White - But first, champagne: a modern guide to the worlds favorite wine

Copyright 2016 by David White

Foreword 2016 by Ray Isle

Photographs 2016 by John Trinidad, except where marked otherwise

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Jane Sheppard

Cover photo by Franoise Peretti - Collection CIVC.

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1144-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1145-7

Printed in China

Wine demands to be shared.
So this book is dedicated to everyone with whom
I've pulled (or popped!) a cork.

CONTENTS

AUTHORS NOTE

Theres never been a better time to explore Champagne.

Of course, the region and its wines have always been associated with prestige and luxury. And knowledgeable wine enthusiasts have long talked about top champagnes with the same reverence they reserve for the finest wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

But everyday consumers kept champagne way back on the high shelf. And too often, when bubbles were poured, they were shoddy imitations like Andr. Real champagne was, for most, more of a symbol than a beverage to be savored.

Exploring the Champagne Bollinger cellars.

Today, thats changing.

Sommeliers, retailers, and wine enthusiasts everywhere have become passionate ambassadors for grower champagnes, which are made by the farmers who grow the grapes. Champagnes biggest housesproducers like Louis Roederer, Pol Roger, and Taittingerare making better wines than ever before. Across the world, people are beginning to appreciate champagne as an affordable luxury. Indeed, global champagne sales hit a record in 2015.

This book is designed as an approachable guide to all things Champagne. The first half reveals the regions exciting history. Throughout the text, sidebar essays attempt to answer any questions that may arise. The second half explores Champagnes various sub-regions, discussing geography and terroir. This section also profiles Champagnes leading producers, from the smallest growers to the largest ngociants . If you come across any words you havent seen before, consult the glossary on .

Communicating effectively about wine doesnt demand an encyclopedic knowledge of rare fruits and bizarre aromas, so this book isnt a collection of tasting notes. Nor is it an academic exercise, so dont expect a comprehensive guide. While great sparkling wine can be made in many regions, the focus here is exclusively Champagne.

As a style note, Ive reserved Champagnewith a capital Cfor the region. When a lowercase letter is used, Im talking about the wine.

David White

September 2016

FOREWORD

Champagne is the wine that everyone knows, and that no one knows. Millions of bottles are drunk throughout the world every week, at parties, at restaurants, at clubs, at social events. Weddings are toasted with champagne; birthdays are celebrated. It is inarguably the wine that brings the most pure delight, thanks to its bright effervescence, celebratory pop, andmight as well say itextraordinary, centuries-long marketing campaign, to the most number of people in the world.

At the same time, champagne is one of the great wines of the world. The best champagnes age as long or longer than great Bordeaux and Burgundies; they have the same nuanced complexity and profound depths. And yet, partly because of champagne's success at promoting its festive image, only a very tiny percentage of the millions of people who drink it realize that.

Certainly I didn't for a very long time. I don't recall the first glass of champagne I ever had, but I clearly recall the first bottle. It was a bottle of Mot & Chandon White Star, back when the house's basic brut bottling was called that, and my parents gave it to me to celebrate the opening of a play I'd written (at my college theater, just to ground this in reality). I have zero memory of the wine, which I drank with my girlfriend, but I do recall being impressed by the gift. We were not a champagne-drinking family in the slightest.

If you land in the wine business, though, you inevitably realize that there is much more to champagne than its all-purpose fizzy gift-worthiness. First comes the realization that the wine is not monolithic, and that the different houses bottle vintage wines, tte de cuves and other more obscure cuves along with those basic bottles that every restaurant serves (Laurent Perrier's bone-dry Ultra Brut, the first modern zero-dosage wine, was my personal eye-opener in this regard). Next, perhaps, some friend opens a bottle of vintage champagne that's been sitting in a cellar for ten or twenty yearswell, that's pretty amazing, you think. And then, roughly in the late nineties and largely thanks to the importer Terry Theise, a large number of people (again mostly in the wine business, initially) started to realize there were champagnes out there beyond what the big houses madesmall producers, working from individual estates, working to define the region's wines in a very different way. I got lucky in terms of the first grower champagne I tasted. It was in 1999, and I was at an after-work dinner with a bunch of wine salespeople at a place called Grand Szechuan International on 9th Avenue in New York. We'd all brought wine, and as we were putting them on the table a fellow named Mike Wheeler pulled a champagne I'd never seen before out of his wine bag. It showed two faces in profile, and was called Substance; the producer was Jacques Selosse. What's that? I said. That is the best fucking champagne on the planet, he said. Admittedly there was a certain amount of sales guy bravado in the statement, but after a couple of sips, I began to wonder whether he was actually right.

My point is, we all know to a degree what champagne is, but it's that voyage of discovery into everything else that champagne is that makes it such a compelling wine. Its history is fascinating. The technique used to make it, and how history and location brought that technique into being is fascinating. There a great stories even in the historical footnotes of champagne. I had no idea, for instance, before reading David White's book, that the charismatic champagne ambassador and entrepreneur, Charles Heidsieck (or Champagne Charlie, as he was known in the US) was accused of being a Confederate spy during his travels and thrown into a malarial swamp-situated prison outside of New Orleans. That alone is a novel waiting to be written.

Which brings me to David White's smart, entertaining, and valuable book. I doubt there's a wine writer in the business (or a wine anyone in the business) who doesn't rely on his Terroirist wine blog for daily insight into more or less everything being written about wine. What his blog does not give away is the energy and liveliness of his storytelling, and the crisp appeal of his prose. But First, Champagne covers the stories of champagne with great verve; the technical aspects of champagne with accuracy; and the producers, grand marques, and growers alike, with clarity and depth. It's one of those rare wine books that should appeal to people just getting into champagne and longtime champagne obsessives (there are more than you think) alike. In fact, it should probably best be read with a glass of champagne in handas to which one, well, read on.