Six Atmospheres #3
Champagne - new releases from Krug and a look at the intruiging 2015 vintage
In this edition:
Krug - New Releases
In Depth: The 2015 Vintage In Champagne; Green Lights and Question Marks
1. Krug - New Releases
Krug are the arch-architects of multi-vintage winemaking in Champagne, crafting ‘editions’ that show a strong familial resemblance without pretending to taste the same. This summer will see the release of two new cuvées, both with 2014 as their youngest vintage.
The 2014 vintage
Cellar master Julie Cavil characterises 2014 as a year where all the critical stages of grape development were accompanied by helpful weather during the earlier part of the season: rain at the right time, dry weather during flowering, useful heat without drought. Alternating patterns that didn’t pose any serious difficulties in the vineyards.
The kick in the tail came in the form of the fly Drosophilia Suzukii, or spotted-wing drosophila, which attacked red grapes during September in the run-up to harvest. If you’ve seen these beasts in action then you’ll know it’s not a pretty sight - they split the skins, inviting in acetobacter and vinegary aromas just as ripening approaches. Cavil describes it as a ‘lightening attack’, and it left them without Pinot Noir in Clos d’Ambonnay (and without 2014 red wine for a rosé edition, either).
The solution? To sort, sort and sort. And, to raid the cellars for reserve wines. Cavil relays that the 2014s showed excellent, ripe, balance, but lacked structure - and that’s where 2013 came in. The final blend for 170 relies heavily on 2013 reserves for freshness and structure, with other reserves going back to 1998 for depth. Pinot Meunier had a torrid year, and features in the blend at only 11% (low for Krug). Pinot Noir is at 51%, and Chardonnay at 38%. Reserve wine usage is slightly higher than usual at 45%. The wine spent 7 years on lees.
For the rosé, the red wine addition actually came via reserves in the cellar from 2013.
In Context
Krug will say that all editions of Grande Cuvée are equal. Perhaps some are more equal than others, though. Where does 170 sit among recent releases? We tasted editions 170 (2014 youngest vintage), 169 (2013), 166 (2010), 164 (2008), 163 (2007) and 160 (2004).
170 is impressive, showing a harmony and sense of integration that is a few notches up on the 169th edition. The two sides of the Krug character - the up-front generosity and the age-worthy structure - seem to be working together. There is a measured, evenly-spread tension, and the oak/spice/butter notes melt into charred preserved citrus, sourdough and an iodine/marine freshness. It is more open and generous than 169, but also promises a greater degree of integration with age. There is a little more clarity and elegance, too, with a smooth, cool apricot fruit finish. I wonder if some of the buttery richness that often emerges with time on cork may prove more subtle in this edition, too.
The other editions? 169 has never quite sat at the very top for me. It’s serious champagne, no doubt, although the vintage character seems to render some of the earlier-developing side of the style more fully, with some briny, slightly dried-out elements. Full of intrigue, thought. 166 is expressive, an early-bloomer with plenty of orange fruits and patisserie, cut with some citrus peel grip and a dash of pithiness. Both 164, based on the great 2008, and the 163, based on the slightly quirkier 2007, were showing a lining of butterscotch/coffee macaroon, the 164 expanding into plush, ripe fruit intensity and beeswax, the 163 more playful with some sparkier citrus fruit, nougat and yellow tropicals. 160 is deliciously-mature now, tilting into a more savoury, involved style with those darker flavours of waxed wood and marmalade pulling at candied pineapple and brown butter.
All of these, save perhaps for the 166, are contenders for long-term cellarage.
Rosés
The star of the Rosé tasting (and maybe the tasting as a whole) was the 20th Edition, based on 2007. What a superb wine it is, detail and complexity still intact in a delightfully-maturing bouquet of cocoa and orange, dried strawberries, salty pastry and savoury spice. Resolved, yet still with plenty of freshness. Certainly an invitation to age this cuvée.
In contrast to the blancs, I had a slight preference for the 2013-based 25th Edition over the new 2014-based 26th Edition. 25 showed fragrant anise and woody, browned butter notes together with a gentle oxidative streak and a delightful cherry sweetness. 26, in contrast, shows darker fruit of blackberry and strawberry tart, with a slightly pastilley red element. I would give it some time on cork to really allow the richness to come to the surface.
