The last few years taught me that Champagne is wine, not just bottled fireworks poised to explode on special occasions.  Champagne’s food and aperitif friendliness are more interesting to me now than at any other time during my twenty seven year wine zag. I used to zag around Champagne while others zigged straight at it.  I wanted to love Champagne, but couldn’t.  Bubbles distracted my ability to detect flavors while effervescence made it challenging for wines to linger comfortably in my mouth.  I deemed myself a wine misfit.

Champagne prices were always relatively high and it never seemed to make sense investing time to develop a deeper understanding of the region and its wine. After all, the whole affair was about a luxury beverage designed for something other than regular consumption. Right? Bordeaux felt entirely more accessible when I was picking spots to invest my very limited wine budget back in the mid-eighties.  Knowing that I was getting Montrose, Leoville Las Cases,  or Haut Brion grown and made product when I bought their wines was subconsciously important to me.  The big Champagne brands that bought and blended fruit to achieve house and label styles like Moet & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, and Perrier Jouet, as examples, felt predictably manipulated and overproduced. They achieved luxurious consistency and uniformity while stripping high volume purchased fruit of nuance and terroir.

It’s been a crazy prejudice, especially since the occasional opportunities to drink these wines were always enjoyable on some level.  Somewhere along the way, my palate redeemed itself by shedding its unappreciative Champagne bias.

I now recognize my increasing exposure to Grower Champagnes, wines made by the same people that grow the fruit, helped motivate me to drink and learn more about Champagne

So I was excited to have our Boston blind tasting group take on a dozen grower Champagnes; eleven non vintage wines and one 2006 vintage bottling.  I was ready to find a handful of wines that I could stock for regular drinking from the following:  

Egly-Ouriet Brut Tradition Grand Cru $75 ****

Vouette et Sorbee Blanc d’Argile $100 ***

Pierre Peters Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Reserve $65 ****1/2

Guy Larmandier Vertus Premier Cru  $50 ***

Franck Pascal Sagesse Brut Nature  $60 ***1/2         

Rene Geoffroy Brut Expression $45 ***       

Jacques Lassaigne Le Cotet Brut Blanc de Blancs $70 **

Laherte Freres Brut Nature Blanc de Blancs $35 **        

Jean Lallement Brut Cuvee Reserve $60 ***        

Pierre Gimonnet 1er Cru Blanc de Blancs $45 ****         

H. Billiot Brut Reserve $50 ****        

2006 Jose Dhondt Blanc de Blancs $50 ***

I asked Rich Auffrey, who writes at The Passionate Foodie, to share some background on Champagne with the group, whatever he wanted, since he spent some focused tasting time in Champagne this year. Rich mentioned that 90% of the vineyards are divided into about 280,000 plots that are farmed by 15,000 independent growers.  Most of them don’t produce wine and just sell their grapes.  About 2/3 of all the grapes are bought by large Champagne houses.

Growers known as Recoitant-Manipulants (look for RM on the bottle), grow and harvest their own fruit and make their own wine.  Rich shared some statistics underscoring the fact that most Grower Champagne stays in France.  Even though of all the Champagne imported into the United States only 3.7% is Grower Champagne, it is a rapidly growing segment of this French bubbly export market.

I like them because of the unique profiles. Grower Champagnes are more reflective of their terroir, not as consistent from year to year as wines made by the big Houses, and offer flavors belonging to their vineyards of origin.  To me, they are wines born out of the idiosyncratic struggles and advantages attached to their native patch of vineyard land.  Maybe that’s why there was no clear favorite and why so many of the wines we tasted blind offered something uniquely interesting.  The Billiot, Gimonnet, and Peters all shared the same amount of votes and tied for top wines.  Our blind tasting group had never produced a tie like this before. Only one wine, the Laherte Freres (unfortunately the cheapest) received zero votes.  Every other wine scored close.

The Egly Ouriet showed mushrooms, yeast, smoke, and dark color that made it stand out in this lineup with the Pascal for its distinctively oxidized notes and creamy mid-palate (a highly controversial wine, but my second favorite of the night).  Peters was my favorite for its brightness, sweet fruit and floral perfumed nose, and peach flavor.

