Robert Walters - Champagne: A Secret History

Published by Allen & Unwin in 2017

Originally published as Bursting Bubbles by Bibendum Wine Co. in 2016

Copyright Robert Walters 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Email:

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 76063 069 0

eISBN 978 1 76063 997 6

Internal design by Hugh Ford

Index by Puddingburn Publishing Services Pty Ltd

Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

Cover design: Hugh Ford

Cover map: Louise Sheeran

To Kate, Thomas and Emily

CONTENTS

I enjoy drinking good Champagne, but I dont always enjoy reading about it. The gush of foam as you pour a glass of Champagne too often inspires a gush of reverential prose. The technicalities involved in Champagne production methods (no fine wine is more highly processed than this one) can be recounted in daunting detail. The self-importance conveyed by those who market big-name and prestige Champagne is occasionally echoed by those who pass opinion on it. No wine is promoted more pretentiously or mythologically than Champagne. Whats needed to write well about Champagne, therefore, is laconic wit, a probing intelligence and an outsiders innate scepticism. Rob Walters possesses all of these qualities. Hes used them to write the most refreshing, pretension-pricking, myth-busting and amusingly unfrothy book on the subject Ive read.

Not just that, though. No French wine region has been through a revolution equivalent to that undergone by Champagne in the last two decades. This book is not principally about the prosperous if sometimes neglectful ancien rgime, but about the uncomfortable revolutionaries. These are the winegrowers who are calling a halt to Champagnes easy life of slack viticulture and blurred terroir expression. These are the winegrowers who wish to make Champagne with the purity and truth to place of fine Burgundy. These are the winegrowers who question dogma; who rethink every practice; who experiment anarchically, sometimes unsuccessfully but always interestingly.

Rob Walters works with them; he imports their wines to Australia. He is not, therefore, impartialbut the portraits he paints benefit from a deeper knowledge than that which even specialist journalists and writers can provide. They are truly portraits, not sketches. The result is the most engaging book about leading Champagne growers Ive read, full of insight and detail. About those, in other words, who have helped give a great wine region back its soul.

Andrew Jefford

1. This is not a wine guide

It is a voyage through the history and also the landscape of Champagne, from north to south, in order to visit and comprehend some of the regions greatest artisans. The winegrowers we visit within these pages are those that I have been able to spend some time with and whose wines can truly move me. Real wines. Delicious wines. Wines that I would like even if they did not have bubbles. Yet, there are any number of other Champagne growers that critics speak highly of, whom I have either not visited or whose wines have not excited me in the same way. If you are after a more comprehensive guide to the wines of Champagne, I can recommend Peter Liems champagneguide.net, Michael Edwards The Finest Wines of Champagne (Fine Wine Editions) and Tyson Stelzers The Champagne Guide (Hardie Grant Books). These guides cover many other growers that are not covered here, as well as all of the quality Grandes Marques (the most famous large houses).

2. The author is not completely impartial

The Australian Labor politician Jack Lang once said, In the race of life, always back self-interestat least you know its trying. Let me be completely transparent: I am a wine merchant. I buy and sell wine. When it comes to Champagne, I work exclusively with first-rate growerproducers, and I import the wines of most of the producers covered in this book. I am therefore far from impartial. On the contrary, I am completely self-interested. Having said that, I have not written this book in order to sell more wineI could have spent my time far more effectively had that been my goal. Rather, I have written this book because I believe that the story of the great growers of Champagne is one worth telling and because I believe that the producers I have highlighted in these pages are making the most exciting wines in their region. I write about them for the same reason I work with thembecause their wines are brilliant.

Warning: the author sells wine! AUTHORS COLLECTION

3. The arguments in this book are the authors, and the authors alone

The views expressed in these pages should not be seen as directly representing the opinions of the growers that are mentioned, unless of course I am quoting them. There are in fact a number of instances where my opinions may differ strongly from those of the producers we visit in this bookas is befitting an outsider.

4. This book should not be viewed as an exercise in Grandes Marques bashing

Most of Champagnes worst wines are in fact produced by lower grade growers, co-operatives and small ngociants, not by the large houses or Grandes Marques. On the other hand, the large houses account for the majority of exports, and as such they are the standard-bearers. In many markets, most consumers will never encounter a Champagne that has not been made by a ngociant or a co-operative. It is in this context that I have critiqued the ngociants and contrasted their culture, and the general practices of the region, with those of the finest growers.

My epiphany came at a simple dinner at the home of a friend, Dominique Denis, in the city of Chlons-en-Champagne almost fifteen years ago. The wine was a bottle of Larmandier-Berniers Terre de Vertus, the food a slab of thick, earthy, duck liver terrine. My host had simply pulled the Champagne from the cellar and poured it into my glass. It was cool, but not truly cold.

Shouldnt we chill this? I asked.

Dont worry, he assured me. What you are about to drink is a wine first and a Champagne second.

This was a phrase I was to hear a number of times during subsequent visits to the region.

As soon as my friend poured the wine, I was disorientated. Intense aromatics of earth, salt flakes and crushed chalk rose from the glass. There were none of the toasty, bready, yeasty characters that I thought Champagne was supposed to have; this smelt like the ocean and like rocky soils immediately after the rain. In the mouth, the wine was like nothing Id ever tasted from the region: a mineral blast that was somehow rich yet intensely savoury at the same time, like essence of mineral waterferrous and with a long, citrussy, saline finish. It was wonderfully dry and cleansing and had none of the harsh acidity or the syrupy, dosage-driven texture and sweetness that you find in so many Champagnes.And it went perfectly with the food, losing none of its personality or intensity. It slurped up the terrine and broke it down like a river carrying silt.