"Champagne is just the stuff for celebrating the summer but what’s so special about the real article and what makes it stand out? On tasting some Veuvue Cliqout and Krug, the scent of the wines just keeps changing like something akin to a wonderous creation by Willy Wonka, had the fictitious chocolate mogul ever ventured into winemaking.Veuvue Cliqout Ponsardin (Ponsardin was the husband of Madame Cliqout) is 60% from Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay and 15% Pinot Meunier, with the red Pinot giving the structure to the wine and each grape playing its part in this legendary threesome.
According to Xavier Monclús, a member of the oenology department of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy’s wine division Estates & Wines, yeast is considered the fourth varietal in Champagne and is just as important as the grapes themselves.
While yeast is prominent on the nose, essence of raspberry was one of the first flavours I identified, which comes courtesy of the Pinot Noir, followed by some citrus and the chalk from the soil. Then the Chardonnay takes over, lending Mokka and a rich smidgen of honey as the Pinot Meunier contributes apples and pears to the taste frenzy.
Complex stuff indeed, and by the way it takes four hours to press 4,000 kilograms to get only 2,050 litres of the best juice, a process that Monclús compares to pressing grapes between your fingers.
Non-vintage Champagne is the most difficult wine to make because the winemaker has to make the same quality year after year, argues Monclús. Therefore, wine from grapes from different vineyard plots and vintages is blended to ensure the end product is unmistakable.
“Like a painter mixing paint, 150 colors are better than three colors,” says Monclús.
As it’s not immediately apparent how old the wine is, Monclús recommends going to a reputable wine merchant who won’t leave the stuff on the shelf for ever. Non-vintage champagne is generally good for five years ageing and the bubbles get smaller as time goes by.
Krug starts where other champs finish, says Monclús, which is easy for him to say as it’s also owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, but there are plenty of people who would agree with him. Krug Grand Cuvee is a very big and intense sparkling wine and may not be to everyone’s taste, even Monclús admits.
Its taste starts off fuelled by the taste of rich albeit bitter fruit and then you make out marmalade, apples, oranges, manzanilla, compote, plum cake, and butter rounded off by milk chocolate, cappuccino, and melon.
This stuff is the result of some serious blending, with the wines used varying in age from six to 20 years from up to 12 different harvests. Serve at ten degrees.
These two are available from Bortársaság: Ft 35,700 for the Krug and Ft 9,750 for the Veuvue Cliqout.
Briana’s Blend, a Bordeaux-style blend comprising 62% Cabernet Sauvignon and 38% Cabernet Franc from 2005 from Bruce Wayne Winery in California’s Napa Valley, has that aroma change thing going on too. An aroma of blackcurrants and blackberry gives way to red fruits and then is rounded off by chocolate. It’s seriously smooth and unctuous on the palate.
Californian Cabs and Bordeaux Blends can be very good but they are bloody expensive, partly fuelled by big Yankee reds wiping the floor with their French rivals in their own backyard at the Paris tastings of 1976. This one’s a comparative steal at a bargain for Ft 4,800 from Monarchia Matt.
Tokaj power
One of the striking things about Tokaj, other than the uniqueness and sumptuousness of its wine, is its remoteness, tucked away in the far northeast of the country at the confluence of the Bodrog and Tisza rivers. Oh yes, like much of northern Hungary it’s also close to the Slovakian border but unfortunately for the legendary wine region it is only 20 km from that part of Slovakia for which a great big dirty coal-fired power station is touted.
The Slovaks themselves also have a decent chunk of Tokaj’s vineyards and hopefully this will make them reconsider, but it’s not just the Slovaks who are bringing Tokaj into the industrial age, for there are also a couple of biofuel projects
László Mészáros, head of Tokaj Renaissance and managing director of Disznoko, one of the region’s leading estates, points out that the main wind into Tokaj wafts in from the north-east, which is where the coal plant would be located.
Coal and Tokaj just don’t seem to go together like Tokaj and blue cheese, goose liver, et cetera.
It’s not all doom and gloom in Hungary’s premier wine region, however.
Mészáros is very optimistic about the prospects for the 2007 vintage as Tokaj has been happily basking in the sunshine, and sun is something that is really needed in such a northerly wine region. The backing grapes in Disznókő’s Aszú symphony, Zeta and Muscat, are fully ripe and approaching full ripeness, while the backbone Furmint is ripening both quickly and perfectly and should soon be in prime condition to receive noble rot, ie botrytis rather than malignant rot, forecasts Mészáros.
The great Tokaj vintages have tended to be the early ones and the signs are good that 2007 will be mentioned alongside the likes of 1993, 1999, 2000, and 2003.
Meanwhile, 2006 was a little cool in August to make it a great vintage, at least for Tokaji Ászu. However, there are plenty of very decent and fuller-bodied dry whites from last year’s vintage.
I’m all for Hungary concentrating on its indigenous grapes for its export effort, but the nation shouldn’t rip up all the Chardonnay vines just yet. Nyakas’ Don Oliver 2006, bottled exclusively for the Zwack wine division, has all the perfumy fragrance of this underrated Hungaricum that does tend to lack the bit of acidity required to make the taste on the palate as impressive as the nose.
In comes Chardonnay and adds that bit of steel to it, making the blend a rather pleasing summer mouthful. The addition of Chardonnay can also be used to get foreign drinkers to pick up the bottle in the first place and actually taste the Hungaricum, with Chardonnay lending a trusted guiding hand."
Written by Robert Smyth
Source:
BBJ
07.09.2007