12/01/2006

Tastings: A Season to Sparkle --- We Test Champagne and U.S. Bubbly For All Budgets; A Toast to Tuesday

Publication Name: The Wall Street Journal

Author: Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher

DURING MOST OF THE YEAR, sparkling wine sits quietly in the middle of an aisle of the wine department at the Costco in Edison, N.J., overshadowed by other wines, like bright blue bottles of Pinot Grigio. There are, at most, five pallets of bubbly, mostly inexpensive Korbel from California and Freixenet from Spain. But come November, the movers arrive, lifting entire loads of the good stuff -- including an entire pallet of Dom Perignon, 50 cases worth -- into prime position. First the sparklers take over the much-coveted corners. Then they spread out, filling huge blocks of floor space. When everything is in position, the store's general manager, Chris Binns, has on display at least 12 pallets of Champagne and sparkling wine, including Costco's own pleasant Kirkland Signature Champagne for $19.99.
 
So how often does Mr. Binns himself pop open a bottle of bubbly? "Actually," he says, "I only drink Champagne on New Year's."

That, in a nutshell, is the story of sparkling wine in America. Costco and other retailers say they sell 40% of all bubbly during the last six weeks of the year. Look at supermarket figures from ACNielsen and it's quite startling: Sales of sparkling wine are pretty much the same, month after month, until mid-November, when they skyrocket. Bubbly sales at Costco, which is the top U.S. retailer of Dom Perignon, peak at nine times normal during the last week of the year. You can see for yourself: Go online to Google Trends and search "Champagne." It's clear that, as the holidays approach, America's thoughts turn to bubbly.

This comes as Champagne sales are experiencing growth around the world. The official Office of Champagne USA, based in Washington, D.C., says Champagne sales to Asia have doubled in the past decade. It says Japan is already the sixth-biggest market for Champagne and that it sees China as a major growth market.

One of the hoariest cliches in wine writing is Napoleon's quotation that "in victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it." But that does give some insight into why Champagne seems to sell well in both good times and bad. The Office of Champagne says world-wide sales rose 2.3% last year. But that only includes Champagne, the real thing, from the Champagne district of France. Truth is there has never been a better selection of sparkling wines on shelves. Some American sparkling-wine producers make large quantities of well-priced bubbly. Spain's Cava is an inexpensive delight. These days, there are even some good sparkling Shiraz wines from Australia -- proudly red -- in stores.

Our feeling is that sparkling wine should be enjoyed on a regular basis to celebrate just about anything, such as Tuesdays. Not only that, but good sparkling wine -- because of its lively acidity -- really is a great match with food, especially seafood, including sushi, and anything with a cream sauce. But since we understand that this is prime time for bubbly, we figured it would be a good moment for some high-end and lower-end advice on what to look for on shelves during the next month.

One of the great developments in sparkling wine in our lifetime has been the rise of American bubbly. When we were growing up, most American bubbly was cheap stuff made in a bulk process. Korbel was the biggest name in better American bubbly (and says it's still No. 1), while a few small pioneers, such as Hanns Kornell, made a limited amount of very good sparkling wine. Then Richard Nixon took Schramsberg sparkling wine with him to China in 1972 and the world -- and America -- really began to notice. Soon after that, France's Moeet & Chandon opened Domaine Chandon in California, which began producing a big quantity of fine bubbly. Now a number of sparkling-wine producers in the U.S., some of them owned by French Champagne houses, make quite a bit of good, reasonably priced bubbly.

It's not just California. Domaine Ste. Michelle in Washington, Gruet Winery in New Mexico and others are producing thousands of bottles of good sparklers that are widely distributed and priced well. On top of that, it seems that just about every small winery in America produces a tiny amount of bubbly, if only for the amusement of the owners, and it can be outstanding. You might recall that, during our most recent trip to Disney World, in which we tried wines throughout the resorts, one of our favorites was a bubbly from Oregon called Domaine Meriwether. One of the very best American bubblies we've had in a long time was something we found recently in a close-out bin: a 2001 Blanc de Blanc from Lieb Family Cellars on the North Fork of Long Island, N.Y. (It cost $20, marked down from $29.95.) It was made from Pinot Blanc, which does well in Long Island.

