Wine Review: Three Champagne Houses

So this is going to be a slightly different wine review than normal. Rather than focusing on one wine and the food pairing, we’re going to be talking about several. While in Reims, I had the opportunity to taste several type of champagne, some quite good and others not so much. I went on three champagne tours: Mumm, Charles Cazanove and Castellane. Between the three of them, I have some good news and some bad news. Firstly, the best of these champagnes is easily available in the United States. However, it’s also the most expensive.

Mumm
Here, I had the chance to taste two: Mumm Cordon Rouge, their traditional brut and a Mumm Millisimé 2004, a vintage made from only the 2004 harvest.
Mumm Cordon Rouge
ABV: 12.5%
Composition: 45% Pinot Noir, 25% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay

There is something different about Mumm champagne and which I think is what makes it the best that I tasted. Mumm champagne is actually fermented three times rather than twice. The first is obviously the fermentation that turns the grape juice into wine and the last is the prise de mousse , in which the wine becomes champagne. However, in between these two stages, the wine undergoes a mallo-lactic fermentation. For those of you who have not taken Latin, lacto- means milk. It’s a fermentation that makes the champagne less acidic and creamier.

The Cordon Rouge was excellent—tart enough, creamy enough, with a lively amount of bubbles. For someone whose main complaint against champagne is that it was too dry, the mallo-lactic fermentation is excellent. But, of course and unfortunately , the millisimé is even better. It has been aged longer, making even more of the dryness disappear. Finally, the millisimé contains only Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, giving it a higher quality and more of the “refinement” that the Chardonnay brings.

Finally, there’s one last reason that I pefer to buy Mumm—it also seems to be one of the few champagne houses that still owns its own vineyards, sourcing 80% of its grapes from their own estate’s vines.

Charles Cazanove
At Cazanove, I tried three types of champagne: a traditional brut, a rosé, and a demi-sec. The brut was champagne—more acidic than Mumm. It’s made of 10% Chardonnay, 60% Pinot Noir, 30% Pinot Meunier, so it really should have tasted fruitier than it was, but all I got was champagne taste.

The rosé, however, struck me as bizarre. It’s made by mixing a still red wine with regular champagne. To me, it tasted like weak red wine. With bubbles. It was weird. I think I’ll have to give it another try another time maybe.

Finally, the demi-sec was incredibly sweet. I really couldn’t manage to drink it. Unlike some sweet wines, you really didn’t taste anything but sugar.

Castellane
I tried three champagnes here, but unfortunately there a little fuzzy. They were very generous servings and I hadn’t eaten a lot that day. I tried their traditional brut, their millesimé (2004) and their special cuvee (2002). The Castellane brut is composed of 33% Pinot Noir, 33% Pinot Meunier and 33% Chardonnay. Unlike Charles Cazanove, I did taste the predominance of “red wine,” making for a fruitier champagne. It was pretty nice for someone who once again, does not particular care for the dryness of champagne.

Their millesimé was also excellent—a bit more “refined” with a higher amount of Chardonnay, but I have to say that I preferred the Brut, since it had more unique taste.
sparkling

Wine Review: White Loire Valley

(I haven't forgotten about you, Internet peoples! I'm sorry!)

So, after lingering in Bordeaux for a very long time, we're finally moving on to another region-- the Loire Valley. Home of castles, cathedrals and the French accent reputed to be "the most perfect" in the country, Loire also offers up some spectacular wine. At the moment, the first one we're trying is a white Sancerre.

The Wine


Pierre Chanau Blanc 2009

Origin: Loire Valley

AOC: Sancerre

ABV: 12.5%

Varietals: 100% Sauvignon Blanc

Serve: at cool room temperature, with shellfish or fish

The Food

Chicken Piccata, although I made a decent number of changes to this recipe. Firstly, French chicken breats are thin enough there cooked after five minutes on each side, so I just set them to one side, covered with aluminum foil, while I made the sauce. I might do that even with thicker chicken breasts; I'm afraid leaving the breasts in with the sauce will make them lose the slight crunch that the flour coating has.

Secondly, I added capers and garlic to the sauce. I love garlic and chicken piccata just isn't chicken piccata without capers. I left out the mushrooms this time, though I could have easily put them (or artichoke hearts) in.

The Verdict
The Sancerre was excellent, though I admit this may partially come from the fact that I adore Sauvignon Blanc in general. However, the Sancerre didn't have the creaminess you get from a New World Sauvignon Blanc such as Cupcake Winery's. Instead, there was a surprisingly mineral refreshment, accompanied by some citrus-- lemon, green apple and grapefruit as well as some floral notes.

