A 5 Hectare grower estate on the limestone soils of Ambonnay, H. Billiot has become one of the leading grower producers of Champagne, with his top cuvees (The Julie and Laetitia) attracting a cult following.

Do You Like a Little Oak?

Billiot traditionally ferments entirely in enameled stainless steel tanks and the wines never undergo malolactic. However, Cuvee Julie sees several months in oak casks, which assists its chardonnay and pinot noir blend by adding depth and rich complexity. I have heard the top wines compared to Krug, which may be a reasonable comparison, though these are uniquely endowed with the mature fruit of Billiot’s top Ambonnay Grand Cru vineyards. It is the quality of the fruit that prevents this wine from becoming overwhelmed by oak, which in my opinion was superbly integrated.

The Tasting Note

A Champagne composed of very ripe fruit of exceptional quality. A wine of opulent fruit, red berries, cream, a touch of brioche and a mineral tinged and extremely long finish. A wine that successfully combines density and elegance in an extremely vinous package. This is hedonistic champagne that is perfectly balanced and is ultimately an incredible wine that kills pretty much any house champagne at this price. Built both to drink now and for aging.

Excellent+
$140 at Kits Wine

Blanc de Blancs is wine geek Champagne. Lots of these wines are mineral driven and eschew the autolytic characteristics that so many people love with champagne (with exceptions, of course). But these are much more wines than ‘bubbly’, and the terroir transparency can be truly exceptional with the best examples.

New and Old

This single vineyard wine from 70 year old vines classified as Grand Cru offers an excellent view of what Jean Milan is capable of as a wine maker because there is so little stamp of wine making on the wine. For Champagne, which prides itself on the consistency of its house style (witness the Chefs du Cav of the greatest houses), wine making of this type is the new Champagne. But unlike some other regions, the new Champagne will not take over tradition, but is rather an alternative vision of the region. I often wonder why the competition between stylistic approaches to wine can often escalate into ideological debates about what wines are valid.

The greatness of wine is the multiplicity of voices. House champagne should, theoretically, be able to subsist side by side with growers, even if the two approaches create a tension in the region. I often find that tension is the cradle of inspiration and beauty, and I feel that embracing this tension is the best way for a region like Champagne to move forward.

Champagne as Wine

But enough philosophy, this is awesome champagne. Unlike much blanc de blancs, it is incredibly rich but also very savory. The mineral intensity is very high and there is an almost austere edge to the finish, especially upon first opening. This edge dissipates with air and the wine ultimately smooths out considerably.

A truly terroir driven wine that has a flavour profile unique unto itself. With the richness of a Champagne from Bouzy, but with the transparency and incredibly high acid of blanc de blancs, this is a magnificent Champagne that exhibits why so many wine geeks are so in love with grower blanc de blancs.

Excellent
~$105 at Kits Wine Cellar

There is something in vintage Champagne that allows it to express a side of yeast that no other wine can. Aging on the lees for such an extended period of time somehow changes the yeast influence from the obvious baked bread qualities to something deeper and more mysterious. When you couple that with superb fruit quality, a great vintage Champagne combines complexly delineated terroir, taught structure and cascading richness. This combination is, at least for me, perhaps the most compelling in the wine world.

A Multi-Dimensional Champagne

Le Brun is a hard producer to get your hands on, but boy do they offer ridiculous quality for a very reasonable price. This is decidedly terroir driven Champagne. Located in the Avize Grand Cru vineyard, south of Epernay, the Le Brun vineyards produce predominantly chardonnay, which is perhaps the most transparent grape for the expression of terroir in Champagne. The Avize chard is blended in this wine with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier from Oger.

Avize produces wines with a blanc de blanc level of clarity not dissimilar from Vertus, but with a different sort of minerality. And, the minerality is decidedly profound in this wine, driving it forward more than any other flavour. The quality of the fruit is significantly above other Champers I’ve tasted from 1998 and this helps the wine maintain its youthful clarity and excellent structure. The most exciting aspect of the wine is the multi-dimensionality of its flavours and aromas, which go well beyond what you would ever expect for a wine at this price point. It’s too bad it is sold out in Vancouver, but keep your eye open for future releases.
Disgorged just over 2 years ago.