In general, fine American bubblies are made like their counterparts in Champagne, from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier grapes, with the secondary fermentation that makes the bubbles taking place in the bottle. Blanc de Blancs means it was made primarily from Chardonnay, while Blanc de Noirs means it's mostly Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier. Brut means it's dry, while extra dry means it's a little sweet. Most American bubbly, like most Champagne, is nonvintage, blended from various years to create a consistent style. And while sparkling wine is meant to be enjoyed when it's released, some people, including us, like it with some age on it, when possible, because that often adds a special richness and nuttiness.
Overall, there really is a difference between Champagne and American sparkling wine that goes beyond proper usage (Champagne is an actual place, and it drives the French crazy when other bubblies are called by that name). Champagne has interesting layers of tastes -- yeast, minerals, brioche, lemon and other ripe citrus fruits -- that meld effortlessly with the bubbles. American sparkling wine, in general, is delightful in its own way, but often less nuanced, and the bubbles sometimes seem an overlay on the wine instead of an integral part of the taste. At the same time, though, American sparklers tend to be less expensive than Champagne -- usually less than $25. That means they can be enjoyed more informally, and more often.
So which of the American bubblies would we recommend? To answer that question, we bought all of the big names and conducted a blind tasting over several nights. While some American sparkling producers make a small amount of high-end wine, we focused on the most widely available wines and set our price limit at $30. In most cases, we tasted at least two of every winery's offerings (such as the Blanc de Blancs and the Blanc de Noirs).

Overall, we found the quality consistent. The wines rarely were unpleasant, but rarely were they exciting, either. As Dottie said at one point, "They're not art. They're willing to settle for good enough. They're inoffensive." They're very nice everyday bubblies with which to celebrate Tuesday and they'd be perfectly good in a glass to toast New Year's Eve, but wouldn't add much to the evening except bubbles.

There were some exceptions, of course. Most notable was our old friend Scharffenberger, which was the clear best of tasting, with interesting layers of taste, some complexity and an intricate melding of bubbles and wine. Scharffenberger was our favorite in our very first tasting of American bubblies for this column back in 1998. Then it was sold to French conglomerate LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which changed the name to Pacific Echo. Two years ago, it was sold again, this time to an arm of the Louis Roederer Champagne house (which also owns California's Roederer Estate), and the name was changed back to Scharffenberger. For around $16 a bottle, this is a fine bottle of wine. The winery says it makes more than 25,000 cases a year that are distributed nationwide. Our best value was also notable for its verve and risk-taking, a wine that was willing to be proudly dry and austere, like some good Champagne. This turned out to be Gruet from New Mexico, another old friend. The winery makes more than 45,000 cases of this and distributes it in 48 states.

One annoying note: More and more American wineries are making Blanc de Noirs into a rose and, in many cases, a clumsy one. There's nothing wrong with a rose sparkler, of course, but it's important you know what you're getting, so be careful. If you're looking for a bubbly with a classic Champagne color -- that is, straw-colored or golden -- check the label for Blanc de Noirs closely. The label probably won't admit that it's rose, but the label or the foil around the cork might be pink. You might also ask your wine merchant. We wish the wineries would just announce more clearly that the wine is more noir than blanc.

When that tasting was over, we moved onto the prestige Champagnes, the well-known, expensive names such as Dom Perignon. Keep in mind that there are thousands of wineries in Champagne and many of them produce just a small amount of occasionally excellent wine. It's always worth looking for labels you've never seen before. Remember that any wine called "Champagne" from France must be real Champagne, so if you see a name that's unfamiliar, you might have found a special, small-production wine. Look very closely at the label and you'll see, in tiny print, some numbers preceded by a couple of letters. The most common is NM, which means the wine was made by a negociant, who generally buys wine, blends it and puts on its own label. But if you see RM, that's a grower's own wine and chances are it's filled with personality. These also sometimes can be very good deals because the names are unfamiliar.
We focused, though, on the high-end names that you are most likely to see, from Bollinger to Veuve Clicquot. In addition to their bread-and-butter wines -- the nonvintage Champagnes that cost around $25 to $35 -- the well-known Champagne houses generally make a limited amount of very expensive wine in the best years and then age them for years before releasing them. The current releases from most of them, for instance, are from vintages between 1995-98, which means these wines sat on their sediment for years before release, gaining stature and complexity.

Obviously, these aren't everyday wines, but wines fit for an occasion like Christmas dinner or New Year's Eve, not to mention weddings. Do they cross the bar? We tasted them in blind flights over several nights to find out.