However, it wasn't quite as spectaculer as the Sancerre I drank at L'Assiette, but that might be for two reasons. Sancerre is not a popular white in the Southwest, so there isn't a great selection. There was literally only one Sancerre in the entire section (which takes up two complete aisles in Auchan). Also, Sancerre's expensive, so any award-winning wine was beyond my self-imposed budget of ten euros a bottle.

Ultimately, the mineral quality of the Sancerre worked well with the piccata. It gave the wine the structure to stand up to the acidity of the dish and to cut through the creaminess. A excellent wine, but with a small price concern. Not going to stop me from buying another bottle though!

Champagne: How Champagne is made and the best champagne tours in Reims and Epernay

Musée de la Reddition and the Cathedral aside, this is really why people come to Reims. Champagne. Reims and Epernay, a small city about a twenty minute train ride away, are the capitals of bubbly.

Most people know how wine is made—the fermentation of grapes so that the sugar turns into alcohol. But how is Champagne made? It’s a wine, yes, but how does it end up carbonated? The short answer is with a lot of work.

Here’s the long version.

According to AOC regulations, only three grapes can be used to make champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. Of these three grapes, the two Pinots are red-skinned grapes with white juice, whereas Chardonnay is a white-skinned grape with white juice.

Most champagne houses either own land or hold contracts in multiple appellations (different areas with different soil, amount of rain and sun exposure, resulting in a slightly different harvest with thus a slightly different flavor to the wine produced.) When the harvest comes, these grapes are picked and pressed as quickly as possible, so that the red-tinted skin from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier doesn’t have a change to “stain” the juice.

The juice is then shipped to the champagne house where it undergoes the first fermentation and turns into wine. At this point, the wine is still separated by appellation and by varietal (type of grape.) At this point, the cellarmaster tastes the various wines. Based on the quality of the produced wine, he’ll decide to make a millesimé (a vintage) or regular champagne.

He’ll choose various wines and blend them together to produce the champagne of that year that closely approximates the house style. (For example, Mumm champagne is said to be refined and creamy whereas Charles Cazanove is said to be fruitier.) If he is making a regular wine, this could also include wines from prior harvests—called reserve wine. For a millesimé, the cellarmaster has decided that this year’s harvest was exceptional enough that he will only use this year’s harvest. Thus, vintage champagne will carry the year of the harvest on the bottle.

The wine will be bottled along with a little extra sugar and yeast. It is then left to age in the cave for at least fifteen months for non-vintage champagne and at least three years for vintage champagne. Some champagne houses, especially the big ones, will age much longer than this. During this time, the wine undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle. Since the bottle is capped, there is no way for the carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct of the reaction to escape. Thus, it dissolves into the wine instead. The “bubbles” in champagne are the carbon dioxide coming out of solution upon the release of pressure and exposure to air.

This, however, leaves the wine maker with a problem. There is dead yeast in his bottle of wine--- and that’s pretty gross. Seriously, would you drink a bottle of champagne with that stuck to the side?

So, the champagne is then “riddled.” Originally done by hand and now done by machine, riddling means that a bottle of champagne is slowly turned from side to side and moved from a horizontal position to a vertical. This loosens the yeast from the side of the bottle and then it slides down into the neck. Before machinery, there was a person who then turned the bottle back upright and opened it, allowing the pressure to force the dead yeast out. However, this took a very long time and resulted in the loss of some champagne. Today, the very tip of the bottle is dipped in a chilling solution, causing the yeast (and a little bit of champagne) to freeze. When the bottle is opened, only the ice cube pops out. No mess!

Finally, before we put the cork in and send our champagne off to be sold, there is one final step. A small amount of still wine and sugar is added, called the liquor of dosage. This determines what type of champagne it is: extra brut (no sugar added), brut (6-10 grams added, replicating the amount of sugar in the grapes), sec (sweeter) and demi-sec (sweetest).

You will learn all of this if you go on one of the many champagne house tours. Mumm, Tattinger, Moet et Chandon, Veuve Cliquot, Dom Perignon, Pommery, etc--- they all have houses in either Reims or Epernay. Some require calling in advance and do much smaller groups (Mumm, Veuve, Ruinart) while others you can probably call the day of and still get in (Castellane, Charles Cazanove.) Essentially, the best way to guess? If you’ve heard of the champagne, you should call in advance.

However, this is not to say that the best tours are necessarily the ones where you call in advance. Or that the best tours are done by the houses that produce the best champagne. I went on three champagne tours: Mumm, Charles Cazanove and Castellane.

