Warm Spring weather in Champagne following a very mild winter during which the temperature rarely dropped below freezing has resulted in an early start to growth in the vineyard and the danger of frost damage. “This winter in Ay we had only one morning at minus 3degC and by midday it was 12degC, we’ve had almost no frost,” says Philippe Brun of Champagne Roger Brun. “Not enough to damage the grass or the bad herbs, the soil stayed green all winter. Since the start of March we’ve had no rain and the soil is very hard partly because of no frost to break it up, making it very hard to work.
At the moment it is like 2003 and we are ten to 12 days in advance of ‘normal’, compared to the average over the past 25 years. So now the vineyard will be very sensitive to frost. In 2003 we had minus 10degC on 11th April, which is why we had almost no crop. in 2012 we were frozen twice in the middle of April and on 2nd May when there was widespread damage.
Pinot Noir in the best sites in Ay is already quite advanced and frost damage is a real danger, says Philippe Brun
In 2003, after we picked three times, I had only 4 tonnes per hectare, the first harvest was only 2 tonnes (Regrapage). We picked over two months, now we have to pick over three weeks in total; it is not permitted to go back and pick second generation grapes.
So at the moment we have crossed fingers with a danger of frost until mid May and in fact temperatures dropped to minus 1degC in Reims last night, though that is not expected to cause any damage as Reims is less advanced than the vineyard in Ay.”
This year Brun is to experiment with spraying Oligo Saccharin (apple extract) in his vineyards if there is a risk of being frozen. This works by encouraging a concentration of glucose in the leaves and that reduces their freezing point by a few degrees and gives some protection down to about minus 4 or 5 degC. “If I do it this may help me have 40-50% less damage. I think it’s the effect of global warming; we’ve had virtually no winter and this makes the vineyard much more susceptible to frost in the Spring.”
Speaking at the UK launch of Edition Première Belle Époque 2007, Chef de Cave Hervé Deschamps describes the new, predominantly Chardonnay, cuvée which has a hint of pink thanks to a splash of Pinot Noir in the blend.
Champagne shipments were down just 1.53% in 2013 to 303,870,438 bottles, according to figures just released by the CIVC, Champagne’s governing body. The French domestic market was down by 2.43% to 167,093,159 bottles but total export shipments only fell 0.42% to 136,776,979 bottles. Shipments to the UK market were down by 5.13% to 30,786,727 bottles, dropping from 32,445,352 in 2012, the lowest level they have been at, bar 2009 when the financial slump hit sales, since 2001.
The UK is still by far the most significant export market in terms of volume, shipments to the number two market the USA which rose by just 0.93% are still over 12.9m bottles lower. In general, as expected, it is the mature European markets that fared worse with Germany and Spain down 1.57 and 1.92% respectively and Italy falling back further again – by 14.18% to 5,359,536 bottles, after a drop of over 18% in 2012. Belgium bucks the European trend with a 14.15% rise to 9,525,304 bottles.
Outside Europe the market for champagne in Japan and Australia remains buoyant with shipments to the latter, the sixth most important export market now, up 11.4% following on from 11.2% growth in 2012 and a 31.9% spurt in 2011. The Japanese market also continued to grow with shipments up 6.75% to 9,674,446 bottles.
In terms of value because of the higher average bottle price — consumers there favour more expensive rosé champagne and prestige cuvées — Japan may well have overtaken Germany as the third most important export market in terms of value. Those detailed figures are not available yet but with average shipment prices at €19.19 in Japan versus Germany’s €14.83 in 2012, the gap in terms of Euros between the two was less than €14m though over 3.5m more bottles went to Germany.
You can see why the Champenois like the Japanese market and that’s the reason Perrier-Jouët has just chosen to launch its new 2007 Belle Époque Edition Première there (a wine I tasted with winemaker Hervé Deschamps last Thursday in London of which more soon) in time for the Spring blossom. A few years ago Veuve Clicquot launched its non-vintage rosé in the Japanese market before releasing it anywhere else and the PJ has hint of pink from macerated Pinot Noir.
The feeling that the biggest houses are concentrating their efforts on the emerging markets like the BRIC countries and that this is where the growth is all going to come from in the short term took a blow. Shipments to China were down 18.35%, exports to Russia only up 4%, Brazil fell 0.46% and while India was up 5.36% shipments there still only reached a paltry 367,020 bottles.