The group’s consensus was that every wine offered something enjoyable; not an unattractive wine in the bunch.  The most expensive $100 Vouette et Sorbee, with its highly expressive baked apple nose and clean fresh flavors had fewer votes than the $45 Gimonnet, the $50 Billiot, and the $45 Geoffroy.  But each one had its own endearing style, and our many different palates leaned toward their own comfortable landing zones.  Cream, lemon, apple, yeast, crisp, tight bubbles, elegant, caramel, quince, summer fruit, tangerine, mushroom, acidity, etc.  The rainbow of characteristics was colorful and varied, each wine lining up neatly in it own appropriate spot on the spectrum.

There is a lot to like about Grower Champagnes; starting with their relatively low prices and ending with varied style and unique terroir.  They are authentic wines that are finally making it fun for me to drink and learn more about Champagne.  You won’t go wrong with any of these wines, but if you drink all of them side by side like we did, you will find your preferred style.

Note:  Thanks to Matteo at Wine Bottega for helping me source most of these wines with ease.

Some wine is described to be authentic. I have been meaning to build a working definition of authenticity for my own clarification and finally managed to squash a prolonged streak of procrastination after discovering ($25 ****) Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades XX on Atlanta’s Local Three Kitchen & Bar wine list. This adjective that has blossomed into standard wine enthusiast fodder, bandied throughout critical wine circles with head-spinning frequency, will no longer be taken casually here.  Research turned up these words and phrases to collectively define authenticity:

•         devotion to genuineness
•         truthfulness of origins
•         true to one’s own personality
•         conforming to original character and attributes
•         adherence to originality
•         lack of falsehood

This urgency around authentic clarity was driven by the reappearance of Pleiades in my glass, a wine and winemaker emanating high beams of authenticity, unlike anything I have ever tasted from California before, and a vintage version different from any other wine we came across in the vertical Pleiades tasting we conducted last year.

Conversely, Local Three Kitchen & Bar fanned antithetical flames of authenticity, housed in a building complex called Piazza at Paces somewhere off I-75 in a nondescript Atlanta, GA neighborhood.  The southern/suburban/Italian center is designed with grand Roman thematics in mind, and the restaurant is located off a lobby of what appears to be an office building named Forum.  You can park your charriot in a brand new multi level parking lot that is just behind the Forum.  When you finally navigate the commercial office space and open the door to the restaurant, you spatially transition one more time into yet another farm to table, contemporary barn decor, pig-art dominated meat theme park.  It’s a restaurant du jour, paying attention to local, meats, and comfort foods that you have been served at twenty other places.  All the boxes are checked, some surprisingly good (brussel sprouts), but most renditions not as compelling as earlier versions (i.e. pork buns compared to Momofuku’s).

While we could have been eating in Epcot Center’s Italy Pavilion housing a mediocre replica of a trendy themed American restaurant, Sean Thackrey and Pleiades XX came to authenticity’s rescue.  Dinner guests and wine became the focus of my experience.  The polarizing effect of a highly authentic wine showcasing the original attributes of its component parts, not dressed up to be anything it isn’t supposed to be, producing a drinking experience uniquely it’s own, and presenting a personality not shared with any other wine helped push away Local Three’s themed overtones.

The Marin county based iconic, idiosyncratic, and eccentric Sean Thackrey produces Pleiades without any adherence to style consistency year to year.  The blend is different each vintage, and possibly never totally represented on the label. According to this vintage’s label, Pleiades XX includes sangiovese, pinot noir, mourvedre, viognier, and syrah among others.  The appearance of the wine is on the lighter side, showing off the color characteristics associated with its sangiovese and pinot noir components.  You might be able to even see the hint of brown edge that lives at the edge of the glass of Pleiades XX at the right.

There’s a sweetness, almost candy apple quality to the aroma.  Earthy and leather notes are neatly tucked into the sweet nose.  Simply from the aromatics, it reminded me of Arianna Occhipinti’s southern Italian Frapatto since both wines offer floral sweetness, multi dimensional flavor profiles, great acidity, a lightness on their feet, and sweet/herbal/earthy changing aromatics.  Sage and thyme (maybe the mourvedre?) show up after the wine sits around in the glass for ten minutes.  The mouthfeel is like a graceful, medium rich pinot noir and it finishes with Burgundian like acidity.  Its a wine that juxtaposes styles and varieties to the drinker’s advantage.  It does all that for around $25 a bottle.  It could be one of the most interesting values in all of California.

In addition to my working definition of authentic wines, there is also Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades as a benchmark of authenticity.  And then there is Local Three Kitchen & Bar to prove authenticity is not required to be mostly presentable, sometimes yummy, occasionally attention-getting, and ordinarily unexciting.

You don’t have to be a Rock Star to drink wine like one.  Rock Star Winos beguile fame, demagnetize paparazzi, leave crowd-free wakes, and sign no autographs.  Being a Rock Star Wino with the juice to indulge audiences in sensory, intellectual, and emotional celebration is unassuming and simple.   So, if you read Wine Rock Star- Part 1, my reflex to Dave McIntyre’s routine wino tips, you are now ready and equipped to take your show on the road with Part 2.

Without really knowing if any legitimate Rock Stars drink wine just like this, here are two performance formats that will deliver wine experiences even the most jaded wine enthusiasts would clamor over:

The Three Wine Comparison

Never serve one glass of wine at a time with dinner.  Rather, set out three identical glasses and compare the wines against each other.  Never pick just a white and a red wine.  Instead, pick three whites and three reds. Or, just three reds or whites or rosés.  Most importantly, make sure they are related to each other in some way and serve them side by side.

For example, serve three 2009 Russian River California pinot noirs next to each other with a single course.  Or, serve one 2008 syrah from the Rhone Valley’s Côte Rôtie, another 2008 syrah from California’s Paso Robles appellation, and the last from Australia’s Barossa Valley.  Alternatively, serve 2008, 2007, and 2006 O’Shaughnessy Howell Mountain Cabernet, as an example, side by side.  Or pour 1985, 1995, and 2005 Gruaud Larose from Bordeaux’s St. Julien appelallation.  Or maybe just three different Talley Vineyard 2009 pinot noirs; Rosemary’s, Rincon, and Estate.

Get the picture?  Serve them blind or open to your guests.  Be creative.  Reach out to your local wine monger for help…tell them what you want to do and ask for creative suggestions.  Most importantly, enjoy the comparisons, differences, distinctions, favorites, commonalities, styles, and most of all the simultaneous resonance of appreciation, education, indulgence, and group connection.  This performance qualifies you as a Wine Rock Star.

The Blind Tasting

It’s an advanced move, but intensely rewarding. I organize one each month as a labor of love and for the opportunity to comparatively taste wines I am curious to learn more about. Choose a theme…maybe 2007 Chateauneuf du Pape?  2008 Willamette Valley pinot noir? 2009 chenin blanc from Loire?  2009 white Burgundy vs. California Chardonnay?  Buy a dozen bottles (or 6 of each if you are comparing the same variety from two different regions). Or, buy 10 bottles of the main region and add in two distant relatives to see if they stand out (i.e. one 2009 red Burgundy and one 2009 German spätburgunder added to a flight of 2009 California pinot noir).  Then, remove all the foils and corks and put all of the bottles in paper bags, taped tightly around incognito necks so nobody can cheat.

Invite 12-15 of your closest friends.  Put white table cloths over one or two long tables.  Do this so you are able to see the color of the wines against a white backdrop.  Cut up some baguettes and put plates of bread on the table.  Get some big bowls or pitchers for dump buckets so everyone can pour out wines at the end of flights.  Print out names and prices of the wines so everyone knows what is inside the brown paper bags.  Give each taster a blank piece of paper and number it one to twelve, with twelve individual sections devoted to notes for every wine.

Set up six glasses for every taster.  Pick six random bottles from the group of twelve.  Mark each one by Sharpie with a number from one to six.  Pour wine number one for each taster in the left most glass, number two in the second from the left, and so on.  Once the six wines are poured, begin tasting.  Look at color for all six, then check aroma for all six, then taste all six.  Make some notes, rudimentary or exhaustive, and when everyone has finished tasting….compare your impressions with each other.  You will be amazed how much of a learning experience this is.  And, you just got to taste a half dozen amazing wines with good people.  Rinse and repeat with the second six wines.

Have blind ballots for first and second place, add up the votes, and determine the group’s favorite wine. Such fun.  Twelve great wines, sixteen wonderful people, untold enjoyment, connection, and new knowledge.  Rock Star or not, you have created a new stage for exaggerated wine appreciation for you and your friends.