Champagne part VI – Vilmart, Selosse
.. and so it was that we came to the final day of tasting in Champagne. We awoke to a very heavy frost and dense fog, with visibility down to maybe 20 meters. Proper weather for Champagne.
Fittingly, our first appointment, in the Montagne de Reims, was actually situated high up the hills around Reims. We were at the beautiful premises of Vilmart in Rilly la Montagne:
Laurent, who owns and runs Vilmart, showed us into the superb tasting room, decorated with stained glass works created by his father (a renowned expert on the subject):
Laurent took us through an impressively detailed recent history of Vilmart. They hold significant vineyards in the Montagne de Reims, with excellent premier cru and grand cru sites. The vines are 45 to 50 years of age. The soil is usually 40 cms of marly top soil on 20 meters of chalk. They farm organically. Quality is paramount.
The ancient pressoir is of huge significance to Laurent:
I have never seen a piece of wine making equipment this clean. Indeed, the entire establishment is spotless. Laurent confided, with pride, that a customer once said that his chai was “cleaner than Switzerland”. Someone who cares this much about cleanliness must make good wine, and indeed he does.
The pressoir allows Laurent to extract the core of the fruit — the heart. Indeed, his prestige cuvée is called the coeur de cuvée. To be this attentive to quality and yet make 120,000 bottles per year is amazing.
Vilmart must be an accountant’s nightmare: wines may spend many years on lees and vintage wines are not released for at least five or six years. For a small producer, this is impossible unless you have very loyal customers. All wine see some barrel maturation: the NV in huge foudres, the premium wines in barriques from Burgundy:
One could again see Laurent’s fastidious attention to detail: he pointed out that his oak barrels are not new or one year old, they’re 5 month old barrels. He has a contract to buy barrels that have only had white burgundy in them for that period. Of medium toast.
After so much detail, we were dying to look at the wines. The Grande Réserve (70% PN, 30% CH, disg. Oct 2007) was an assemblage of 2004 and 2005 from 30 year old vines. The wine spent 10 months in foudre. The nose showed a lot of classy Pinot Noir fruit, with a core of ripeness. Needs time to soak up some oak. Good structure.
The Grand Cellier (70% PN, 30% CH, Disg. June 2007) was a blend of 2003, 2004 and 2005. The nose showed 2003, with a hint of dried grapefruit. The palate showed more refined citrus fruit flavours. I was surprised to learn the that the dosage was ten grams. The wine held this very well. Likely due to the excellent acidity, which I found utterly delicious and reminiscent of raspberries.
The Grand Cellier d’Or 2001 (80% CH, 20% PN, 1er cru fruit) is superb for 2001. Creamy and rich Chardonnay flavours mix with a cork of vanilla and some preserved lemon. Excellent quality wine, still needed cellaring.
The Coeur de Cuvée 1999 (80% CH, 20% PN) was a massive step up though. A beautiful lift of passion fruit, roses, spice and brioche on the nose. The palate, just delicious. Supreme integration, absolute class.
The Grand Cellier Rubis Rosé 2002 (60% PN, 40% CH) at first showed only aggressive oak aromas, but after breathing revealed a delightful nose of cranberry and rhubarb confit. It smelt of summer. The palate was refined and long with great balance. A very good rosé.
We finished with a freshly disgorged Coeur de Cuvée 1993, in magnum. An absolutely spectacular wine, showing the beautiful mix of primary and secondary fruit. Just exactly what everyone wants out of wine, magical. We drained the whole magnum — at 11am. A real treat.
While finishing the bottle, we discussed closures. Laurent is looking at Diamant for the Coeur de Cuvée (see more below). He is extremely concerned that his loyal customers — and most of his sales are direct customers — get what they paid for. Refreshing frankness, rarely seen in Champagne.
Lunch
We took lunch at a duck restaurant in the forest above Le Mesnil sur Oger. Always reassuring when they kill the ducks out the back. The food was fine and Champagne a little disappointing after the greatness of the Vilmart. The menu was worth noting though:
Menu for “the little ducks”. Some what concerning considering they kill little ducks out the back every day!
Selosse
Selosse is now something of a legend in Champagne circles. Anselme Selosse learned oxidative wine making techniques from the Jura (vin jaune), which is very similar to Jerez (Sherry). He applied them to the making of Champagne and just about every hard core Champagne enthusiast fell in love.
Unlike Salon, the wines at Selosse at not treat with kid gloves. They’re beaten around until something new and interesting comes out of them. It is totally contrary to everything you’d expect from Champagne.