When I spoke to Moët’s CEO Stéphane Baschiera on the telephone last month he mentioned that Mexico was a ‘priority market’ for the largest champagne brand. Perhaps therefore unsurprisingly the highest percentage growth achieved by any top 30 countries came in Mexico where shipments rose 31.18% to 1,137,845 bottles. That’s more than India and Brazil put together, though sitting together in 15th and 16th position in the top 30, China and Russia are still slightly larger at 1.63m and 1.54m bottles respectively. Shipments to the UK are however still more than five times larger than all five of these markets put together.
We have made some improvements to the Champagne Guru site this past weekend. There is now a mobile version available for smart phones that is easier to use, you can sign up to receive an email whenever a new post is put up; there’s a contact form for you to get in touch plus a real time twitter feed and more regular blogs.
We have exciting plans to develop the site further over the coming months, meanwhile your feedback is much appreciated.
Following on from my top ten pink champagnes selection last month, I realised I hadn’t really done anything about the large range of growers’ pink champagnes that are now available in the UK at various specialist retailers. So with the help of Berry Bros & Rudd, who have one of the very best selections of ‘artisan’ champagne in the country, I put together a small tasting of mostly growers’ rosés and called in Anthony Rose of The Independent to join me in trying them.
The line-up included six growers’ champagnes, and three from small négociants with only the Billecart-Salmon style from a well-known house. There were six pinks made by blending (adding a portion of red wine to white champagne) and three saignée rosés (where the colour is ‘bled’ off the skins), plus a fourth made from a combination of the two methods. We tasted them blind taking our time to assess each wine, looking at the blends first.
Our favourite wine on the day was the R&L Legras Brut Rosé (93/100, 94/100). Complex, smoky, it has a lip-smacking refreshing, savoury quality that made it hard to resist drinking it in the tasting. It was closely followed by Philipponnat Brut Réserve Rosée, (92/100, 93/100). I moved the Philipponnat pink up a mark after consuming it with brilliant fish & chips (from Bowen’s, St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire) a couple of day later, a great match thanks to the wine’s richness and vinosity, that’s boosted by having a large portion of reserve wine in the blend. I gave the Berry Bros UK Grand Cru Rosé made by Benoît Marguet my third highest mark. As the only wine in the tasting priced under £30 it certainly represents terrific value and Benoît is a fine producer whose champagnes generally are really worth seeking out.
The two wines from the Côte des Bar region, Champagne’s southernmost where Pinot Noir is the most widely planted grape (both featuring in my top ten pinks last month), also showed well. Drappier’s pink, which has long been a favourite of mine, showed an ample, generous Pinot Noir driven richness while the biodynamic produced Fleury, is a winey, muscular style that calls for food.
By chance the first wine in the line-up was Billecart’s Salmon’s a classically fresh, aperitif pink showing a lovely balance and a perfect benchmark style to assess the other wines against. The bottle of Pierre Peters Rosé d’Albane we had at the original tasting was faulty but a subsequent sample demonstrated that this fine Le Mesnil based producer also makes an attractive, delicate but intense pink fizz.
Paul Bara Grand Rosé de Bouzy: 88/100 (AR); 87/100 (GF), £32.45 Berry Bros & Rudd www.bbr.com
Andre Jacquart Rosé de Saignée ‘Experience’ Premier Cru, 88/100 (AR); 88/100 (GF), www.topselection.co.uk
Pierre Peters Rosé d’Albane, Second sample 90/100 (GF), £36 Berry Bros & Rudd www.bbr.com
Anthony Rose’s tasting notes:
1. Fleury Rosé de Saignée. A lively pink light cherryish colour, quite vinous on the nose, and equally on the palate, lots of rich, almost sweet strawberryish fruit, nice lingering depth and winey texture with attractive depth and vinosity, very much a food wine with good personality, balance and tangy finish. Good for seafood. 91 / 100
2. Drappier Rosé. Pale bronzey pink, immediate, fresh, pleasant nose, some rich berry fruit on the palate, full-bodied, nicely vinous and very attractive, good concentration, almost juicy with redcurrant and cherry fruit tang to it, nice dry finish, good personality with a touch of tannin for food-friendly, savoury-winey character. Serious. 91 / 100
