Champagne for Hard Times: Toasting the Product and the People Who Have Sustained It

Class transcript:

All right, welcome one and all. Cheers to you on this beautiful Sunday, a very hopeful Sunday. And we have the most hopeful and celebratory of all wines to drink, to toast with, to learn all about together on this gorgeous day. Thank you for resisting the urge to celebrate outside or at the very least, hopefully, you know, you have a laptop or monitor set up on a patio by a fire pit, what have you. But I'm thrilled to have you all with us. I was worried having set the mandate for today's lesson that I jinxed the whole thing or that the results would trickle in at an even slower pace than they did. But at the very least, we all have something to toast to this Sunday. And that is worth celebrating.

And I'm excited to give you all a better sense of exactly what's in your toasting glass. About that glass, you know, if you have champagne flutes, that's okay. But if you have regular wine glasses for your champagne, please use those. It is just a better glass. You know, if you have champagne flutes, that's okay. But if you have regular wine glasses for your champagne, please use those. It is just a better glass. For champagne. The flute, aesthetically pleasing, you get to see, you know, the bubbles arise ethereally, you know, up, you know, kind of like that longer arc. But the flute itself really adds nothing for the sake of the enjoyment of the wine. And, you know, you can make a strong argument that it detracts from the enjoyment of the wine because you have this kind of narrow little opening.

And ultimately, what that does with something like champagne is it delivers all the CO2. And, you know, it's not just the wine. It's the entire atmosphere. You know, it's the entire atmosphere. You know, it's the entire atmosphere. You know, it's the entire atmosphere. None of the other, you know, kind of more charming scents to your olfactory bulb. So you just get this like, you know, blinding, fierce kind of burst of, you know, that fizz and nothing else. So, you know, if you're trying out the fluids more prior to you, but if you have the option, make like, you know, your friends at a Gatsby garden party, use a coupe or better yet, just use a good wine glass.

You know, your greatest champagne makers, your greatest appreciators of champagne, will insist on a proper glass for their wine, and we'll talk more about that as we go forward. On the subject of temperature, obviously you want your champagne cold, you know, I know this is a matter of personal preference, but I will say, you know, leave it out a little bit. The more the champagne comes up in temp, the sturdier your champagne is, the more expressive it will be. Become as it raises a few degrees so maybe go closer to 50 degrees in temperature as opposed to that, you know, freezer-like, uh, you know, 40-degree mark that most people, uh, aim for or, you know, better yet, if you're happy with where your wine's at, you know, let it out a little longer and play around, uh, with, you know, a little more exposure and see how it evolves um over time.

I think you'll be presently surprised. At any rate, I am, uh, equally thrilled that this Sunday to have, uh, none other than our very own, uh, Joan, operations guru extraordinaire, joining us, uh, to administer the chat and, uh, just keep everyone in line, uh, she does that, uh, at the office, um, through both restaurants, and she's gonna do that, uh, for the chat forum and, uh, the hangouts today. Thank you, John; I didn't you're the best! Uh, don't worry, Zoe will be coming back; she uh, is, I don't know where the house Zoe's somewhere in West Virginia, I don't know if that Zoe knows where she is in West Virginia, but um, she uh, has earned a break, um, for the sake of wine.

We sold, uh, some mini bottles um and we're gonna move through those first, uh, if you have a couple glasses available. As always, I encourage you to taste those wines side by side. Uh, we sold through the bulk of our minis, so I'm going to talk you through the tasting on those. I've tasted both those wines but i won't be able to enjoy them uh with you myself because I had to give up those bottles um for the sake of the masses because uh your appetite for champagne uh became insatiable um over the last couple days. I was very excited about it, but uh we're going to start with uh dosage trial uh with uh Sirine uh tasted alongside the Margon uh Margain demi sec and then uh move into the Gatineau versus the Guillaume Ranger um tasting those side by Side and if you do have a couple glasses so they can move from one to the next, I think tasting that way um is hugely illuminating.

Um otherwise, I think it's less important today of all days um you know what you're drinking uh than the mere fact that you are drinking, that you are celebrating um that you continue to sustain sustain this amazing uh virtual community and that we are all uh celebrating uh together. So uh cheers to everyone uh without further ado uh honored to have you all with us um uh to uh celebrate uh wine perfectly suited uh for this moment, that is champagne. Uh want to give big ups major props to Todd Daver uh one. of our uh regular listeners who ran the gamut on the champagnes for the sake of this lesson uh todd i hope you're not uh popping the cork on all of those today uh but i am absolutely uh honored that you chose to uh provision in such style uh with us and i hope you enjoy them all um napoleon uh is said to have marked in victory you deserve champagne uh in defeat you need it uh i am grateful um uh that uh we are celebrating uh in victory uh as opposed to defeat uh today uh we have a lot to celebrate um you know first and foremost a peaceful uh election prod uh kind of process no violence um at the polls uh to speak in the midst of this you know Very tumultuous, uh, national moment, uh, I am very hopeful, uh, for a Biden presidency and I wanted to, uh, kick things off with a bit of verse that Joe himself, uh, quoted in his, uh, Democratic um, National Committee nomination, uh, speech. This is from, uh, an I wish a contemporary Irish bard, uh, named Seamus Heaney this is from, um, a translation of a Greek tragedy, uh, Seamus calls it the Cure at Troy, History says don't hope on this side of the grave but then once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme, so hope for a great sea change on the far side of revenge believe that a farther shore is reachable. From here, believe in miracles and cures and healing wells. Call it self-healing, the utter self-revealing double take of feeling. If there's fire on the mountain and lightning and storm and a god speaks from the sky, that means someone is hearing the outcry and the birth cry of new life at its term. It means once in a lifetime that justice can rise up and hope and roost, and hope and history rhyme.

Um, I know I usually wait till uh the uh end of a lesson uh to offer up a proper toast, but I wanted to kick things off with uh a toast to that um uh to uh hope and history uh rhyming uh cheers to you all uh cheers to uh the election result. The hope of a new presidency now you may wonder why it is that I have a red wine in the glass here. Um, as opposed to the usual sparkling uh, that is because um, Champagne has been uh, a hugely celebrated and famous wine-making region for uh, well over a thousand years. But for much of its history uh, it owed its fame to wines that were still and looked more like this than what is likely currently uh, in your glass.

That's kind of fascinating to me. So um, Champagne Paine, the region exists at the crossroads of Europe, kind of sandwiched between east-west and north-south trade routes. So working your way through France, and you can get a better sense of this, you know, looking at a larger map, but working your way through France, you have trade, traditional trade routes, and a portion of them run from north to south, which is to say from the Mediterranean up to Flanders, from Switzerland up to Flanders, and then a portion of them run east to west, and that is from essentially Paris through to the Rhineland in Germany, and Champagne exists at the cross-section of those two regions. The name derives from the Latin Campania, so you might know that Champagne and the Italian region Campania share that in common.

They are very close to national capitals. Champagne has a gift and a curse being at the crossroads of these trade routes, the crossroads of history, you know, its unique geographic position has been a boon, but it has equally, you know, been problematic, and over the course of a thousand years, you know, it has been, you know, the center of, you know, various battles over the continent, particularly over France. It was kind of the northern extremities of the Roman Empire. It takes, the country takes its name from Frankish tribes, Germanic tribes who settled there in the latter days of the waning of the Roman Empire, but you have, you know, Mongol hordes such as Attila the Hun, you know, who wasn't repulsed until the fifth century.

You have, you know, French civil wars erupting, you know, every few hundred years. You have the hundred years' war between English and French, which goes on for, you know, if you guessed it, actually well over a hundred years, and then into the modern era, World War I and World War II were fought on the chalky soils of Champagne. Nonetheless, these successive conflicts merely interrupted the growth of the wine trade. You know, they continued to cultivate the vine and develop wine in spite of these frequent and, you know, painful interruptions. It should be said that the kind of wine trade didn't really blossom there until the seventh, eighth century. It grew up with the church, but as it did grow up, the most famous kind of early French kings from the 14th to the 16th century, they were drinking Champagne and celebrating its merits.

French kings have been historically thrown at rims, and that dates back to Clovis, the most famous early Frankish king who promised to convert to Christianity if he won a battle over rival Germanic tribes. And he, of course, you know, seized the day and triumphed on the battlefield. And, you know, if you make that kind of triumph, you know, you have to follow through on the whole baptismal thing. So he did. He was baptized at Reims, and since that time, at the tail end of the fifth century, every major French king from the fifth century on has claimed Reims as the site of their ascension to the throne. And the proximity of Reims to these historic vineyards in Champagne has created a natural association between the wines of Champagne and celebration.

And, you know, that is something that we are marking ourselves through to the modern era. Now, I mentioned briefly that I'm drinking a red wine. And, you know, that is because, you know, until, really, I'm talking like the 17th, 18th century, Champagne was a still wine. The wines of the region made their way down the Seine. Paris was the most important domestic market. And the wines were largely pale in color, luminous. One of my favorite growers, actually the gentleman who makes this particular wine, he says that we grow grapes on the same soils as the vine growers of Chablis. And you can see this particular producer, Dumont, is in the Aube, in the Côte d'Ivoire, at the southern end, the bottom edge of that map. And his region is closer to Chablis.

And its soils are very chalky. All of the Champagne region exists in the heart of the Paris basin. But different types of chalk and the Chimeridgian soils here are most famously the source of Chablis' steely Chardonnays. But in this corner of the Champagne region, you see light ethereal Pinot Noir. And Bernard Dumont, one of three brothers who works the vines here, his family has worked this land for over two centuries; he says that we produce white wine from white grapes in Chablis. But in his region, we produce white wine from red grapes. I love that notion. And, you know, if any of you are drinking this by happenstance at home, you know, I'd love to hear what you think of it. It is very much a wine that drinks like a white in spite of its red color.

It has more of this kind of bright, you know, kind of like tart fruit of a dark rosé as opposed to a fuller-bodied red, as I think, you know, we typically think of a red wine. But it's hugely enjoyable, nonetheless. You know, that freshness, that vibrance is something that historically people that love Champagne would celebrate for the sake of what ended up in the glass. Now, I'm going to share a bit of a timeline. It's not the most, you know, kind of compelling timeline or graphic in the world, but it has a lot to say about the history of the region. So if Champagne didn't really exist until, you know, the 17th and 18th century, you know, how did it come to pass that, you know, what we are drinking today is the most famous fizz in the world?

Well, it came to pass not through the ages of a monk, you know, working in isolation at an abbey and seeing stars, as it were, but through the ages of English traders. So this is a series of Champagne first and big up to the folks compiling this rather boring looking, but hugely informative timeline. And the earliest recorded mention of Champagne is not in French, but in English in 1662. And Samuel Pepys, it should be said, who wrote the most famous English diary documenting his work as an English bureaucrat around the time of the Restoration, he documents his love of Champagne. It's a fizzy wine, but well before the French were enjoying it as fizz. It just so happens that English merchants were bringing in chilled wines like this and even lighter red wines, like I have in my glass, and they were adding them to their own bottles.

Now, at this time, English glass was vastly stronger than French glass, and that is because the English in their gas furnaces, in their kind of glass furnaces, it should be said, had embraced coal, which fires at a much higher temperature and can produce much stronger glass. And so, you know, it's a very, very interesting story. And so, you know, the French were still, you know, firing their furnaces with wood. And because of that, the English could add this French juice back to their stronger English glass bottles. They could add raisins, add molasses, add sugar, add honey to prime for a second fermentation in the bottle and create something that was fizzy. And it was a bit of a fad, you know, at the time.

So it was considered less a serious age-worthy wine, as it was, you know, a fun, you know, kind of a sporting class fad of sorts. So, you know, this was something that, you know, kind of wealthy English and then Frenchmen did for diversion more than anything else. And it should be said that the most serious wine merchants of the time actually looked down on fizzy champagne. They thought that fizzy champagne was actually debasing the reputation. And so, you know, the French were still, you know, trying to get the best of their preferred wine. And I love this image. This is the first, it's called the oyster lunch, but this is the first image of champagne as a sparkling wine that, you know, exists on record. And it's at Versailles or some, you know, haughty French palace.

But, you know, this looks like a fun, you know, kind of party. If you're one of the dudes, I don't know if it would be, you know, fun for anyone other than a wealthy, you know, French gentleman of leisure. But, you know, if you fall in that demographic, it looks like the place to be on that particular afternoon. It should be said that these wines were much sweeter than the wines that we enjoy today, and production was much less regularized. So if the English invented champagne, the French, it should be said, perfected champagne. And they did that over time throughout the 19th century, through a series of innovations that ultimately allowed them to regularize what had been, you know, a very difficult, you know, set of production practices.

So, you know, you read this early literature about champagne, and people talk about losing, you know, half of their product to breakage of, you know, the inferior French bottles that they were using. You know, they talk about, you know, bottles that were variously too fizzy or not fizzy enough and had to be added back to the vat. So it was hugely unreliable. It took, you know, a lot of time and effort to get it right, so it was hugely unreliable. It took, you know, kind of mass mechanization and the growth of what the French called the grande marque, the great houses of the 19th century, to create a product that we know today as champagne. And I'm going to share one more boring, you know, kind of timeline for you, chronicling the many innovations that make champagne what it is today.

But, you know, you can see beginning in the 18th century, you have the greatest houses of champagne. Veuve Clicquot, first of all. First among them, which was presided over by the widow Clicquot, who deserves much more credit than the monk who typically gets it for making champagne; what we know today, along with her German cellar master, Antoine Muller. Now you must notice that many of the greatest names in champagne are actually German, not French. And that's because a lot of the proudest aristocratic families in champagne, the French ones who owned the land and the larger estates, didn't want to be associated with the wine trade. So they hired, you know, kind of industrious Germans to do it for them. The Germans were so industrious that they took over the estates.

And, you know, names like Krug, Heidsick, Bollinger; they went off on their own. And, you know, so the French, you know, essentially invited the Germans into the market, and the Germans ran with it as they are wanted to do. But the widow Clicquot and Antoine Muller invented a process called ramage. And the ramage process allowed them to do it. And they did it in a way that was very, very, very, very, very, very simple. It allowed them to add sugar to the bottle and prime a secondary fermentation to create fizz in the wine. So it allowed them essentially to mechanize what formerly, you know, had been a somewhat kind of arbitrary and uncertain process for the sake of creating champagne.

And it allowed them to create something that was vastly more consistent than it formerly had been, and create something at a scale that would satisfy foreign markets. And first, you know, the English, but then the Russians and then the Americans came to adore this product that was champagne. And you can see here, you know, the riddling wrecks. And these are the wrecks in the underground cellars drugged out into the famously chalky soils of Champagne. And you can see here that the fuzziness of the champagne bottles on end are bringing a little bit of sediment that is left over after the secondary fermentation process that happens in the champagne bottles, and leaves a bit of spent yeast in the mix.

And in order to clarify the wine, what the Widow Clicquot and her German cellar master realized is that they had to rack their wines, leave them on end, stem each slowly over time. And as they were doing so, and as I'm saying, my Pellegrino, you know, they could work the sediment into the end of the bottle and then ultimately freeze the neck of the bottles. And, you know, there wasn't necessarily one person that was, you know, making these innovations. It was a series of innovations that really occurred over time that, you know, kind of standardized what was a much more kind of, you know, individualized, you know, kind of set of, you know, practices. From cellar to cellar.

