Vintage Point

On Champagne and Napa Valley Bubbly

BY JOEL L. FLEISHMAN

Champagne is surely our most versatile drink. It can be served throughout meals, even formal dinners. It perfectly accompanies desserts, no matter how sweet, and it is everywhere the potable of choice for postprandial toasting. Its acids clear the palate and its carbonation lightens the stomach.

Champagne is a relatively recent discovery, coming about two thousand years after still wine was first produced in France. Perfected in 1690, it was taken to the bosom of le tout Paris by the 1740s. "It gives brilliance to the eyes," Mme. de Parabere observed, "without flushing the face."

To make champagne, one starts with specially chosen still wine and then adds to it a combination of yeast and sugar as it is about to be bottled, so that a second fermentation occurs within the bottle, creating bubbles. It was a Benedictine monk, Dom Perignon, chief cellarer in Hautvillers Abbey, who figured out, after twenty years of experiments, how to get the bubbles into the bottle and keep them there. That was no mean feat; those wondrous bubbles create a pressure of as much as ninety pounds per square inch. In the early days of champagne-making, vintners frequently lost half their total production because of leaking or exploding bottles. Even now explosions occur, especially if champagne gets too warm, but because bottles today are made to withstand great pressure, such losses have been reduced to half of 1 percent of production.

The methode champenoise—bottle fermentation—has long been used to make sparkling wine in parts of France other than the Champagne region, as well as in other countries. While the vintners of Champagne are understandably testy about calling such wine "champagne," the general public does not seem to be bothered by such nice distinctions, and in fact the similarities are unquestionably greater than the differences. While one might well agree for the sake of peace to refrain from calling "champagne" anything but the wine produced in the official region, that's the only reason for doing so. There are sparkling wines that not only approach the quality of authentic champagne but sometimes surpass it.

To test that belief, I assembled a group of wine-loving friends for a blind tasting of champagnes and California sparkling wines. We uncorked twenty bottles in all, five from California and the rest French champagne, sampling them in two "flights"—one costing ten to twenty dollars, and the other around twenty to thirty. The results were fascinating.

In the lower-priced flight, five French wines—Pol Roger Brut, Perrier-Jouet Grand Bmt, Billecart-Salmon Bmt, Charbaut Bmt, and Moet & Chandon Extra Dry, all nonvintage—placed first through fifth. Two California wines—Domaine Chandon Bmt and Schramsberg 1982 Blanc de Blanc—tied for sixth place, ahead of two other Califomias and an authentic champagne.

The competition among the more expensive wines was extremely tough. Against very heavy competition, the Piper Heidsieck Cuvee des Ambassadeurs came in first, followed by a tie for second place between the Pol Roger 1975 Cuvee de Blanc de Chardonnay and the Schramsberg 1976 Reserve. Placing fourth to tenth were Moet & Chandon 1980 Bmt, Pol Roger 1976 Bmt, Perrier-Jouet 1978 Bmt, BillecartSalmon Brut Rose, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Bmt, Billecart-Salmon 1979 Bmt, and Bollinger Special Cuvee Bmt. In my personal ranking, I found both Billecart-Salmons to be better than the other tasters ranked them, which was the only substantial divergence from the group findings. Overall, we came to the conclusion that not only can inauthentic champagnes approach authentic ones in quality, but there is at least one American sparkling wine—Schramsberg— that can, in older vintages, best some of them.

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the purchase of the nineteenthcentury Jacob Schram vineyard by Jack and Jamie Davies, and the establishment of Schramsberg Vineyards Company. It was among the first "new" wineries in the Napa Valley; in 1965, there were fewer than twenty operating there. The Davieses' first release, in 1967, was an instant success. President Nixon took a Schramsberg sparkling wine to Peking and toasted Chinese leaders in the Great Hall. Every president since has served Schramsberg in the White House, and by now it has been widely recognized as the finest sparkling wine produced in the United States.

The Davieses' only problem stems from their great success: demand exceeds supply. They have not yet been able to hold back their wines long enough to give them the aging they feel necessary to show them at their peak. The tasting reported here would seem to confirm their judgment; both 1982s, aged from eighteen to twenty-four months, seemed at a decided disadvantage against the French, which must be aged for at least three years if they are to be called vintage "champagne." The Reserve, however, which had been aged for four years, was easily triumphant, confirming my belief that American wines are increasingly competitive with the best the world has to offer. □