The Great Little Champagnes

Buying Champagne used to be so simple. Pick a price range that doesn’t make you wince, find a non-vintage brut from a grande marque in a style you like and bingo! Year after year, you had a reliable choice, without the assiduous study, rote memorization, hand-wringing and general angst necessary to secure great wine from, say, Burgundy.

Of course, you can still buy Champagne that easy way, and most of us do. More than 95% of the Champagne sold in this country is made by one of the big Champagne houses, such as Moet & Chandon, Perrier-Jouet, Mumm, Laurent-Perrier or Veuve Clicquot, all members of the Syndicat des Grandes Marques, the organization of about 25 “great brands” of Champagne.

With a Champagne from one of the big firms, you get wine that usually has been masterfully blended to a house style from an array of vineyard sources. The level of excellence is almost invariably high. It’s very, very difficult to go far wrong with French Champagne.

But if you slavishly stick to the well-known brands, you’ll miss some of the more intriguing bubblies on the market. There’s an exciting crop of estate-bottled, grower-produced Champagnes available this season, wines made by grape growers that reflect the characteristics of their specific vineyard sites.

Keep in mind that it is only when dealing with the wines from these smaller growers that you get a sense of the geography of the Champagne region. Wine from the big Champagne houses is almost never identified with a more specific site than “Champagne,” with the exception of the famed Le Mesnil vineyard in the Co^te des Blancs. Grande marque Champagne is all about brands, an anomalous approach in France, where the country’s vineyards are elaborately classified according to place-names by the appellation controlee laws. But unlike the grandes marques, Champagne from small growers is much more site-specific, being estate-bottled from vineyards in delimited areas.

You can see the difference in a bottling such as the Brut Blanc de Blancs from Guy Larmandier, a producer who owns slightly less than 20 acres of vineyards. The label is emblazoned in large letters with the name of the village where the Larmandier vineyards are situated. This is sparkling wine from Cramant and, oh, yes, it’s Champagne.

It is with the smaller growers, too, that the unique vineyard rating system of Champagne comes to the fore. In Champagne, the echelle des crus ranks all the area’s vineyards on a 100-point scale. Vineyard areas rated 100% are grands crus, while those rated 90% to 99% are premiers crus. Grower Champagnes often include the vineyard rank (grand or premier cru) on the label, while Champagnes from the big firms, which are blended from a variety of vineyard sources, seldom do.

In fairness, I should also note that most grande marque Champagnes own or have long-term contracts with top-rated vineyards, a factor that contributes to quality and consistency.

Estate-bottled, grower-produced Champagnes are the bailiwick of the smaller, quality-oriented fine wine importers such as Robert Kacher, Kermit Lynch, North Berkeley Imports, Neal Rosenthal and Terry Theise. The last, who until this year specialized exclusively in German and Austrian imports, introduced his first group of estate-bottled Champagnes, 10 in all, this fall.

“I felt it was important to offer that many growers,” Theise explains, “because I believe that the distinctions between Champagne from Dizy, Bouzy and Vertus are equally compelling as those between Volnay, Corton and Gevrey-Chambertin.”

Jean-Louis Carbonnier, director of the Champagne Wines Information Bureau in New York, says that Theise’s introduction of so many grower Champagnes is significant because it shows a confidence that there is room in the market for this type of Champagne.

“These Champagnes are like top Rho^ne or Burgundy producers,” Carbonnier says. “They are not well-known by the general public, but wine lovers in Europe seek them out because they get such high ratings in European publications.”

In fact, while grower-produced Champagnes account for less than 1% of Champagne volume in the U. S., they account for nearly 40% of Champagne volume in France, reports the Syndicat General des Vignerons de la Champagne, the trade association representing Champagne growers.

To determine whether the bottle in your hand was made by a vast international luxury-goods conglomerate or a mom-and-pop operation, you have to read the fine print on the label. Every Champagne label carries a code composed of initials, such as NM, RM, CM, SR, RC or MA, preceding a code number. The initials are abbreviations for the type of operation that made the wine. Most Champagne on the U.S. market carries the initials NM, for Negociant-Manipulant, a winemaking operation that is permitted to buy grapes for its Champagne blends.