These wines are expensive for a reason -- snob appeal, to be sure, but also great grapes and years of care. The bottle of 1995 Bollinger R.D., we bought, for instance, had been "disgorged" -- the sediment popped out and the bottle prepared for release -- on June 13, 2005, a decade after the harvest. Everyone knows that keeping inventory around that long is costly, which begins to put the high prices of these wines -- we paid $100 to $250 -- into some perspective. Still, we must admit a growing concern about their ever-more-intricate packaging, with wooden boxes, fancy carrying cases and all sorts of bells and whistles. It worries us that so much money is going into appearance. Does it mean they're scrimping on the wine itself?

In each instance, we bought the most recent release or the most widely available vintage. We tasted them blind in several flights. It's worth special note that much of the attraction of these wines is highly personal. Many people associate one of these prestige bubblies, maybe Taittinger Comtes de Champagne or Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame, with a special moment in their lives. If so, that's important to keep in mind. Beyond that, these are generally wines with specific personalities -- Dom Perignon might be elegant, while Bollinger R.D. is serious and weighty -- so which of these is best is very much a matter of personal taste and opinion.

Overall, we were pleased with the wines. At these prices, these sparklers should say "special occasion," from the first look (beautiful bubbles) to the first smell (toast, yeast, lemon and ripe fruit) to the lingering, ephemeral finish -- and, we're happy to report, most do. We would be happy with just about any of them. They retain their special smells, tastes and textures. In fact, to our own surprise, three rated Delicious, and each is special to us in its own way.

Pol Roger's Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill isn't as well-known as many of the prestige Champagnes and so, for a long time, was a great deal. It has been our best of tasting going back to 1998, and its price since then has soared. We hate it when that happens. Once again, it was beautiful -- elegant and perfectly balanced. Bollinger R.D. (which stands for "recently disgorged") has always been a special treat to us, with big, proud tastes, and once again was excellent. Our best value was a nice surprise. Taittinger was our wedding Champagne, in 1979, but, truth be told, Taittinger's high-end bubbly, the Comtes de Champagne, didn't impress us for years -- until the 1995, which we thought was the best we'd had in a long time. In this tasting, the 1998 kept up that trend, with tastes that were elegant and pure. As John wrote in our notes, "A wine to fall in love with -- or over."

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Look for our Wine Notes column in the Pursuits section of the Journal's Weekend Edition. Every Saturday, we answer questions from readers. If you have a question, drop us a note at wine@wsj.com. Be sure to include your full name, city and state.

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Online Today: John and Dottie provide tips on sparkling wines, at WSJ.com/Video.
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The Proper Glass for Serious Sippers
What is the best glass for drinking Champagne? Many of us grew up with those big bowls. The holidays were the only time those odd glasses were ever used, which added to the festive nature of special occasions. But they never were very good for the wine, allowing both the bubbles and the wonderful smells to dissipate far too quickly. So during the past couple of decades, many wine lovers have moved toward flutes, which allow the bubbles to rise gracefully and beautifully.

Just recently, some wine lovers have begun to question whether flutes are really such a good idea for fine Champagne. These aren't just fun sparklers, after all, but outstanding wines in their own right, made with top-notch Chardonnay and Pinot Noir fruit. Don't they deserve a more classic wine glass that will allow the smells and tastes to stretch a bit and show their best?

To answer that, we conducted our tasting of prestige Champagnes with two different kinds of glasses. We poured each wine into a flute and into a traditional wine glass (albeit one that is smaller than we usually use for still wines. We generally use glasses that hold at least 20 ounces, but these were 7 1/2 inches high and held 12 ounces. We felt that anything larger would allow the bubbles to dissipate too quickly). We tasted the wines side-by-side in each glass.

For most of the wines, the glass didn't make much of a difference. For the bubblies that had flaws, the larger glass simply showed the flaws more clearly, which certainly isn't a good thing. The 1999 Louis Roederer Cristal, for instance, seemed simple in the flute and positively two-dimensional in the bigger glass. For some of the better wines, there was a notable difference, but in some cases the wine tasted better in the larger glass and in some cases it tasted better in the flute. The Dom Perignon, which tasted too young and aggressive in the flute, became richer, rounder and more drinkable in the larger glass, while the Taittinger, which was so elegant in the flute, lost some of its focus and purity in the larger glass. And, of course, the bubbles didn't last as long or tickle our nose as well in the larger glass, which is certainly a loss.