Excellent
$80 at Marquis

Champagne more than any other region exemplifies the modern debate between wine as a platonic ideal and wine as an expression of the particular. On the Platonic side, the great houses blend purchased grapes culminating in a prestige cuvee meant to be the purest expression of house style. For the particular, growers own and farm the land from which they source their grapes and try to create wines that express that land. You can distinguish between the two types of winery by the designations NM (houses) and RM (growers) on the bottle.

Of course, as with any starkly positioned debate, the reality is far more complex. Some houses are starting to bottle vineyard specific wines and a group of 25 growers has created the “Special Club”, a collective that seeks to make the greatest wines possible in their domains and label them as such. This was done to compete with the house prestige cuvees and to show that the growers could produce wines just as good for ¼ of the price.

What’s So Special About this Club?

The special club is somewhat of a paradox, focusing both on the specific terroirs of each of its grower members but also seeking to produce blends of the highest possible quality that reflect a sort of “house style” of each member. Where does terroir end and style begin? With Special Club Champagne it is not entirely clear.

Special Club Champagnes are rigorously controlled, with a panel tasting the wine at blending and the finished product to ensure it meets quality standards. Wines must be aged at least 3 years in bottle before release and must include the very best fruit from the estate making the wine. A grower may make a Special Club wine in each vintage, but the wines must pass the quality test regardless, and so most growers only make Special Club wines in the best vintages for their domains.

The tug of war between principles of terroir and house style are particularly evident in the five main articles of the Special Club Charter:

Article 1: The Club recognizes that it is the quality of the grapes that allows growers to be part of the club and thus members individually and collectively commit to high quality methods in the vineyard.

Article 2: Each member will reflect the unique characteristics of its land, respecting the natural cycles of the vine and the environment.

Article 3: Each member will develop a wine in its own style and suitable for the unique characteristics of the winery. This style will be subject to the approval and supervision of the Club Commission.

Article 4: The Club will specifiy and monitor specific requirements for the techniques used in the maintenance of the soil, its fertilization, pest control and all actions that affect the quality of the grapes.

Article 5: Any person may consult the specifications set by the Club’s Wine Charter directly with the members.

As you can see, the articles comprise a mixture of terroir specific principles and those that allow and encourage each grower to develop its own style, all within certain uniform parameters. The project is a good one and the wines tend to be of very high quality, but it would be a mistake to assume that Special Club wines are inherently more “terroir” focused than those of the houses or other independent growers. Despite this, many bottlings do manage to express some degree of terroir on a case by case basis.

Bouzy and Bara

Paul Bara is a grower with vineyards in the town of Bouzy, which is part of the Montagne de Reims sub-region of Champagne. This region has mostly chalk soils but higher elevations on the slopes also see lignite and, depending on the site, soils may also contain clay, sand, marl or gravel. The main grape is Pinot Noir.

Paul Bara is known to produce superb expressions specific to Bouzy – a rich and powerful style with surprising intensity. The entire 11 hectare vineyard is classified Grand Cru.

The Power of Fruit

This is powerful Champagne, with great intensity and richness. White chocolate, apples and pear cascade over mineral undertones that increase considerably with air. The ripeness is the house style, but I also suspect that the 2002 vintage has something to do with the particular intensity here.

The richness derives from the quality of the fruit rather than any oak or lees aging and thus the richness is distinct from a wine like Krug, which is far yeastier. This is not about brioche and bread, but more about poached pears and apple tarts. This is an outstanding quality Champagne but may be on the opulent side for some, particularly those who prefer Blanc de Blanc. Regardless, the complexity and structure are undeniably superb.

This Champagne is a definite win for the Special Club and for Paul Bara and was a great way to bring in the New Year.

Excellent
$90 at Marquis Wine Cellars

It’s been too long since the last Champagne day and I figure it’s time to bring back this series and keep it more regular. Today’s Champagne is from the newest Champagne house (founded about 20 years ago), which is an amazing feat given how much financing you would need to start a new house these days. This difficulty is evidence by the fact that Paillard is the first new house in about 100 years.