Grower-produced Champagnes carry the initials RM, for Recoltant-Manipulant, a firm that makes wine from its own grapes (recoltant-manipulants are permitted to buy only 5% of their grapes from other sources). Rarely, you might see the initials SR (Societe de Recoltant), a term that signifies a group of growers in the same family who share their resources.

Incidentally, for all the wine geeks out there, CM stands for Cooperative Manipulante, or a cooperative winemaking facility (Nicolas Feuillatte is a well-known cooperative brand). RC stands for Recoltant-Cooperateur, a grower who doesn’t have a winemaking facility but, instead, has a cooperative do the winemaking and whose Champagne may be blended with other grapes from the cooperative. MA, or Marque d’Acheteur, signifies a private label brand.

Retailer mailers and in-store shelf talkers will rhapsodize about this or that Champagne grower and the lovely situation of his or her vineyards, the distinctive terroir, the painstaking care taken in the winery, yada-yada-yada. The description may sound as though it is a grower-produced Champagne but, to be certain, check for the RM on the label.

Why buy Champagne that no one’s ever heard of? If you are less concerned about dazzling your date with a well-known label and more interested in how the wine actually tastes, many estate-bottled Champagnes give great bang for the buck. I’ve been going out of my way to sample grower Champagnes this fall, and I’ve been impressed. Here, in alphabetical order, are a few standouts. (The dollar figures are approximate retail prices and will vary around town.)

* Non-vintage E. Barnaut “Grande Reserve Brut” (Grand Cru, Bouzy) $20--A fruity, toasty, straightforward bottle of sparkling wine with lemony flavors, a lively mousse and a creamy finish. What a deal for the price.

* 1989 Gaston Chiquet “Carte d’Or Brut” (Dizy) $36--Ultra-rich in style, this is a crisp mouthful of wine with delicious Champagne flavors of hazelnuts and toast.

* 1989 Egly-Ouriet “Brut” (Grand Cru, Ambonnay) $42--The golden color of maturity is immediately evident in this full-bodied bubbly. Lush aromas of biscotti and yeast set off the wine’s round, creamy flavors.

* NV Geoffroy “Cuvee Selectionee Brut” (Cumieres) $31--A full-bodied, very fruity style of Champagne with attractive flavors of plum and apple; sappy and lively on the palate with a crisp finish.

* NV P. Lancelot-Royer “Cuvee des Chevaliers Blanc de Blancs” (Grand Cru, Cramant) $33--Notable in a recent tasting of two dozen French Champagnes, this well-balanced wine has a delicious aroma of ripe melons and toast with lively, rich flavors and a crisp finish.

* NV Guy Larmandier “Brut Blanc de Blancs” (Grand Cru, Cramant) $37--The Larmandier family has been farming grapes in Champagne since 1899, although they have bottled under their own label for just 20 years. The Cramant has rich, toasty Chardonnay aromas that are balanced by a lean raciness on the palate. The flavor notes are apples and honey, with a creamy, long finish.

* NV Larmandier-Bernier “Brut Blanc de Blancs” (Premier Cru, Vertus) $27--Lovely as an aperitif, this 100% Chardonnay sparkler has a biscuity aroma and bright, distinctive flavors of green apples on the palate.

* NV J. Lassalle “Brut Imperial Preference” (Premier Cru, Chigny-les-Roses) $30--The Jules Lassalle Champagne house, owned by a mother-daughter team, produces a big, yeasty, toasty Champagne with perhaps a bit more dosage (sweetness) than most, balanced by a brisk finish. A bruiser of a Champagne, but quite delicious.

* NV A. Margaine “Rose” (Villers-Marmery) $29--This charming lightweight rose has a seductive fragrance of rose petals and strawberries and a delicate fruitiness on the palate. Who knew a wine that’s 87% Chardonnay (the rest is Pinot Noir) could taste like this?

Incidentally, Michael Edwards’ 1994 book, “The Champagne Companion” (Running Press, $24.95), is a good source of information on large and small Champagne producers and would make a nice stocking-stuffer for any sparkling wine fan.