My recommendation overall is Castellane. Although it’s located in Epernay instead of Reims, I think it’s definitely worth the trip. (For those of you who don’t want to go to Epernay, Mumm gives a very complete, elegant and interesting tour.) At Castellane, actually see the factory where the champagne is paid, including the riddling machine, the labeling machine and the freezing vats. The guides (or at least mine) are also fantastic—they seem to know everything and don’t mind answering questions.

Their museum is also excellent, showing you the machines they used in prior centuries as well as a whole range of old bottle and advertisement designs. Plus, you can climb up the Castellane tower.

While it is an awful lot of stairs to get up that high, you get a wonderful view.

The tour is 8.50 and you get one glass of champagne at the end, with the possibility of buying other tastings. Additionally, it’s not one of the most well-known houses, so you can really just show up and there will be tour openings. Though, one thing to pay attention to: Castellane is not on the Avenue de Champagne like all the other houses. It’s on a little road just off to one side, but if you take the Avenue de Champagne and keep walking, you’ll eventually see the tower.

La grande gastronomie

I think I may have fallen back in love with French food.

When I came to Toulouse the first time, I threw myself into la grande gastronomie francaise. I devoured foie gras, pate and all sorts of patisserie. I learned how to make coq au vin, pot au feu, daube, cassoulet, blanquette de veau, French onion soup (yes, it is actually French), crepes and mousse au chocolat. But after a while, I started to get a little bored. It was all the same—butter-heavy and rich. Five of the dishes I just mentioned boil down to x protein plus y vegetable cooked in a Z liquid, with a sauce made from the remaining liquid at the end. It was getting old, to the point that Christina and I debated whether French or Italian food was better.

(This happened in a restaurant in Venice. I conceded that Italians may have beaten the French when I came to main dishes, but added, perhaps too loudly, “but not dessert. No one beats the French at dessert. Besides, what does Italy have for dessert, besides like tiramisu and gelato?” A free slice of rum cake magically appeared on our table. Guess our waiter spoke English.)

But this place has proven once again, when it comes to food, no one, beats the French. L’Assiette, buried in the 14^th arrondisement, far from any tourist spot, only came to my attention because my train back to Toulouse after taking the GRE Literature test left from the nearby Gare de Montparnasse. I wanted to reward myself (and kill some time before my train) with a long lunch at a good restaurant. L’Assiette fit the bill exactly. It had a small dining room that probably couldn’t hold more than twenty-five people maximum, a painted tile mural on the ceiling as well as a large hunk of cheese and an entire cured pork leg sitting on an old wood and ceramic buffet.

In fact, when you take your seat (old wooden tables, starched linen napkins, silver tableware) the first thing the waiter does is slice off some of that cured ham onto a plate and bring it to you with a basket of bread and some butter. Even the butter is marvelous. Thick, creamy and deliciously salty, it was well, the butteriest butter I have had in a long time. You know how butter-flavored popcorn has that artificial yellow butter taste? Well, this is what the manufacturers are trying to imitate—and it’s sublime. The bread was everything I expected of French bread- crunchy exterior, soft interior and slightly tart, though I was surpised to see that L’Assiette serves at least partially whole-wheat bread instead of white. The ham was also excellent—moist and flavorful. I think maybe it had been cured with thyme or maybe rosemary.

I ordered their lunch menu at 23 euros, which gave a choice of a first course (cream of cauliflower soup or “Blue Crystal” shrimp tartare) and a main course (quenelles de Sandre au sauce nautua or poitrine de cochon fermier), plus an expresso to end your meal. Fair warning—ordering off the menu will be significantly more expensive. I ordered the shrimp tartare and the quenelles as well as a glass of Sancerre (a Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire Valley). Obviously, L’Assiette doesn’t make the wine, but they did choose to put this on the menu. This may be because I have never tried a Loire Valley wine (to my knowledge), but this Sancerre was a hell of a white wine. It had a strong and distinct bouquet of grapefruit as well as a “damp” minerality and maybe some apricot. It was a light-bodied and well-balanced wine with a clean, almost mineral finish that lasted for over a minute. It was entirely unlike the Sauvignon Blancs I have had—(Bordeaux and New Zealand)—lacking the creamy mouthfeel and significantly drier. I would have guessed that it was a Pinot Gris, maybe, or another varietal rather that a Sauvignon Blanc. The minerality was also quite intriguing, since there was an earthiness to it that was almost herbal.

Now finally, onto the food.