And so, the time had come for me to meet the man behind Selosse. This was the last appointment and, for me, the most anticipated. I was not let down.
We arrived at 5PM Friday evening (amazing for France, as the working week finishes at lunch on Friday) to find everything… totally empty:
The empty, completely open barrel room
The empty ‘court yard’ — if you can call an area where Anselme dumps all his crap a court yard.
After an hour standing around, Anselme popped out of no where with glasses in his hand and said, ‘follow me’. He did not stop talking, pouring, musing for the next two hours.
We entered one of the caves to find Olivier Humbrecht (Zind Humbrecht) and his staff there:
We commenced with a Version Originale, freshly disgorged. It was an assemblage 2002, 2001 and 2000. The nose was rich, identifiably Selosse — that almondy, floral oxidative note. There was a hardness to the acid, which Anselme says will be balanced by the dosage when it is disgorged: he is not one for riding Champagne of dosage. Most wines have dosage, hovering around 4 grams. Surprisingly though, the wine itself was a bit of a let down. Until we let it sit for 30 minutes or so. Then it showed a plethora of aroma, remarkably enjoyable and fine.
We moved quickly on from this entry level wine, straight to his premium cuvée, the Substance, freshly disgorged. The nose is just completely out of this world, full of white flowers, ginger, milk (?), dried peach, hay. The palate was structured, the acid ever present (no malo), the finish tannic. Absolutely superb. Incomparable, really.
After this was the Contraste 2000 (disg. Oct 2007). I absolutely love this wine. For me, the Contraste is the best wine of Selosse. The nose and palate, indescribable. I can only compare it to the Vieilles Vignes Français by Bollinger for it’s complexity. You just have the sense of something rare, special, unique in front of you. It is like no wine you will have drunk.
The Rosé, made of 2005 fruit and just disgorged was a wake up call. Simply, the best rosé I’ve ever drunk. This justifies the existence of rosé. This is to rosé what the Contraste is to blanc de noirs. Staggeringly good. The oxidative treatment really suits the rosé. A big surprise.
The Rosé from Ambonnay fruit was more traditional and I felt less interesting. It suffered by coming after such a great wine.
At this point, the Zind Humbrecht crew departed and we were left alone with Anselme. We stood there opened mouth. Anselme didn’t stop talking. He was amazingly articulate. Talking about wine making by the numbers, he said that when he received the analysis of the 2003 wines, his heart sank. All the numbers told him the wine was terrible: too little acid, too much sugar, too ripe… yet he thinks the wines are amazing. This taught him a lesson about the senses over the analytical mind.
He went on to tell us, with a cheeky smile which seemed to suggest he’d been given bag loads of cash, that he was involved with a sparkling wine house in Italy. They flew him down to Italy and put him in a room with scientists. They presented chemical analysis of the grapes and the wine. He said to them: ‘I don’t drink analysis’. They stood up, and started tasting. (The wine, by the way, is called Feudi di San Gregorio DUBL Greco — with a name like that, it should sell by the boat load.)
Every where was the mark of Anselme Selosse: the caves were confusing, labyrinthine. There was little, or nothing marking what a particular bin held. Over head, live wires ran. Every now and then, Anselme would reach out, in the dark, an grab a wire, sticking it at another to turn the lights on:
We stopped to taste more wines. This time, a Substance 1998. This showed absolutely perfect balance, amazingly striking. Jarring. The Coche-Dury of Champagne. We tasted even more, a Contraste 1994, the first vintage of this wine. Then another Contraste 2000. It’s no wonder you can’t buy the guy’s wine, people drink it in his cellar before it’s even left!
Anselme went on to explain that he no longer thinks of acid, sugar, alcohol, oxidation, oak… he thinks about the minerality of the wine and the minerality of the soil. The minerals in the soil, he says, make the wine. In this way, he has drawn from organic and bio dynamic farming techniques, always encouraging the vines to dig deeper, be healthy.
We discussed practical issues too. For example, Italy is his biggest market. We were surprised. Anselme said ‘even when there’s no money, the Italians have money for luxury.’ More significantly, he will be releasing six new cuvées in 2013, all single vineyard wines. They will be from: Aÿ, Ambonnay and Mareuil sur Aÿ (where Clos des Goisses is situation, in fact the vineyard is next to the clos) in the Montagne de Reims and Avize, Cramant and Mesnil in the Côte de blancs. The wines exist now in the cave but they were pretty much the only wines he wouldn’t let us taste.
