South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Four

Foam collars and Nucleation Collars

I was not alone being tired within the SEVA group as we started the early evening lecture session back at the hotel. Richard Marchal of Reims University presented on foam (the bubbles at the top of the glass, not the effervescence which comes up through it). We learned that the premier taille gives better bubbles than the cuvee, and that botrytis is the enemy of a well bubbling Champagne. And we were also told that filtering a sparkling wine reduces the fizz. The theory came on a little strong for the time-slot given, but things perked up as we watched Champagne being poured into different glasses (heights) and into glasses with 80 micro-dots laser-etched inside the bottom. Taller glasses lead to larger surface bubbles since the bubbles gain in size as they ascend through the liquid (gaining CO2). And those micro-dots sure did make the fizz fizz, though it only lasted 5 minutes or so.

The high-point came as the session ended with a tasting culminating with a 1983, zero dosage wine which had only been hand-disgorged hours before. Wonderful! So rich and complex. I’d have never guessed it was zero-dosage, so soft was the acid (though not flabby). Beautiful. One in the eye for my theories that sparkling wines need cork ageing, but then this wine was nearly 30 years old.

More next week.
Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.

South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Three

Continuing the further exploits of the South East Vineyards Association Trip and one member of SEVA whose trip was part sponsored by the International Farmlink, we learn a bit about champagne corks.

This morning's first visit on the SEVA Champagne trip was to Oller, a manufacturer of Champagne corks in Reims. I say manufacturer, but they actually accept the prefabricated pieces (discs and crumbles) from their factory in Spain (where the cork forests are) and stick them together in Reims. This sounds easy, but actually it is a detailed process with many, many steps and quality measures and checks in place. Two discs form the bottom of the cork and the composite layer above is used since it is cheaper. Quite an interesting trip, and refreshing there was no accompanying glass of Champagne!

For the readers of this blog who are from France or have a smattering of French, I think there is an interesting video of some corks and an idea of investment in Reims on YouTube.

The afternoon's visit saw us at Nicolas Feuillatte (the website has links to English, French, German, Italian and Japanese sites), the huge cooperative. The visit was characterised by the wow-factor. Ohhh, what huge tanks you have. Ahhh, what huge and efficient machines you have. Yiiikes, how many bottles per year was that?

In fact Moet's production is twice as big, though Feuillate is the biggest seller in France, showing just how much Moet is marketed for export.

I'm not sure how much I really got from the trip. It was interesting that they don't use pectolytic enzymes to speed settling ("no time to add them", the man said, or somesuch as we whizzed around with our necks craning up at the huge tanks or down over the balcony to watch robots wrangling pallets full of bottles into shape).

Then there was the tasting. I'll be frank it left me a little cold. Perhaps the wines were a little sweeter than my normal taste. Some others in the group left the shop with Champagne in fancy packaging, but I did not.

More next week.
Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.

South East Vineyards Association Trip Part Two

Continuing the journey of one of the successful applicants of the International Farmlink travel bursary, more information can be found here, we pick up the thread on our intrepid reporter.

Still on the SEVA trip to Champagne...Back at the hotel this evening we were treated to a Champagne tasting hosted by Steve Charters MW who works as an academic in Reims, which is pretty cool given that he is English. As well as being an MW, he is an expert in marketing and consumer behaviour.

The tasting contained some good Champagnes and some interesting ones. We opened with a zero dosage, 100% Pinot Meunier, which was characteristic and quite fruity, and very good but not my favourite. Better, to me, was the Paque et Fils, which was slightly oaked: the oak being very well integrated to give a fine round body but with great complexity of taste and a long finish.

We had a good conversation about the merits of lees ageing versus bottle (cork) ageing. A common view is that it's the lees ageing, which matters for Champagne, with this giving it the rich toasty autolytic flavours and rich integration. Consistently, though, for the past few days we are shown wines with significant periods of cork ageing and it's certainly made me wonder whether a good length of time both pre and post disgorging is important for a fine sparkling wine.

We challenged Steve for his views on English sparkling wine. He put forward some passionate views convincingly, urging English growers to pull together with one voice and to rally round a quality charter. The room was in broad agreement with his comments, only broken when we pushed him as what name English sparkling wine might succeed with. Steve pulled the straightest face he could before announcing that he'd be asking for royalties when we were all using his inspired idea. "Spurgle," he announced. There was universal loud laughter, including Steve himself. The point, of course, is that it's a tricky subject.

More next week.

Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.