The shrimp tartare was a blend of chopped raw shrimp, shallots and a type of seed that I couldn’t identify (I think it might be flax), moistened with some oil and lemon juice. There was a little bit of chives and lettuce on top and drizzled on the sides of the plate was a brown sauce, sweet and tart at the same time. I think there was a little bit of soy sauce in it. It was simply sublime. The shrimp was plump and juicy and the other ingredients (shallots, lemon juice, seeds) provided the perfect accent without distracting from the shrimp. The sauce was also delicious—sweet and tart but for the life of me I cannot identify what was in it. Balsamic vinegar? Soy sauce? It definitely struck me as a Franco-Asian fusion.

The quenelles are going to take significantly longer to explain. Firstly, they look a little bit like this.

A quenelle is a white fish (usually pike) that has been forced through a sieve, then mixed with a cream sauce called panade. This makes a slightly sticky blend which you then form into an oblong and poach. The ultimate result is an incredibly light and tender fish “croquette.” I’d like to try and make these, but they take a lot of work, at least according to my waiter at L’Assiette. (More proof of how excellent this restaurant is—the waiter very patiently answered all the questions that my foodie, non-native speaker self could come up with.) The sauce was a red sauce that (at least to me) tasted like it had cream and shrimp it—at the very least, there were little bits of shrimp floating in the sauce. I also thought I tasted a strong cheese—Roquefort or another blue.

Research suggests that sauce nantua does not usually involve cheese, but this chef obviously could have done something different. A traditional sauce nantua is a béchamel (or classic white) sauce that has been flavored with beurre d’ecrevisse—butter that has been melted and simmered with crayfish meat and shells, then rehardened. This also looks incredibly difficult to do, but most department stores apparently sell crayfish butter in the fish aisle, so I can cheat--- at least until I go back to the United States!

Finally, they served the quenelles with mashed potatoes on the sides. Can I mention how much I love mashed potatoes? They were made in a ricer rather than with a potato masher, which produces an incredibly smooth, creamy mashed potato. Then, of course, they are very thoroughly doused with cream and butter. These were the Platonian ideal of mashed potatoes. I felt drunk (simply from food) by the end of the meal.

And of course, a perfectly made espresso, with raw cane sugar and a mini-cannele to go with. How could I have ever doubted that France is the queen of the kitchen?

Wine Review: White Bordeaux

Hey all. So this is my first wine review—of many, I hope. Like all consumers, I have a budget, thus, I will not review any bottle that costs more than ten euros. However, as I am in France, the wines I am drinking may end up being significantly more in the States (or indeed, not available), since there’s a long plane ride and an import tax between the wineries here and the consumers in America. Secondly, the wines I choose are ultimately subject to my palate. I don’t like tannic wines, as much as I make an effort, and I’m partially to elegant, creamy whites. Thirdly, the French don’t really drink wine without food, so I’ll also be talking about the dinner I made to go with the bottle and how well that worked.

So, with those precautions, let’s meet:

The Wine:

Benjamin de Vieux Chateau Gaubert Blanc 2009

Origin: Bordeaux, Left Bank

AOC: Graves

ABV: 12.5%

Awards: Bronze Medal, Concours de Bordeaux 2010

Varietals: 60% Semillon (“which brings roundness and body to the mouth”), 40% Sauvignon Blanc (“for the richness in bouquet”)

Aging: 80% in stainless steel, low temperature, 20% in new barriques

Serve: at 50 degrees Fahrenheit, with fish in sauce, shellfish, white meats, or cheese

The Food:

Broiled Lemon Thyme Pollock

I followed the recipe almost to the letter, but I left out the anchovy paste. I don’t like anchovies, in general. Additionally, I didn’t have any anchovy paste and didn’t feel like buying any specifically for this recipe. Additionally, it’s worth noting that the mayonnaise I used was flavored with Dijon mustard, which added another flavor to the fish.

Diced potatoes, sautéed in butter and garnished with chives.

Green salad with a mustard vinaigrette.

The Verdict:

The Benjamin Gaubert starts with lemon and grapefruit on the nose, then opens up to some floral scents and a little bit of green apple. The bouquet is fairly indicative of the flavors, but the Gaubert also boasts a nice, creamy mouthfeel and a little bit of butter on the mid-palate, maybe because of the barrique aging. I didn’t notice quite as much green apple as I expected from a Sauvignon Blanc, but then again, this is majority Semillon, a varietal with which I don’t have a whole lot of experience. Fairly creamy throughout, but with a fairly long and fairly tart finish, which gives it a nice balance.

It paired very nice with the fish, since it was tart enough to punch through the mayonnaise crust but without overwhelming the taste of the fish. However, it did not work as well with the salad. The mustard vinaigrette was a bit too, well, mustardy to go well with this wine, but I think a simple oil and vinegar dressing would have worked perfectly.