{"id":1397,"date":"2019-10-31T14:29:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T14:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1397"},"modified":"2019-11-04T19:48:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-04T19:48:59","slug":"champagne-the-wines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1397","title":{"rendered":"Champagne \u2013 The Wines"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to World Food and Wine, there are 19,000 (!) vineyards growing grapes to be used in Champagne wine.\u00a0 Of these, 2,124 make and sell the wine itself.\u00a0 Of course, the majority are small producers that are barely known outside their villages.\u00a0 But there are 260 large producers, the top 76 of which are known as the Grandes Marques & Maisons<\/em>, in other words the biggest players in the market.\u00a0 These latter houses make two-thirds of the Champagne sold in the world and 90% of those exported from France.<\/p>\n

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Perrier-Jou\u00ebt headquarters in \u00c9pernay<\/p>\n

You surely know some of the Grandes Marques<\/em>, such as Mo\u00ebt & Chandon, Perrier-Jou\u00ebt or Taittinger<\/a>.\u00a0 But have you heard of, let alone tasted, such labels as Canard-Duch\u00eane, Mansard Baillet or Charles Mignon?\u00a0 These last three are also considered among the \u201cbig houses\u201d.\u00a0 And we at Power Tasting<\/em> can assure you that there are many other smaller Champagne houses that make extremely high-quality wines.\u00a0 They just don\u2019t ship very much outside of France and even less that reaches North America.<\/p>\n

Of course, with that many to choose from, no sane wine tasting visitor can hope to try them all.\u00a0 Moreover, each house is likely to have a selection to choose among.\u00a0 Almost all will have an Assemblage<\/em>, made from the three Champagne grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.\u00a0 Then there will be a Blanc de Blanc<\/em> made from Chardonnay only and, so we are told, most connoisseurs prize the BdB most highly.\u00a0 Maybe we\u2019re not connoisseurs, because we often favor a Blanc de Noir<\/em>, made from red grapes, usually Pinot Noir.\u00a0 Oh, yes, and then there\u2019s the Champagne ros\u00e9 as well.\u00a0 And then each Champagne house has its top wines (known as the t\u00eate du cuv\u00e9e<\/em>) that you really want to try if you\u2019ve travelled all that way to taste Champagne.\u00a0 But don\u2019t expect to taste too many houses\u2019 Champagne in any one day.<\/p>\n

There are local people and Champagne specialists who can differentiate wines from different sectors of the Champagne region.\u00a0 It\u2019s no different than being able to taste the differences between, say, a Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon and one from Calistoga.\u00a0 (Quite frankly, we can\u2019t do either one.)\u00a0 But it is interesting, though not surprising, to see that the white grapes come from one part of the region and the reds from another.<\/p>\n

The one thing that does makes true Champagne distinct from all other sparkling wines is the chalk just below the soil.\u00a0 The caves where they age the Champagne are also made of chalk.\u00a0 The controversy over terroir vs. winemaking skill will never end, but there is no doubt that the soil in this part of France makes Champagne different \u2013 and we would say better \u2013 than bubbly from anywhere else.<\/p>\n

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Of course there\u2019s no shortage of winemaking skill in Champagne.\u00a0 Some of the credit that goes to Dom Perignon may be apocryphal, but there is no question that a few centuries of making these marvelous wines do develop a certain proficiency.\u00a0 And it is a very interesting exercise to taste a few different Champagnes, available by the glass, made by the winemakers from various houses.\u00a0 This kind of tasty test raises the level of your understanding of the subtleties that go into making Champagne.<\/p>\n

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According to World Food and Wine, there are 19,000 (!) vineyards growing grapes to be used in Champagne wine.\u00a0 Of these, 2,124 make and sell the wine itself.\u00a0 Of course, the majority are small producers that are barely known outside their villages.\u00a0 But there are 260 large producers, the top 76 of which are known … Continue reading Champagne \u2013 The Wines<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions\/1414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}