South East Vineyards Association Trip

This week, please find a report by a fellow blogger who used a travel bursary with International Farmlink and Eurolink's assistance to find out more about the production of Champagne. The writer was a city worker until he decided to go into wine production. His blog can be found here.

SEVA Champagne Trip report (22nd - 26th of June 2011) 

I’m off to Champagne with the South East Vineyards Association (SEVA)! This is a good opportunity to learn a lot more about Champagne, meet lots of English industry people and have a break. It didn’t start too well with the coach turning up an hour late, but soon we were on our way through the Channel Tunnel on our way to the world’s most famous wine region, to which I had only been once before. 

Champagne Jacquinot - The first visit of the SEVA Champagne trip was to Jacquinot in Epernay. Jean-Manuel is well acquainted with the English wine industry. He first worked with Nyetimber a decade ago, and since then has moved away from that to be the Wineskills mentor for sparkling wine, via which he visits and speaks to lots of English wine makers. He’s a very charismatic bloke, and his wines were tasting very nicely today. I particularly liked his Harmony’96 and Symphonie’00 so I bought some.

What did I learn from the visit? Well the topic of riddling came up and Jean-Manuel made the point that to get a good clarity in the resulting wine he always leaves the riddling crate to sit for a week next to the gyropalate so the lees resettles before starting the riddling. When loading the crate into the gryopalate, extreme care is taken not to move the bottles suddenly.

This morning I visited the CIVC, the industry body which represents Champagne  growers and houses. They are a powerful body who effectively have the power of law in Champagne. The CIVC is funded by a tax on both growers and houses, to the total of about 20 million Euros a year. Amongst other things they legislate to determine production methods and protect the brand worldwide. It was the latter which left the biggest impression on me given the strangely heavy focus the topic received in the presentation I saw. “Champagne” is only for Champagne, right! 

I also learned some basic facts, such as the harvest yield is about 10-12 tonnes/hectare, and land costs about 1 million euros per hectare. I already knew that Great Britain is the biggest importer of Champagne, but not the scale of this “lead”. Annual Champagne exports (in order) are: GB (35 million), USA (17 million), Germany (13 million), Belgium (9 million), Japan (7 million) and so on. Apparently only half the 35 million is actually drunk in Great Britain, with the other half finding its way to be re-exported elsewhere.

Plumecoq Experimental Vineyard - The CIVC run an experimental vineyard called Plumecoq. We were taken round by one of their viticultural researchers, and were impressed at the range and depth of work being undertaken. Perhaps most obviously impressive was the “precision viticuture” which took the form of a small tracked vehicle with GPS, computer and optical sensors. These sensors monitor canopy density and colour, hence indicating vigour and nutrient levels. Plumecoq monitors all vines once a week and has a few years of data already.

It was interesting to hear comments made about vine density. Champagne planting can be around 10,000 vines per hectare, about 3 times a typical recent planting in England. But the researchers at Plumecoq have trialled many different vine spacings and reckon the 2 metre row width makes sense. Going from 1 metre to 2 metres (with associated increases in canopy height) showed only a 20% reduction of yield. I was interested, though, that they said they saw a slight increases acidity in the grapes. But when taking into account the extra labour and machine costs of the higher density spacing, the view shared was that wider spacing probably made sense (especially in an era in which Champagne grape acidities are creeping down for climatic reasons). 

Perhaps the other most notable point I heard was regarding botrytis, and the result that a grass cover-crop reduces the incidence of this fungal disease. I had previously heard the opposite that grass makes the atmosphere humid and hence encourages botrytis. However, the researcher said that empirically the a grass sward reduced incidence of botrytis, and gave 2 reasons: that grass dries out the ground in general, and that the competition with the vines triggers a vine response which makes them less susceptible to botrytis. The second reason in particular sounds curious to me, though others in the group thought it matched with other things they had heard. 

Lastly of interest was an observation that there is more chlorosis in the region than in most years, despite the dry weather. We were told that the conventional wisdom is that chlorosis comes when conditions are wet, which causes increased dissolved calcium (from the chalk-rich soil) to antagonistically effect the vines’ ability to uptake iron. However, the increased chlorosis this year might be caused either by the high yield last year (hence decreased reserves within the vine) or the fact that vines are drawing water from lower down in the ground, an area with a higher concentration of calcium. Interesting stuff.

More next week.

Travel bursaries are available to contribute to the cost of study trips to help your business. If you are interested, please contact the International Farmlink.