3. Pierre Peters Rosé. First sample at the tasting was faulty.
4. André Jacquart Rosé. Inelegant cherry / rosehip red colour, quite strong smoky oak and vanilla aromas, ripe sweet cherry fruit with lots of smoky oak behind it; some may like this style but it’s probably quite controversial because the oak’s in the foreground rather than the background, a rioja of champagne? 88 / 100
5. Billecart-Salmon Rosé. Pale bronze pink, lovely freshness and life, very bright, quite big bubbles, lovely intense and fruit nose, rich soft mousse of bubbles, initial strawberry sweetness balanced by a tangy redcurranty fresh acidity and elegant dry finish. Drink with food but a classic style, for drinking mainly as an aperitif. 91 /100
6. De Sousa Rosé. Aged in oak, 92% chardonnay and 8% pinot noir, rather deeply-hued for a rosé, quite cherryish in colour, rather dumb on the nose but a touch of spicy oak, idiosyncratic, nice sweet and sour cherry in the mouth, rustic and winey at the same time, almost more of a food wine than a champagne; not smooth but quite tangy and dry and has character, lots of it. Very much a seafood champagne. 90 / 100
7. Philipponnat Réserve Rosée. Pale bronze in colour, creamy-looking bead, lovely light savoury toast on the nose, very rich and complex, a suggestion of reserve wine maturity and richness, more complex than simply fruit, equally deliciously rich toasty fizz with powerfully textured creamy bead of bubbles; long and lingering flavours. 92 / 100
8. R&L Legras Rosé. Pale bronze pink, tiny bead of persistent bubbles, attractively fresh, smoky-creamy and fruit aromas and flavours, lovely strawberryish fruit quality, richly textured mousse, nice freshness and balance, with long, fine dry savoury lipsmacking finish that makes it hard not to swallow as you taste. It grows on you as you drink it. 93 /100
9. Paul Bara Rosé. A deep pink bronze, quite a lot of dark red berry on the nose, sweetish strawberry and cherry fruit with rather obvious sweetness that makes the wine a tad heavy in the mouth and lacking in finesse, and less refreshing that you might hope for, but pleasant enough as a drink with slight bitter-skin finish. 88 / 100
10. Berry Bros & Rudd Grand Cru Rosé. Benoit Marguet. 70% chardonnay and 30% pinot noir, lovely pale bronze colour with bubbles swirling in the glass, fine fresh and intense aromatics, lovely rich berry fruit, very fruity in fact on the palate, powerfully concentrated and full-bodied, lots of flavour intensity, rich and yet delicate at the same time, with finely textured mousse and excellent finish. 90+ /100
In this video Benoît Gouez discusses the different effects of lees ageing and post-disgorgement ageing for Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage. He was talking at the recent preview of the 2006 Vintage which will be released in May of this year. He also bought along the superb 1999 wine from the Vintage Collection and the surprisingly fresh 1985 in magnum to illustrate his points.
My pocket sized book on Champagne, has just been published in the USA by Princeton Architectural Press in their ‘Instant Expert’ series. Originally it was brought out at the end of 2012 by Hardie Grant (in the UK and Australia) and by Sueddeutsche Zeitung, in Germany, all under the series title, Le Snob. The layout and look of the revised book is pretty much the same while the series title is arguably an improvement. I’m hoping to get some good feedback from readers (and reviewers?) in the US via my website and twitter (ChampagneGuruUK).
Princeton wanted it to come out just before Valentine’s Day to take advantage of the expected surge in consumer interest in fizz. I’m not sure if they go as mad for rosé styles at this time of year as we do, but the USA was the second most important export market for pink champagne after the UK in 2012 (barely less than 100,000 bottles fewer) and once the detailed figures for 2013 are published next month, may have over taken us as the first pink market.
With this in mind I’m going to pick out a few more pink hued fizzes I favoured in the book and add them shortly to the top ten rosés already on the website.
I used to be unenthusiastic about rosé champagne. I have an issue with the fact that it is generally priced at a similar level to vintage champagne, but rarely offers anything like the same emjoyable drinking experience. However I have to admit there are now many more attractive pink champagnes on the market and for Valentine’s Day lots of people will be drawn into buying pink fizz. So what are the best options, outside the supermarket norm but not in the stratospheric price territory (over £200) occupied by the big brands’ rosés, the likes of Cristal, Dom Pérignon, Krug, Comtes de Champagne, Clicquot’s La Grande Dame and Laurent-Perrier’s Cuvée Alexandra?
I am particularly attracted to the more winey, Burgundy style Pinot Noir driven pinks that age really well and work surprisingly well with food, particularly game. In this camp I’d include Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée Rosé, ideally the 1989 vintage which is still available, if in fairly limited distribution. Ten years younger, but both delicious in their different ways are Charles Heidsieck’s 1999 Rosé and Bollinger La Grande Année 1999 Rosé, Closer in style to the Clicquot with powerful rich Pinot Noir from Les Riceys playing a significant role in the blend comes Nicolas Feuillatte’s Palmes d’Or Rosé. I have the 1999, 2004 and 2005 vintages and will probably open the ‘99 myself on the 14th.