Regionality and House Style

Paillard has his own vineyards in the Reims region, which contains mostly chalk slopes and some clay and gravel. While Pinot Noir is the main grape variety in this region, this particular Champagne also includes a healthy 33% Chardonnay, which is uncommon for Champagnes from Reims. For my money I think the Chardonnay adds considerably to the acidity and focus of the Champagne, which in turn helps its precision and balance.

Of course, since this Champagne is made in the house style and thus is blended from 30 different vineyards from which Paillard buys fruit on contract, it is hard to suggest there is any real terroir in the wine. It is, however, a masterful example of the art of blending.

Precision Wine Making

This is great Champagne. Disregarding the wonderful flavours of almonds, cream, and lemon, what makes this wine great is its tartness and precision on the palate combined with a nice silky rich texture and impeccable balance. This texture and balance are key to the wine’s success along with the right counterpoint of richness and clarity. A particularly impressive Champagne for the price.

Disgorged July 2009

Excellent
$70 at Liberty Wine

Grower Champagne – that rare bottle of bubbly where the name on the bottle indicates the entire chain of production rather than a branded endpoint – comprises a mere 20% of Champagne’s overall production. And yet, the growers are on a relentless path towards dominating an ever increasing percentage of the highest quality wines of the region. Why should this be the case?

Unlike pretty much every other region of France, Champagne only has a single AOC – meaning that there is no real way to tell where a wine is from by the basic labeling on the bottle. Some might go further and say ‘premier cru’ or ‘grand cru’ fruit, but the villages that have been given these designations consist of a huge number of farmers, each with different vineyard practices and even, potentially, terroirs. How, then, can a consumer tell whether the fruit from which a wine was made was made with care, passion, good vineyard practices and the least amount of chemical additions as possible? The only way for a consumer to know is to invest considerable time and effort into researching a particular house’s practices, and even then one could end up never finding the answer, as the houses are pretty secretive about such things.

This is where the growers come in. While not all growers are producing outstanding wines, they are at least in control not only of the wine making process but also the farming of the vines. By simply looking up where a grower’s vineyards are, a consumer can tell what they are drinking. However, without an official legal designation for particular terroirs, it is almost impossible to tell any of this information from the label on a bottle of Champagne.

Of course, the debate still rages about whether blending or terroir will produce the best wines, but I always find the terroir based approach a bit more interesting, since there tends to be more diversity of philosophies and more argument about what constitutes the most effective approach for a particular place and a particular style. Does the ‘terroir’ approach always produce the best wines? Well I’m doubtful of that since I think terroir is a bit of an elusive ideology for what is actually a debate about the philosophy and science of production. But that’s a debate for another post.

H. Billiot, neighbour to the well-respected grower Egly-Oriet, has his vineyards on the southern side of the famous Montagne de Reims, which is north of the Cote des Blancs where the fruit for most of the Chardonnay based Champagnes are grown. Particularly, Billiot is in the “grand cru” village of Ambonnay.

The soil type here is chalk and lignite deposits (a mineral that is more nourishing for vines than chalk), and while the Montagne de Reims is best known for Pinot Noir, there are also plantings of Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay, the last of which comprises the substance of the Champagne I drank.

This was an incredible Champagne that hit heights greater than many many wines I’ve consumed. I could describe the yeasty apple nose, but that means little. I could also suggest that the wine is hugely fruity and explosive while also retaining fundamental elegance and a profound delicacy, but that could just seem like hyperbole. All that matters, really, is that this wine combines finesse and fruit in the way that you expect the best Champagnes in the world to do. And, it achieves its lofty aim with what seems like minimal effort.

Paired with a truffle/miso glazed sea bass and truffled popcorn that I made, this was the epitome of both the exceptional ability of Champagne to pair with food and of how terroir based grower Champagne can match the best cuvees of the houses at 1/3 of the price.

