[wine] How Artisanal is Artisanal

Must be time for a Bubble Brunch - say January. Champagne: How artisanal is artisanal? K&L Wine Merchants/Leclerc Briant Don't hate me because I'm an NM. In addition to our picks for Winemaker of the Year and our five winemakers to watch -- and congrats to them all -- Friday's Wine section also has the results from our latest panel tasting of grower Champagnes. We last tasted these in panel four years ago, and plenty has since changed. It's that time of year when bubbles are front and center (though, yes, not everyone is thinking on a Champagne budget this year, and we'll tackle that another time) so it's a good moment to spend some extra time thinking about things that sparkle. I'll start with grower fizz this time and offer some more general buying advice in another post. Grower Champagnes have been on my mind a lot this year, and caused their share of consternation. There was a time when grower Champagnes -- Champagne made by the same people who grow the grapes -- were an insiders' secret. No longer. Certainly they're not knocking Moet off its throne anytime soon, but rare is the well-assembled wine list that doesn't include at least one grower Champagne. And as much as there is love for these countrified, homespun efforts, there's a quiet murmur of disdain for the famous names of Champagne that lean on their brand-building like a big, shiny crutch. You won't be surprised that grower bubbles are usually the favorites of sommeliers, small retailers and almost anyone else not completely swayed by the sparkle of the grandes marques' tinsel. The original pitch: Buy Champagnes from people who care enough to make the wines from the grapes they grow -- a pride of ownership, of sorts. It didn't hurt that there was an implicit anticommercialism at work, as well as the promise of terroir expression. To steal a line from their biggest booster, Terry Theise: "You should drink 'farmer-fizz' if you'd rather buy Champagne from a farmer than a factory." The Bay Area is doubly lucky because it has so many local importers who specialize in what said booster has long been fighting for. Martine's Wines, North Berkeley Imports, Beaune Imports, K&L Wines, Dee Vine Wines and Charles Neal Selections are among the local posse who hunt these Champagnes down, to say nothing of the fantastic access here to Theise's portfolio of Champagnes, which essentially started this whole parade. But as the grower market gets more mature, it gets more complicated. Though we tasted 33 wines for last week's selections, I knew going in that many of my own fave growers weren't in the mix (Vilmart and Larmandier-Bernier, for instance); if they were, we tasted some of their lesser-known efforts rather than the mainline nonvintage Brut. That I could even brood on getting to taste the vintage Chartogne-Taillet and not its nonvintage cuvee is a sign of how bountiful the grower market has become. With that, complication has come too. It's not even that easy any longer to draw the lines between little grower and mongo negociant. What's the deal? If there once was an NM/RM divide in Champagne (NM for negociants who buy much of their grapes, RM for "recoltants," or growers, marked in agate-ish type on the label), those lines are blurrier now. Sometimes negociant wines pretty well scream of their provenance, no matter how much ruby-encrusted largess now accompanies what have now been redefined, fervently, as luxury brands: But owning land in Champagne is complicated, much as it has become on, say, the Sonoma Coast. And even in Champagne, there need be no scarlet N for those who happen to buy grapes. One of my favorite regular-buying Champagnes, Leclerc Briant, is technically a negociant. But only because Pascal Leclerc Briant buys grapes from several villages and vineyards, including a number of parcels in the town of Cumieres -- Les Chevres Perrieuses and Les Crayeres, in particular, plus the lean all-Pinot Meunier La Ravinne -- that express their specific site with remarkable clarity. So Leclerc Briant wears the NM mark, if not the large-scale trappings that usually accompany it. The small Marguet label, which I've written about before, has a different issue -- a family scuffle prevented Benoit Marguet from getting his own family's grapes, so he was forced to the open market. (Both are imported locally by K&L.) There are enough of these exceptions to the rule that next time, instead of asking for RM Champagnes, I think we may call for Champagnes made by wineries of a certain size or smaller -- say, 100,000 cases. That actually would be an interesting dividing line for wines in general, but in the case of Champagne, where industrial-scale efficiency has quietly taken control, it seems especially crucial, a philosophical dividing line. And yet even there, I'm advised that one of my favorite growers, Franck Bonville, makes somewhere well north of 100,000. Does that negate the farmerness of that fizz? Setting caps is even more fraught with problems because there are other, larger producers who dedicate themselves to cuvees that depart from the norm. One that comes to mind immediately is Jacquesson, which dates back to 1798 but is currently run by the Chiquet family -- Jean-Herve and Laurent. (Their cousin is behind a favorite grower Champagne house, Gaston Chiquet, which was featured in Friday's paper.) One feature of Jacquesson is their unique not-quite-vintage dating scheme for their (technically) nonvintage cuvee. Each subsequent year gets its own number, so 728 designated the 2000 vintage and the latest, 732, is largely composed from the 2004 vintage. The NV Jacquesson Cuvee 732 Brut (around $60) is racy and focused, with a hint of pastry dough. What doesn't change is quality that transcends the somewhat generic competency (and typically high sugar dosages) of truly large negociants like Moet or Piper-Hiedsieck. If growers are subject to the whims of vintage, the consistency of winemaking style doesn't change so fast. A talented Champagne maker's abilities shine through no matter what, which is why even the geekiest among us should think twice before going on a RM jihad. Next time: name-checking my trusted posse of bubble brands. Posted By: Jon BonnéEmail) | December 17 2008 at 09:30 AM Listed Under: Importers, Labels, Sparkling Wine | Comments (0) : Post Comment -- ------------------------------ * 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 *