[wine] Guide to Champagne

Mmmmm. Champagne. but $89 a year is a bit stiff. That's 3 bottles of Champagne! An in-depth guide to Champagne Craig Lee/The Chronicle It takes a steady hand ... For as much as Champagne is beloved, there's a gaping void in advice about it once you move beyond the same few obvious names. Part of this is intentional: Champagne more than most places is dominated by its largest brands (in turn run by large corporations with more than bubbles on their minds), and despite the endless enthusiasm of we writer types for many smaller houses, most have neither the money nor werewithal to compete. So Champagne remains wrapped in a well-woven mystique. It has been a pleasure, then, to road-test the newly launched ChampagneGuide.net, created by Peter Liem, a writer and senior correspondent for Wine & Spirits who moved to the Champagne village of Dizy in 2006 from the United States. (Liem is also a contributor to The Chronicle.) Liem is one of the keenest Champagne tasters around. After nearly three years of filling notebooks, he has turned his collected wisdom into one of the most comprehensive efforts yet on the subject, writing with an informed on-the-ground perspective that's virtually unmatched. Profiles of more than 100 houses are already available -- a mix of famous names like Krug and obscure gems like Ulysse Collin. Liem plans to add more regularly; Champagne has thousands of producers, so he has no shortage of source material, but as readers of his blog know, he has a precise radar for newsworthy and talented vignerons, regardless of size. The profiles are perhaps the most detailed anywhere, expanding on works like Richard Juhlin's "4000 Champagnes" and Tom Stevenson's "Champagne." Liem elevates them above the usual frothy prose, as he offers a sense of each house's philosophy, style and methods of working. (Example: Larmandier-Bernier finds spraying with a helicopter beneficial for its biodynamic regimes.) Tasting notes -- with about a half-dozen for each producer, there's already more than 600 -- are equally thoughtful, with Liem's precise palate extending well beyond the usual mix of fruit. The Gatinois Brut Rosérand Cru is "a vividly aromatic wine, showing brambly notes of crushed red fruit with the peculiar sense of concentrated berries typical of (the Champagne town of) Ay." Added bonus: A Google mashup map locates each producer, providing a valuable geographic anchor often missing from discussion of Champagne. At $89/year, it is priced for the connoisseur. I asked Liem about the pricing last week, and he said he wanted to price competitively but felt that amount was the least he could justify for his years of work. (At a time when it's fashionable to give away your collected wisdom online, that's a laudable stance.) He intends to expand to other formats including, potentially, the dead-tree sort. Of course, the price is about two bottles worth of good Champagne. If you drink more than that in a year, Champagneguide.net should prove a valuable guide through a region where quality is often obscured by endless layers of marketing fizz. More at Champagneguide.net. (See a sample profile here.) Y mucho mas: If you haven't yet checked out the 30/30 project by Chronicle contributor Paul Clarke to commemorate the fourth anniversary of his Cocktail Chronicles site, do so. Like so many bloggers (say it, brother) Paul found his original momentum for writing about new cocktails had flagged. This is his revival effort (currently on No. 27) with everything from the Tchoupitoulas Street Guzzle to more au courant picks like the Wibble. The only thing better than a week of cocktails is a full month; 30/30 is like cocktail grad school on overdrive. Posted By: Jon BonnéEmail) | May 14 2009 at 01:50 PM Listed Under: Champagne, Cocktails, France, Sparkling Wine, Spirits, Web -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *