TN: Supermarket Champagne

K

Kay Bixler

Kay Bixler
At a small, totally non-wine geek party I managed to find an opportunity to geek out as three different bottles of popular bubblies appeared.

Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve: Quite sweet actually, not really for me.

Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Reserve: Much drier than the B-S but not much else.

Piper-Heidsieck (Probably Brut as well, too dark to read the label): Dry and crisp but rich with lots of bready aromas and flavors. Liked this one best and assume others did as well--it was gone before I could snag a second pour.

It was fun to taste these wines as a group and get a small sense of big house Champagne. Also kind of surprised not to see any Veuve Cliequot. Has it fallen out of favor?
 
I recently had a Veuve Cliquot and found it to be considerably improved over what I was finding there a couple of years ago. Seemed like the sugar levels in particular were much more under control, which allowed the Champagne to show some real character. That said, Veuve Cliquot may still be over-priced relative to its quality, drifting up now to as much as $60 some places.

Wish these guys would control the amount of sugar they use. I suppose it is added to overcome other faults they have. I was big on Ruinart NV for a while, still a good drink, but last bottle I had started to show a bit more sugar than I care for (of course, my own palate is shifting continuously towards the drier end of the spectrum)...
 
Carl, I also remember V-C being on the sweet side though I haven't had it in quite a while. It was a standard at every office party for many years.
 
It definitely was too sweet (for my tastes) in the past, which is why I was pleasantly surprised that with the recent bottle, the dosage seemed more under control (maybe in the middle of the Brut spectrum??). Of course, this was one bottle based on an unknown degorgement, so I am not 100% sure this is a general result. Bought another one to test, but failed to taste it before I left for France...
 
Well, it's an interesting sitch, in truth. Big houses have picked up on the fact that the new guard of grower champagnes eschew dosage in favor of less dosed fizz with a better vinous quality, be that limpid or ripe*, and that that has affected tastes in a certain segment of their market. However, all the non-dosed or lower-dosed big house wines I've tasted have failed spectacularly, because... well, the dosage, as you guys note, is there for a reason, and you really, really don't want undosed Laurent Perrier, because it tastes like battery acid.

I don't think they've realized that you have to better your vineyard practices or even just decrease your yields, and then maybe, just maybe?...

The model doesn't fit. But hey, the planet's boilin' up, Champagne is no longer a "limite" region. They all may have to switch to petit meslier in the future.

All that to say: big house wines suffer from a lack of depth of character in the base wines still, and the way they tart them up has to match the styles of the day. I haven't subjected myself to enough of the current stuff to know where the wind is blowing, but the theoretical structure is there.

*as in the C. Bouchard lineup
 
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