he began using the solera-style fractional ageing in which older liquid is removed from intricately stacked tiers of barrels and replaced with newer liquid, as a way to provide wines of a constant average age.
“As revolutions go, even in the wine industry, this is a quieter one,” Parker says. “It wasn’t as noisy as the Barolo Boys in Piemonte, but that doesn’t make it less meaningful. Using a solera system adds to the consistency of the blend year over year.”
Blending is inherent to the process of making all top-tier Champagne, but this throughline delivers a certain flavour, texture and quality that collectors and enthusiasts (sometimes even unconsciously) come to associate with a house.
A shortcut to freshness and complexity
One of the key attributes of quality Champagne is a balance between brightness and deep flavour. The perpetual reserve system allows producers to consistently have it both ways.
At Champagne Palmer, MD Rémi Vervier says they’ve been using the perpetual reserve system for decades. (The perpetual reserve system is a simplified version of the solera system; both systems blend wines of older vintages into newer ones, but with perpetual reserve, there are fewer, larger containers of blended vintages).
“We’ve had this method in practice for nearly 50 years,” Vervier says. “Our cellarmaster likens it to a chef’s use of a special ingredient to elevate a dish. The process allows the older wine to impart its wisdom and depth, while the younger wine contributes vibrancy and energy.”
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In other words, balance: is equal parts depth and liveliness. It is also an invaluable gift in off years when conditions are not ideal for producing a top-tier vintage.
The process at Champagne Palmer reaches its apotheosis in the La Réserve collection, which showcases the house’s passion for blending and leveraging the power of reserve wines.
Built on the principles of a perpetual reserve, the collection includes wines that are composed of previous blends of La Réserve, with future reserve wines continuing to incorporate parts of the current blend. Most non-vintage Champagnes are produced using a blend of wines from a few recent harvests, but La Réserve includes between three and four years of reserve wines, each of which contains multiple vintage years.
“This creates a continuous thread of Champagne DNA that runs through each iteration, ensuring a remarkable consistency while also adding layers of complexity,” Vervier explains, adding that there is an increasing interest in the line, and the perpetual reserve method more broadly, from both connoisseurs and more casual enthusiasts.
Establishing and ensuring a house’s terroir
“We are noticing that more and more wine enthusiasts are seeking to deepen their understanding of a house’s style,” Vervier says. “And we’ve found that can be found particularly with non-vintage cuvées, which are the ultimate expression of a house’s identity.”
Nicolas Jaeger, Champagne Alfred Gratien’s fourth-generation cellarmaster, says that his father initiated their perpetual reserve system in 1990. The system lays the groundwork for remarkable and consistent freshness in the wines, and also a distinct house style, he says.
“It ensures consistency of style from year to year,” he says. “As custodians of the house’s style, we work with whatever nature provides us each year. The reserve, together with our barrel winemaking process, enables us to preserve our distinctive house style year after year.”
Many enthusiasts still don’t have the language to ask for what they want though, says Annie Edgerton, wine educator and appraiser.
While she marvels at the fact that “there are potentially molecules of wine in your glass that are as old as when the perpetual reserve or solera system was established,” Edgerton wonders how much of the “enchanting mystique” is lost on enthusiasts.
“A perpetual reserve is like a snapshot of a much wider range of vintages, putting the spotlight on the vineyards and winemaking philosophy more completely,” she notes. “But if you ask most consumers, I can’t believe you’ll find many who say they only or never drink perpetual reserve bubbles.”
Many of her customers aren’t even familiar with the concept.
“They just know if they like a sparkler with aroma and flavour elements from longer-aged wines,” Edgerton says. “But at the very least, it’s a talking point that can engage a customer, which is always helpful when they’re standing in front of a wall of Champagnes looking confused.”
Collector awareness on the rise
While Champagne lovers may not be dialled into the details of the perpetual reserve and solera system, Parker says that a certain cohort of collectors are aware of the (still quite limited) practice.
“Selosse (particularly their Substance Champagne) is famed for this process, and collectors and connoisseurs highly prize all of their bottlings, Champagne Bereche et Fils also uses the solera system and is noted by collectors,” Parker says, adding that while others like Champagne Beerens and Champagne Gamet also use it, their products have not drawn as much interest from collectors yet.
Utilising the solera and perpetual reserve system is a way to stand out in the market, to both collectors in the know, and bubbleheads who love what they taste, and will remember the experience—even if they can’t explain or name the reason behind it.
After all, how many wine enthusiasts know and care about the intricacies of wild-yeast fermentation, the merits of lightly toasted oak barrels, or the importance of Brix levels when grapes are harvested?
They just know what they like — and know they want to buy it again, and again.
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