Since there are few questions more frequently asked than what my favorite Champagnes are, it's a worthwhile time to revisit some guideposts.
Champagne seems to bring out the sort of brand loyalty -- and hence fear of change -- you find only in jeans and cars. Don't take my Levis, my Acura or my Bollinger, dammit. So with that in mind, here's a quick-and-dirty guide to the labels I look for. You may not find some of your familiar names here, but at least a few of these should appear on any good wine store's shelves.
If you're wondering why some very popular names aren't here, the answer is simple: I drink enough Champagne to be a complete tightwad about it, and many (but not all) big-name houses make wines that are too simple and too sweet for the money. If you're paying the premium to drink real Champagne, it should be a complex and compelling treat.
OK, first to the negociants: I'm unabashedly a fan of the British taste in Champagne: lots of flavors of toast, pastry, nuts and Sherry, typically from exposing the wines to a bit more oxygen and using more of the aged reserve wines in the blend -- hence why, in raised-nose company, I'd call it an oxidative style. The epitome of this style is beloved Bollinger, with Pol Roger doing admirable duty too. Less extreme, and to my taste often a bit more elegant for it, is the smaller Gosset, one of Champagne's most storied houses. If you're stepping up a bit, the lavish and leesy profile of Ruinart speaks to a certain opulence. These are all somewhat big wines, meant for heartier food and certainly ample in structure to last through a meal.
Now let's dial back the nuts and Sherry a bit -- if you prefer your bubbles not to resemble a tapas bar, that is -- to a more fruit-driven, precise style. There are many Heidsiecks in the realm, all with solid quality. I waver between two -- Charles Heidsieck and Heidsieck Monopole (the first owned by spirits firm Remy Cointreau, which also owns Piper-Heidsieck, the latter by Champagne firm Vranken, which also owns the very solid Pommery label, notable for its eloquent Cuvee Louise and its single-serve Pop) -- Charles a bit more flashy, though with gorgeous expression in vintage wines like its 1995 Blanc des Millenaires, Monopole somewhat stoic but so very fresh in its blue and yellow package. Both great. Along those lines, keep an eye out for the recently reinvigorated Ayala, now owned by none other than Bollinger, especially its laser-precise Zero Dosage. Ayala gets extra points for putting disgorgement dates on the bottle, which may bust the impression of all-bottlings-created-equal, but allows those of us forking over the cash to make more reasoned buying decisions. Also notably restrained in its style is Taittinger, which has won it its share of fans over time.
For just a bit more flash (but just a bit), the nonvintage wines of Louis Roederer continue to deliver in their subtle, nuanced style with just a hint of yeasty wildness lurking. Of course the vintage wines and, ahem, Cristal follow in that somewhat timeless mold. (If only the nonvintage was disgorgement-dated.) Henriot follows a similar path, though with somewhat more focus on Chardonnay. In that style, but with a bit more overt fruit to its nonvintage bottling thanks to about one-third Pinot Meunier, is Deutz. The nonvintage can benefit from a couple years of proper aging, and vintage Deutz -- especially the Blanc de Blancs and the top-end Cuvee William Deutz -- have tremendous cellar potential. Not that you needed that for New Year's.
To me, Jacquesson falls nicely in that on-the-road-to-opulent category too, though almost as a bridge to the grower realm; the Chiquet brothers' commitment to specific vintage expressions is really a treat. And as I've noted before, the Philipponnat label finds just the right balance between lean red-fruit precision and toasty opulence that, when I encounter the Royale Reserve nowadays, makes me always think of a poor man's Krug, to say nothing of Philipponnat's extraordinarily age-worthy Clos des Goisses. There is, of course, Krug, for those with the means. And Salon takes the opulence even further without losing precision, though at nearly $300 a bottle, it had better outperform.
Now to those indispensible grower folks. There is no shortage of love for the heavy hitters of the category, Egly-Ouriet (imported straight through Berkeley) and Pierre Peters (a superstar in Terry Theise's portfolio, along with Pierre Gimmonet). Certainly I have no quibble there, though I don't get to taste either as much as I'd like. Given their relative scarcity on shelves, you may have about the same luck. If you find a bottle of Egly's Vignes de Vrigny, all from Pinot Meunier, it's a unique wine worth experiencing, showing an austere side of that usually fruity grape.
But there are so many others. Aside from Leclerc Briant, our house Champagne is usually the NV Blanc de Blancs from Franck Bonville, in magnum when we can. (Both are imported through K&L, and available locally, when in stock.) The Larmandier-Bernier label is exceptional, including its Terre de Vertus bottling, undosed and a stoic expression of terroir from that Cote des Blancs village. Two other growers imported locally (through Martine's Wines) are Diebolt-Vallois and Gonet-Medeville, both consistently excellent and worthy of cellar time (especially the Diebolt, which can be a bit subdued when young.) The same is true of Agrapart, the Avize-based Chardonnay specialist.
Gaston Chiquet (cousins of the owners of Jacquesson) is on my hot list with a bullet. Chiquet took a while to leave an impression, but repeated encounters with its vintage Special Club effort (a series of top cuvees made by a close-knit group of growers) keeps convincing me to buy more and tuck them away. The 1998 was as fresh and focused (especially for that vintage) as the 1999 is opulent and monumental. Along those lines, another name encountered in our recent recommendations, but equally notable for their consistently good Cuvee Ste Anne, is Chartogne-Taillet, like Chiquet a player in the Theise book. (Those of us fortunate enough to keep tasting the full range of the Theise-imported wines get to play favorites. The Aubry and Jean Milan are also fantastic, if less my thing. Aubry's Campanae Veteres Vites, from now-obscure other Champagne varieties like Arbanne, is always fascinating, if primarily an intellectual thrill.)
Of course, there's Vilmart, the powerful, typically oak-aged Champagnes from Rilly-la-Montagne. I was a late convert to Vilmart's style, but the rounded texture it can show when young is lost like baby fat as precision and complexity take over. I'll pretty much buy Vilmart whenever I see it, if only because of its rarity and depth. (This is how some people feel about the utterly cultish Jacques Selosse, but we don't see much Selosse in these parts.) One of Vilmart's lesser known stars is its nonvintage rosé, the Cuvee Rubis, our New Year's Eve Champagne from last year. The nonvintage Rubis brings a fruitier edge and intensity to the subtle house style, like strawberries through a fiber optic cable.
And that brings us to the smile-inducing topic of Rosé Champagne. The big discovery this year was Mandois, a small house in Pierry that takes a similar oak-minded approach as Vilmart, though with sometimes different results. Its Brut Rosé Grande Reserve is an extraordinary wine, made from a blend of white Champagne, saignée pink wine and red wine. The irresistible earth notes of Pinot come shining through. Other excellent, if lesser known names in Rosé include Louis de Sacy, and of course the utterly beloved Billecart-Salmon, though I find Billecart's pink wine too soft-edged, even though I adore the regular Brut and the vintage wines. (To ponder imponderables: Would Billecart's rosé have caught on so well if the name didn't include "Salmon"?)
OK, now I'm thirsty, so I'll stop there. Now's your turn. What names do you look for when you're in the Champagne aisle?
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