Excellent+
$130 at Kitsilano Wine Cellar

I’ve decided that Champagne is both overlooked and too darn tasty not to drink more often. So, I’ve decided that once a month, on a random day, I will open a bottle of Champagne and write about it. This is the first of such ventures, and a good hold-over until my next BC winery profile.

Vertus, where this wine is grown and made, is located in the southern reaches of the Cote Des Blancs in Champagne – a region known for Blanc de Blancs (or Champagne made with 100% Chardonnay grapes). Champagne’s tradition is one of ‘houses’, with the great names buying grapes from unknown growers (at least to most consumers) and blending them together to make a range of wines, usually culminating in a prestige Cuvee (such as Roederer’s Cristal). However, most of the big houses also sell plenty of boring and overpriced blends for the average drinker, banking on their names. On the other side are what have become known as grower Champagnes, which are Champagnes made by the same farmers that grow the grapes. These have been gaining critical and wine geek traction as such producers attempt to make a vin de terroir.

However, all this said, a recent article by Jancis Robinson has put an important reflective caveat on valorizing all grower champagne by pointing out that there are also very good Champagnes from traditional houses. Personally, I’m still far more excted about the growers!

Pierre Larmandier, owner of Larmandier-Brunier, is clearly in favour of the grower Champagnes, being one himself. He spent a while studying in Alsace and Burgundy and noted that the best growers there got the same respect as the best producers. This, of course, is not traditionally the case in Champagne. Larmandier figures that as big houses “suffocating the vineyard”. “We have superb terroir” he says, “but we only make good wines from it”. Andrew Jefford in “The New France” calls Champagne traditionally “a wine of general appeal rather than particular excellence.” This pattern, however, is being challenged by the new breed of Grower-Producers who want the soil to express itself in Champagne in as profound a manner as Burgundy. As Jefford puts well, “We are prepared to pay that much for champagne not because it is worth it, but because there is no functional alternative and that is what the experience of drinking it costs.” This truism is unfortunate, and in my once monthly Champagne indulgance I will seek out the growers and producers putting this maxim to the chopping block.

Larmandier-Brunier’s “Terre de Vertus” is an attempt to express the terroir of their Vertus based vineyards as cleanly and articulately as possible. Extremely rare in Champagne, this wine has zero dosage, which means that no sugar is added to the wine after fermentation. This technique is traditionally used in order to up the residual sugar and balance the often highly acidic result of many sparkling wines.

Larmandier-Brunier is also a biodynamic domaine, and, accordingly, do not use additives or artificial fertalizers. Emphasis is put on viticulture and the resulting product is nothing short of outstanding. On their website Larmandier-Brunier explain the basics of their viticultural appraoch:

“The recipe for good-quality grapes is simple but demanding: old vines, working the soil, moderate yields; vines which thrive without having fertilisers forced into them, and mature grapes picked by hand.

But the terroir is not enough; it is to wine what the score is to music. What’s the point if the grape variety, the vineplant (the instrument) and the winegrower (the performer) are not up to standard?

Consequently, our vines are cultivated with respect for the terroir (ploughing, which favours deep-reaching roots and preserves the life of the soil) and respect for the balances of the plant throughout the growing period. In this way, the yields are naturally moderate and the wine shows its appreciation, through both its structure and its maturity.”

This was the most elegant Champagne I’ve tasted in my limited experience – very focused, delicate and intricate. The flavour – crisp apple and lithe stony mineral – is far less important to this Champagne than its texture and its structure. Oh so very clean while in the mouth, this evolves like a Wordsworthian poem, in ebbs and flows of pleasure and contemplation. But despite the subtlety of its flavour profile, this Champagne is also deeply mineral driven and presents a stony complexity that very few Champagnes I have had do. A fundamental match for salmon mousse or paté, this calls for foods with light delicate textures and focused primal flavours – I’m sure the classic oyster pairing would work fantastically here.

So, it’s time to forget about waiting for an excuse and start opening up a bottle of Champagne for no reason at all other than the moment itself. It’s well worth it: Champagne is quickly becoming the source of some of my all time favourite wine experiences.

Excellent
$110 at Kitsilano Wine Cellars