2. In-Depth: The 2015 Vintage in Champagne - Green Lights and Question Marks
2015 was celebrated as a successful, if warm, vintage in Champagne, with most houses opting to produce vintage wines. As some of these come onto the market, though, some of its peculiarities have become a quiet talking point in the region. What’s going on with 2015?
First, a few headlines.
At the time, this was the driest and warmest vintage ever recorded in the region (using average daytime growing season temperatures and rainfall. The warmth was persistent and even, however, rather than concentrated in extreme heat events such as 2003.
Picking commenced widely in the second week of September
There was very little disease pressure, save for a lingering threat of oidium (powdery mildew)
The drought in the summer months (especially in August), however, was challenging, slowing down the ripening of the crop in terms of flavour (or phenolic ripeness), even as potential alcohol levels increased rapidly.
The period between flowering and harvest was short, especially for Pinot Noir - as short as 85 days (100 is considered ideal, although this is rarely achieved today in Champagne)
Acidities were widely the lowest since 2003, although most of the acidity was tartaric rather than malic, meaning that widely-practised malolactic fermentation would not actually drop the acidities in the finished wine as much as it normally would.
The Puzzle Unpacks Itself
Winter 2020. I am tasting through a series of Blanc de Noirs from smaller producers. A particular flavour keeps popping up, reminding me of cow parsley, meadow vegetation, fields of rapeseed. It is a green-ness, but not the sort of green bell-pepper, fresh-cut-grass sort of green-ness you might find in, say, Sauvignon Blanc. It is more vegetal. And it keeps coming, again and again.
I was confused. This flavour is one I recognise often from Pinot Noir in England; how interesting to find it not only in a warm Champagne vintage, but the sort of vintage we are told to expect more often in the age of climate chaos. There was something interesting going on. Something that would likely have a bearing on wider questions about the future of Champagne.
I did some sleuthing. And, there it was, like a Eureka moment - a sentence by Essi Avellan MW on The Finest Bubble website in which she rows back on some of the positivity surrounding the vintage:
“Initially as vins clairs, I found the wines to come with ample, attractive fruitiness. The vegetal, particularly ash-like aromatics were subdued but have since then become amplified, especially in the vintage bottlings. Drought issues are considered to be the culprit to these widely spread aromatic issues of the year. I have come notably down from my initial assessment.”
Fast-forward to April 2022, and visits with two Chefs des Caves working for houses with rather different mentalities: Laurent Fresnet at Mumm and Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon at Louis Roederer. I ask both about 2015.
Mumm, and its sister house Perrier-Jouët, are known as early pickers in Champagne. They actually requested a derogation to pick four days before the official harvest date in 2021. “People saw us out in the vineyards, and they thought we had the dates wrong!”, Fresnet jokes. Early picking is usually associated with green or vegetal flavours in wine, so what was Fresnet’s take on 2015? Did people pick too early?
“No. If anything, people picked too late. When you pick too late the grapes become very soft, and you can extract flavours from the stems in the press. I don’t find any of this reported ‘vegetality’ in the wines here”.
This surprised me. We don’t taste any 2015s, or 2015 based wines, to put this to the test. The next week I look back at my notes for Mumm’s wines from April 2022 and notice a few mentions of green fruits - greengage, green citrus, just green fruit - not necessarily negative, but just a tint. A tilt, towards that side of the spectrum. Not vegetality, though.
Asked whether the risk of rot played into Mumm’s early picking reputation, Fresnet (pictured below in Mumm’s Moulin de Verzenay) denied it, maintaining that early picking is very much a deliberate, stylistically-driven decision. Lécaillon has a different viewpoint. “People are so afraid of rot”, he explains. “Each time a producer asks for an earlier picking, it is because they are afraid of rot.”
But what about years where rot is not a huge problem? 2015 did have some powdery mildew pressure at the end of the season, but little other than creeping potential alcohol levels and dropping acidities to rush the harvest. So where are the hard lines?
“The only hard line is botrytis! We shouldn’t stop because of alcohol levels. In 2019 I picked my Chardonnay at 12%. In 1959 our Chardonnay were 13% on average - the finished wine ended up at 14%* and it is one of the most amazing vintages ever!"“
But what about acidity? Traditionally, dropping acid levels are one of the reasons Champagne producers pick early in hot vintages. This, though, is also a concept that needs a closer look due to the role of malic acid and the malolactic fermentation (MLF) that converts it into lactic acid, further dropping the acidity of the finished wine.