It being past 8PM, we had to leave: despite the appearance of a madman and the voice of a guru, he has a family, a wife, a life outside of wine.
The visit was an amazing experience, the very opposite of the rest of Champagne — just like the wines of Selosse.
Visiting these smaller producers in Champagne really shows another side to the wine made there, as well as the people. A great place.
Some thoughts
Solera
Smaller producers — and presumably bigger ones too — have noticed Selosse. Everyone talks about Selosse. The wines of Selosse are interesting for wine makers, more challenging. The flavours and character of the wine are totally different. A lot of smaller producers are dabbling with the solera system and more still with oxidative treatment, usually by barrel maturation but also by doing more racking and exposing the wine to the elements.
It’s interesting that the idea didn’t catch on sooner because Champagne is all about blending. Many, indeed most, producers have wine going back many vintages. These are often stored in stainless steel rather than barrel. The solera system actually seems to bring a greater level of consistency to wines than the existing blending system, because the oxidative aspect brings out the same character in different wines. It’s the reason it works so well in Jerez.
A danger facing this approach is that it is easily copied and you know that once a grande marque releases a line which has had its reserve wine managed in solera that it’s popularity will be on the wane. For Selosse and those like them, this will be of no consequence, since they have not sort to promote the sorela approach, they’ve just admitted to their use of it. What makes their wine interesting is actually the attention to the small things in the wine, the care, the willingness to try something new.
The closure debate
The Diamant cork is growing in popularity. No one is talking about doing away with cork but many producers — from the most lowly to the most sort after — are evaluating Diamant right now. No one reports any problem with the sealing quality of the cork or with cork taint. There are two issues: e well branded, there is lack of education in the market about Diamant being a premium cork. To the uneducated eye, the Diamant cork looks like a cheap cork. The second problem is much less significant: producers need time with the closure, as it does implies some changes to process in the winery. In five years, you’ll start seeing a lot of wine under Diamant, I think.
I found it interesting that the small, unknown producers seem to be using it with their entry level wines since consumers are not going to be too outraged if they mistake it for a synthetic or ‘inferior’ cork. The highly sort after producers are looking at it for their prestige cuvées and late releases, since they assume that lovers of fine wine will already know about it. This is the case at Vilmart, for example.
Frankly, I think the makers of Diamant would greatly improve their sales by undertaking some whole sale, mainstream marketing of the closure and associate the brand with the highest quality cork one can buy. The time has come.
Storing Champagne for aging: horizontal or vertical?
A study into this topic, conducted by Veuve Cliquot, was pointed out to me while in Champagne. They found, simply, that Champagne kept on its side on cork took on woody/oaky, earthy notes — characteristics one generally associates with the evolution of a wine — more quickly than Champagne stored standing upright. Sparkling wine is unique because the cork does not benefit from moisture contact inside the bottle. The seal with the cork is much stronger in the case of sparkling wine and the buffer of ‘air’ (actually CO2) is under considerable pressure.
It was interesting to discover that despite this, one of the people involved in the study chose to keep his wine on the side simply because he liked this particular taste — I’m sure many would agree. Speaking with other vignerons, they have confirmed this in smaller trials than that undertaken by Veuve Cliquot.
Dosage
The trend among many the younger generation at the moment is for lower dosage — generally between two and four grams per litre residual sugar. Many are also producing bone dry wines. I think this can be explained a number of ways. Firstly, respected vignerons in Champagne have lead something of a philosophical war on dosage, saying that the dosage hides the real wine. Of course, if asked whether you want to make genuine wine or artificial wine, how can you answer? Secondly, if you taste Champagne all the time, the sugar really stands out. You prefer bone dry wine. Thirdly, ripeness of fruit is increasing and this gives a naturally sweet flavour to the wine.
There is some concern though. One of my traveling companions, Ian Westcott, was adamant that sugar helps the wine age gracefully and has a role to play in the evolution. I know nothing of that but Ian certainly knows Champagne better than anyone I know.
Talking to some vignerons, it was interesting to get their insight into dosage. Few consider it just the addition of sugar, since it can be made entirely of wine and almost always contains some wine. The exact composition is closely guarded by most houses and they put surprising effort into getting the recipe for the liqueur d’expédition right. Of course, thinking of it in terms of adulterating the wine is going to cheapen the image. I am certain that lower dosage is good, around two to four grams, but whether a good Champagne would be a great Champagne bone dry… I’m not sure yet.
