Champagne’s little secret

YOU can’t go wrong with the big names in Champagne. The likes of Veuve Clicquot or Pierrier-Jouet are what they are: expensive and consistent. But, if like lots of wine drinkers in California, you’re not afraid of a little adventure and enjoy trying to identify a terrific wine that nobody in the neighborhood has ever heard of, then there’s something you ought to know.

Right there in France’s Champagne region but worlds away from the big producers are scores of family vintners whose Champagnes have individual personality, representing their own villages rather than the region as a whole. While Champagnes from famous large houses are typically blended from a range of vineyards, these are made from grapes from a single region, and sometimes, even a single vineyard.

What’s more, the wines tend to be better values. A good grower-produced Brut costs $25 to $40 a bottle, around $25 less than comparable wine from its better-known cousins. And while a tete de cuvee from a large house can be $100 more than its next most expensive wine, a grower’s top bottling will generally cost only $10 or $15 more.

The modest size of most growers’ holdings, and the requirement that 95% of their fruit come from their own vineyards or vines they farm under lease, means that a typical grower’s production is rarely more than 100,000 bottles a year. By contrast, Perrier-Jouet produces 2.5 million. Moet & Chandon, the largest Champagne company, produces about 25 million bottles annually.

Many of the front-rank grower-producers are in the charmed pendant of Chardonnay-growing villages known as the Cote des Blancs. One of the foremost is Pierre Gimonnet & Fils.

The Gimonnet family has been growing grapes in Champagne since 1750. They farm about 65 acres of vines in the villages of Cuisse, Cramant and Chouilly. The current winemaker, Didier Gimonnet, produces a minuscule 85,000 bottles a year. Among them is the intensely limestone-inflected Fleuron, a prestige cuvee that competes with more expensive bottlings in quality.

And then there’s the Larmandier-Bernier family. It illustrates the complexities of family ties and land ownership in Champagne: Pierre Larmandier is Didier Gimonnet’s cousin; the adjacent blocks of 80-year-old Chardonnay vines they each own in Cramant were originally part of the same block owned by Phillipe Larmandier, Pierre’s grandfather. “Every year the vines split,” says Pierre’s wife, Sophie, with a smile. She brought her own 18 ares (a bit less than half an acre) of Chardonnay in Oger to their marriage. Their vines are divided among five villages: Vertus, Cramant, Chouilly, Avize and Oger.

Among the eight Larmande-Vernier cuvees I tasted recently, I was struck by the depth and intensity of the Ne d’une Terre de Vertus (a French pun that loosely means “not a typical Vertus”), a Vertus Chardonnay without added sugar. I also liked the high-toned Chardonnay impressions of the Vielles Vignes de Cramant, Extra Brut.

Henri-Pol Milan represents the fourth generation of his family to grow Chardonnay and make wine in the terroir of Oger, the third village from the top of the Cote des Blancs. Oger is tucked into the lee of a promontory that shoulders much bad weather aside while also creating a marginally warmer, more tranquil environment than that enjoyed by vines to the north and south.

The Milan family has about 15 acres of vines in numerous parcels throughout Oger. Surrounding their house and winery are about three acres of 40-year-old vines with the historical name Terre de Noel. Wine from Terre de Noel is bottled separately in certain years, but Henri-Pol Milan told me that they aren’t necessarily the biggest and most powerful vintages. “The purpose of a separate bottling is to show something special in the terroir,” he said. “So it wouldn’t make sense to have two vintages that are similar.” The current vintage, ‘95, is a beauty, so charming I described the first sip as “gently coercive.” It’s lush without being soft -- there’s steel behind all that charm.

Pierre Peters owns some 100 separate parcels totaling about 45 acres; most of his vines are in the Cote des Blanc, and most of those are in the village of Mesnil. His wines come from the same grapes as Milan’s, grown much the same way, in virtually the same soils, but they give practically the opposite impression: The Pierre Peters Cuvee de Reserve Blanc de Blancs strikes, then gentles, as if looking back at some glorious memory.

A grape’s throw from the Cote des Blancs, in Chigny-les-Roses, J. Lassalle occupies a typical grower-producer complex incorporating a family residence, a press-house and winery building and a cellar, all around and beneath a walled courtyard. All of the family’s 23 1/2 acres of vines are under four miles of the winery on Premier Cru slopes of the Montagne de Reims. The house was founded by Jules Lassalle and his wife in 1942; their daughter, Chantal Decelle-Lassalle, has run the business since 1982.

The J. Lassalle wines are remarkable: fresh, elegant and high-toned in style, with hidden depths and complexities in exquisite harmony. The J. Lassalle Imperial Preference Brut is typically one of the finest Champagnes of any vintage, in flavor and style the very essence of France -- and a great value at around $40, or $70 for a festive magnum.

A surprisingly short distance away from Champagne’s Chardonnay belt are sun-traps where Pinot Noir flourishes. The region’s wine has been valued for a long time, as one is reminded by such sights as the seal of Francoise I (1515-47) carved into the wall of a cellar now owned by the house of Gosset beneath the streets of Ay.

That legacy survives most potently in the sensual Ay-grown wines of Gosset-Brabant. The house produces about 40,000 bottles per year of five Pinot Noir-based cuvees, and its Brut is a fine example of Ay, sumptuous yet precisely etched and luscious through a long finish. The ’92 Cuvee Gabriel is a gracious odalisque on the palate, with a treat in the finish: a radiance of cherry-candy Pinot Noir that lingers like a kiss.

The former shore of a Jurassic-era lake provides Champagne’s most dramatic Pinot Noir-based cuvees. The first words I wrote after tasting the Egly-Ouriet Blanc de Noirs were, “savor of chalk.” It certainly wasn’t the mineral intensity I’ve come to expect in Chardonnay from Mesnil or Avize but more like a fine, dry undertone to the Pinot Noir fruit.

Paul Bara is another outstanding producer in the Pinot Noir belt. He has about 27 acres, all in Bouzy except for half a hectare in Ambonnay. His father, Auguste, was one of the first growers to begin making Champagne during the crisis of 1929, but his grandfather had been making and selling Bouzy Rouge (a non-sparkling Pinot Noir) for years before that. Young Paul took over from Auguste in 1952.

The Paul Bara Brut Reserve is expressive. It’s mostly Pinot Noir but also has a significant portion of sumptuous Bouzy Chardonnay. “In my view the Chardonnay isn’t there to make good wine by itself,” he says. “The Pinot Noir brings structure, ripeness and flesh. On the contrary, the Chardonnay is there to bring finesse, youth, an edge.”

In Champagne, it’s all a matter of viewpoint. The big houses take in the entire region, while the growers reveal its many personalities.