Tiny Bubblies

Flying down the stretch toward the New Year’s Eve of a lifetime, it’s good to know that we live in a golden age of Champagne. Never has our choice of top-drawer bubbly been so extensive, especially among the small grower-producer labels that began to appear in this country about a year ago.

We’re talking about real Champagne, of course--sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France. There are plenty of good sparkling wines in the world (especially in Spain and Northern California), but only one Champagne.

This is no accident. All the world’s great wines are distinct expressions of climate, soil and grape variety. Champagne’s climate, near the northern limit for wine grapes, is extremely cool, and the vines grow in deep deposits of Cretaceous Period chalk. That combination gives the grapes (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) a particular high-toned intensity of flavor. Their brilliance is transformed into delicious elegance during a long and complicated winemaking process that infuses each bottle with tiny bubbles.

There’s as much diversity within the ranks of Champagne as there is among the wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux or Napa Valley. Until quite recently, Americans have been spared the chore of choosing among a wide array because only the largest Champagne houses exported wines here in any quantity. As a result, we’ve missed out on some of the region’s most distinctive wines.

Now we have the best of both worlds. During the last year a new wave of Champagnes has swept into wine shops. Familiar names like Moet & Chandon, Veuve-Cliquot, Laurent-Perrier and Ruinart have rather suddenly been joined by new names, including Rene Geoffroy, Pierre Peters, Jean Milan and Larmandier-Bernier.

The newcomers are mostly small family-owned firms that grow their own grapes and make their own wines. They present a new face of Champagne--the face of a twin, though not an identical one.

There are more than 3,000 grower-producers in Champagne, but they make only about 20% of the region’s wine. Most growers are not winemakers; they sell their grapes to the dozen or so large houses, called negociants, which produce 80% of the wine but control only about 20% of the vineyards. (Many growers also sell to cooperative wineries, some of which produce excellent wines, such as Nicolas Feuillatte Brut.)

To put things in perspective, Moet & Chandon, the largest Champagne house, produces aboutt 25 million bottles of bubbly per year; grower-producer Rene Geoffroy produces about 100,000.

Negociants buy grapes from hundreds of growers. Individual vineyard distinctions are necessarily lost in their large tanks. The wines they produce are masterpieces of style that reflect the regional terroir through intricate blends.

By contrast, the grower-producer closely controls all aspects of viticulture and is able to vinify vineyard lots separately in order to confer a personal signature (often including fermentation in oak barrels) on the cuvee.

Because grower-producers generally have most or all of their vineyards in one cru, their wines are generally expressions of single villages and, often, single vineyards. Because the geographical focus is narrower, they tend to express a greater immediacy of terroir.

Is smaller necessarily better? The short answer is no. The nature of Champagne is such that individual wines are more alike than different. But there are enough differences to make comparative tasting a fascinating exercise. The issue, as always with wine, is personal taste.

Rene Geoffroy “Cuvee Selectionnee” is typical of the new (to us) grower Champagnes. The Geoffroy family has grown Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes in and around the village of Cumieres for generations. These days Rene Geoffroy spends most of his time in the vineyards while his son, Jean-Baptiste, makes the family’s wine the old-fashioned way, pressing the grapes with a venerable Coquard basket press and fermenting much of the juice in large oak vessels.

The Geoffroy “Cuvee Selectionnee” is luscious and mouth-watering, yet perfectly balanced and focused on the palate. Like all good Champagnes, it seems to disappear before you actually swallow it, leaving a vibrant rumor of cherries and strawberries.

It couldn’t be more different from the crisp Chardonnay essence of Pierre Peters “Blanc de Blancs de Mesnil.” Proprietor Francois Peters (whose brother, Jacques, is the winemaker at Veuve-Cliquot) also makes his wines in the traditional way, allowing for a clear expression of the family’s vineyards on east-facing slopes of the Co^te des Blancs. Here is pure Chardonnay character with laser-beam intensity, from the initial high-toned whiff of white flowers (characteristic of vineyards around Mesnil) through the lingering savor of clean white chalk.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Champagnes from the villages of Cumieres and Mesnil should be so obviously distinct, given the differences in localized climate and grape varieties. But what about the difference between a Pierre Peters “Blanc de Blancs” and one from the village next door?

Jean Milan “Terre de Noel” is a Chardonnay cuvee from a single vineyard in the heart of Oger, the warmest of the Co^te des Blancs villages. Fourth-generation proprietor Henri-Pol Milan’s winemaking is very similar to Peters’ and the grapes and soil are essentially the same, yet it would be hard to find two more individual Champagnes.

The contrast is not so much in flavor as in architecture. Where the Peters strikes the palate like a light saber before opening to a clear glow on the back palate, the “Terre de Noel” enters the mouth in a swirl of chiffon and lace--and then shows a steely edge of chalk-etched Chardonnay.

This is the kind of interest these grower Champagnes have to offer. Which is better? Let’s see: Given the choice between, say, the ethereal sleekness and depth of Moet & Chandon’s “Cuvee Dom Perignon” and the ravishing intensity of Jean Milan “Terre de Noel,” I would probably . . . not complain.

Smith is writer-at-large for Wine & Spirits magazine.