More delicate in style, but slightly more expensive is the creamy textured Billecart-Salmon’s Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon 2002. Great value but certainly not inferior comes the delicately fruity, but distinctly classy Joseph Perrier 2004 Rosé. Bruno Paillard Premier Cru Rosé is another winner resonating breeding and, as the best pinks are, very moreish. And Gosset Grande Rosé, which I tried again only this afternoon, is a very desirable, seductive pink that rapidly disappears.
That only leaves two remaining slots to fill and for these I am going to go to the Côte des Bar region to the south-east of Troyes where Michel Drappier makes a charming Burgundy-like pink and bio-dynamic producer Fleury produces something substantial and savoury, that would easily and enjoyably be consumed with an Asian duck dish. Finally I am going to cheat and add an 11th pink that is widely distributed in the supermarkets, that from Veuve Clicquot. This is probably the pink fizz I have tried most often in the past 18 months and has been consistently among the most enjoyable.
Although Champagne prices for the major brands continue to increase, reflecting the fact that grape prices in the region have risen continuously over the past two decades between the 1993 and 2013 harvests, UK supermarkets continued to sell some champagne around the £10 mark at the year-end. Why? Clearly they can’t be making any margin selling fizz at this price. It is simply to pull in the punters.
The owners of the big houses worry that selling this very cheap champagne may be damaging the generic image of Champagne and it may also be making it harder for them to sell their international brands at £30 to £35 a bottle or more – several are now over £40 rrp. As Michel Letter the boss at G.H.Mumm at Perrier-Jouët said recently: “With discounts as large as this the consumer might think that something is wrong with the wine and I am afraid of this. You can have champagne selling at two different prices with one that is twice as expensive, giving the explanation that the grapes are sourced from grand cru vineyards or the wine is aged longer, but three times higher starts to be too big a difference.”
But newspaper columnists still like to use champagne as a symbol of extravagance, luxury and celebration and as a gauge of economic well-being, sometimes working it into the most unlikely stories. Under the heading: ‘Champagne flows as house owners see surge in prices’ The Times newspaper ran a story last Saturday (18 January) saying house owners might want to break out the champagne as their properties were now worth £28,000 more on average than they were in January 2013, or £27,991 to be exact. The writer, Deidre Hipwell, clearly a lover of pink fizz, noted this was the equivalent of 560 bottles of gift bottles of Bollinger Rosé at £49.99 a pop.
It seems despite the aggressive pricing of supermarkets in the UK, mirroring what has been happening in France over the past three or four months, brand Champagne is retaining its cachet, its unique position as the drink of celebration. But the fear is this ‘two-tier’ market may cause damage in the longer term.
Champagne shipments in 2013 fell back by 1.5% to 304m bottles, “a satisfactory result in a difficult economic environment in Champagne’s main European markets,” says the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) in a statement accompanying the estimated figures, which were released over a month earlier than usual this year. This volume is nearly 5m down on 2012 and nearly 19m below the 2011 figure of 322.95m bottles but while shipments to both the French domestic market and Europe outside France are down by 2.3 and 3.4% respectively, shipments to countries outside Europe reached a new record level of 63m bottles, up another 3.2% on the 2012 figure.
The markets outside Europe now account for only 11m fewer bottles than Europe, the closest the two have been and in value terms they are neck and neck. Countries outside Europe, a group still dominated by the USA and Japan, respectively the second and fourth ranked export markets for champagne in terms of volume, now account for over 25% of total shipments in value terms and just over 20% in volume. In fact while Japan was still 3.5m bottles smaller than Germany in volume terms in 2012 (12.5m vs 9m bottles), as a very high value market where average bottle price was €19.10 versus Germany’s €14.8 in 2012, in overall value terms Japan is now very close to Germany with shipments there in 2012 worth €173.64m against shipments to Germany of €186.22m.
In 2012 average shipment prices in the three areas were: France: €12.44 a bottle Europe: €14.96 a bottle Outside Europe: €18.18 a bottle
The overall year-end shipment figures in 2013 are better than was expected after a difficult November when shipments were down 13.5% in Europe compared with November 2012 and the total figure looked like being under 300m bottles. A general recovery in December saw shipments increase to around 42m bottles, an 8% rise on December 2012. Total value of shipments for 2013 was only fractionally down on 2012 at around €4.3bn.