Acidities in 2015 were on the low side, but the majority of the acids left at harvest were tartaric, not malic. If acidities had been low, yet still containing a reasonable proportion of malic acid, then producers that practice MLF would have ended up with unacceptably-low acidities in their wines. There are reports of some producers illegally acidifying their musts in the equally low-acid 2018 vintage, after all.
If you usually do malolactic fermentation as part of your style, though, you need some malic acid to start with. I wonder whether this is a factor in some producers picking early in hot years? The Mumm portfolio does, to my palate, make a bit of a feature of some of the flavours of malolactic fermentation. During a sensory exercise, Fresnet even brought out some more diacetyl - the lactic, buttery-smelling compound that MLF can produce - for us to smell. It was immediately identifiable as soon as it entered the room on a few pieces of perfume test strip (and I was keen on it being removed before we actually tasted any wine!).
Some of this buttery character, heading to butter toffee/butterscotch with age, is probably a part of the style that fans of the house identify with. But MLF also helps reduce some of the sensation of greenness in wines. Do champagnes that have undergone MLF avoid the sensation of vegetality in 2015?
Reduce, perhaps, but avoid - not based on tastings so far. In fact, because those that don’t widely practise MLF are often those that tend to pick latest and ripest anyway, there may be a correlation the other way around. This appears to be the case with Roederer, who avoid MLF in the majority of their wines.
Picking Dates - The Phenol Countdown
Lécaillon believes it all comes down to a marker for ripeness; phenolics, a collection of compounds that include tannis, pigments and bitter-tasting elements that evolve as grapes ripen. “My vision is to reconcile phenolic ripeness and sugar ripeness. We got the green, veggie style of 2015 in 2011 too - both vintages with very quick ripening at the end, leaving the phenolics completely lost behind. 2015 and 2011 were picked too early. It is not about the phenolics themselves, but the only correlation I have for the aromatic ripeness is by measuring phenolics and malic acid.”
Here, Lécaillon turns the tables. “Let me ask you this, though - do you think it is a fault?”
The million-dollar question. It’s easy to get drawn down rabbit holes, but it’s only worth getting our paws muddy if the question has a substantial, real-world bearing on how people experience the wines. How the wines will age. Whether they should part with their money or not. Here, I believe it does.
Few would class vegetality as a fault, but context seems to dictate how troublesome it is. It is unappealing in England because it is usually accompanied by other signs of under-ripeness - high acidity, hard fruit. More comparable to the situation in Champagne was a recent encounter with some sparkling Pinot Noirs from Oltrepò Pavese in Italy, where it was accompanied by a slightly raw, inexpressive fruit character that spoke of early picking in a climate probably too hot for fine sparkling wine.
As we taste the Roederer Rosé 2015, Lécaillon points out that this is their wine with the most prominent ‘stalky’ vintage character. It is there, for sure, but quietly nestled into sparkling-bright, ripe fruit, an elegant mousse, a tapered sort of pink grapefruit grip. The dusty, musty side of the character is not here, either. It works.
Lécaillon concludes by offering the other side of the coin. “1985s were exactly like 2015”, he recalls. “It was a year of frost; the wines were low-yielding, ripe…and stemmy! At the time, we covered the bitterness with a lot of sugar. Today, I look at this stemminess as a kind of vegetal freshness.”
More 2015s Emerge
This sort of flavour also doesn’t seem, fortunately, to be an inevitable feature of hot years. Champagnes from 2006 and 2009 both show plenty of ripe, warm characters, but not much vegetal flavour (although 2003 can). As Avellan suggests, perhaps it is really more about the drought than the heat (see this helpful article of the very particular effects that drought can have on grape composition).
So, what of other wines? Pol Roger 2015 has navigated the year really quite well, as has the Philipponnat Blanc de Noirs 2015. Taittinger 2015 is quite forward, the vegetal vintage character a little more prominent. We are past most of the 2015-based NVs, although Palmer Brut Reserve tasted in February was excellent (the Blanc de Blancs based on 2015, however, not quite as strong as it usually is).
There will be many more to come, including, perhaps some Prestige releases. Will they deliver on their promises?