Bottom line: The larger glass wasn't consistently so much better that we would give up the elegance of the flute. But if you have a chance to conduct this little tasting during the next few weeks, we guarantee that your guests will enjoy it.

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The Dow Jones Sparkling Wine Index
 
In separate blind tastings of widely available American bubblies under $30
and the best-known premium Champagnes from France, these were our favorites.
Stores tend to compete aggressively on the price of sparkling wine around
the holidays, so it pays to shop around. All of the wines in this list are
Brut, which means dry. The American sparklers are all nonvintage except the
Schramsberg.
 
AMERICAN BUBBLY
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Scharffenberger Cellars (Mendocino County)
PRICE: $15.99
RATING: Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Best of tasting. Classy, with true, clean tastes of
minerals, toast and ripe grapefruit. Nutty, with a slightly buttery finish
that's quite luscious and lasts.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Gruet Winery (New Mexico)
PRICE: $13.99
RATING: Good/Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Best value. Notable for its Champagne-like dry
austerity and intensity, good tartness and bracing tastes. A confident wine.
Awesome with oysters. We also liked the 2000 Blanc de Blancs ($22.99).
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Mumm Napa Valley 'Brut Prestige' (Napa Valley)
PRICE: $17.99
RATING: Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Juicy nose of toast, grapefruit and yeast. Ripe and
floral, with some brown sugar in the middle and a long, citrus finish. Good
with food or to sip alone. Lovely.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Roederer Estate (Anderson Valley)
PRICE: $20.99
RATING: Good/Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Enjoyable and fun, clean and fresh. No real depth, but
nicely made -- acidic but not a lemon bomb, ripe but not sweet. Great with
cream dishes.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Schramsberg Vineyards Blanc de Noirs 2002 (Napa,
Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin)
PRICE: $29.99
RATING: Good/Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Big, robust tastes of lemon, toast and yeast. A wine
that announces itself from a great name in American bubbly. (We preferred
this to the Blanc de Blancs.)
 
PRESTIGE CHAMPAGNE
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Pol Roger Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill 1995
PRICE: $190
RATING: Delicious
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Best of tasting (tie). Elegant and beautifully
balanced, with layers of ripe lemon, brioche, minerals and yeast, all
tightly wound and working together. Not too big, not too shy -- just right.
A consistent favorite.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Bollinger R.D. Extra Brut 1995
PRICE: $180
RATING: Delicious
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Best of tasting (tie). Lovely, golden-straw color, with
elegant, beautiful bubbles. Some brawn, but beautifully put together, with a
toasty, rich and ripe lemon finish that lingers forever. This says
"expensive." Bollinger La Grande Annee 1997 ($100) was also delicious, even
weightier, nuttier and more serious, with a whisper of white truffles.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 1998
PRICE: $130
RATING: Delicious
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Best value. A total delight. Some of these seem like
meals -- impressive wines that require a little work -- but this is elegant
and lovely, a wine to be admired, not conquered. Lovely chalk, acidity, ripe
fruit and balance, with perfect ribbons of tiny bubbles.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin La Grande Dame 1996
PRICE: $150
RATING: Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: More giving than most, with rich fruit, toast and some
honey. Lovely to sip, but even better with food.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Nicolas Feuillatte Cuvee Palmes d'Or 1997
PRICE: $110
RATING: Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Vibrant lemon, bread-dough nose. Nice acidity, but also
earthier than most, almost mushroom-like, which John found off-putting but
Dottie enjoyed, saying it made the wine taste true.
   
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Deutz Cuvee William Deutz 1996
PRICE: $140*
RATING: Good/Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Interesting and different. Floral, with lemons,
grapefruit, orange blossoms and minerals at the end, with a touch of brown
sugar. Haunting smells and tastes.
 
VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Moet et Chandon Dom Perignon 1998
PRICE: $130
RATING: Good/Very Good
TASTERS' COMMENTS: Classic nose of minerals and toast. Great acidity, with
disciplined, ripe grapes. Classy, but very young and a bit aggressive at
this point.
 
NOTE: Wines are rated on a scale that ranges: Yech, OK, Good, Very Good,
Delicious, and Delicious! These are the prices we paid at wine stores in New
York. *We paid $160 for the Deutz, but this price appears to be more
representative. Prices vary widely.