But, you know, the houses, the great houses, the individual producers talked, communicated over time, they realized that they had this dead yeast, and if they plunge it into a frozen saltwater bath, you get the frozen sediment in the neck of the bottle. If you plucked the crown cap, they would have used cork on the 19th century, but today we use a crown cap, then it expelled the leftover sediment and you were left with something that was crystal clear in the glass. Now, at that point, you have a little headspace in the wine. And at that point, very often you have a wine that is searingly acidic, because in Champagne, we are at the far northern limit of, you know, kind of wine production. So we're, you know, situated throughout the region between the 49th and the 50th parallel.

People commonly say that, you know, wine production, grape growing thrives between the 30th and the 50th parallel. Here we're at the northern extremists. You know, we're practically at Paris. It should be said that, you know, the wine production is, you know, the wine production is, you know, the kind of border between the US and Canada sits between the 49th and 50th parallels as well. So you're pretty far north here, you know, and the only reason that the climate isn't more marginal than it is, is because the influence of the jet stream, but they lean into this marginality. And you're getting grapes that are racy, you know, at harvest and wines that are really bright and acid-driven, but that makes for a great busy product.

The problem being that after you disgorged, after you 86'd your segment, you know, you are left something which very often needs a bit of correction. And that comes in the form of what is called dosage. And that brings us to our first kind of bottle off here. Joan, did we get any comments about the red wine from folks drinking at home? You know, for better or worse, you know, I think, you know, for people who think they know Pinot, this is definitely not, you know, your Russian River Valley Pinot. This is, you know, Pinot. So clearly a wine that is going to thrive, you know, as something busy and maybe not something that, you know, you would want to, you know, drink on its own, you know, in the same way that you would a typical red.

I didn't get a ton of comments on it, but I do have some questions if that's okay at this time. Heidi specifically wanted to know what you and her were drinking yesterday. I think Jessica answered it. It was the, but if you, if you wouldn't mind sharing what you were drinking with Heidi yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. So we were drinking Heidi's V-Mart. That's a V-I-L-M-A-R-T, Grand Cellier. And that particular offering is from a region of Champagne called the Montant des Rimes. And we are going to talk over, you know, the various differences between the qualified growths here. But, you know, just skipping ahead a little bit for the sake of that bottle, because it is pretty fucking delicious. That comes from a primary career village, which is a village which is called Ries-la-Montagne.

V-Mart is one of the greatest wine makers working today, a small grower-producer, which is to say that he owns all the vineyards that he is working with. And he's famous in his village within the region for aging his wines in oak. A lot of the more quote unquote classic producers actually work entirely in stainless steel because they want a wine of purity that takes, that tastes solely of, you know, the famously chocolatey wine. Sochie soils of the region. V-Mart wants breadth, he wants weight, he wants, you know, kind of exotic spice out of his wines. But they work because they maintain this tension between, you know, opulence but also this, you know, really kind of linearity, this bright salinity that Champagne should always have, the sense of focus as well.

And it's that, you know, breadth combined, you know, with that, you know, focus that, you know, makes those wines great. And, you know, that, you know, Champagne really embodies that. at its best. And, you know, these are wines that, you know, they are electrifying, you know, they are buoyant. It's the kind of wine that, you know, you can, you know, just drink and easily appreciate, you know, you don't have to understand champagne as a wine to enjoy it. You can just understand it as something, you know, fun and diverting. You know, I hope that, you know, through the course of this lesson, you know, you will come to understand it better as a wine as well, because lurking underneath the effervescence, you know, there is something that speaks uniquely to this place that is at the crossroads of European history that has endured, you know, centuries upon centuries of warfare, but, you know, nonetheless persisted in making, you know, these transcendentally delicious wines.

What else do you have, Jen? I've got an immediate question on what you just said. Can you explain what grower champagne is? Yes. So that's a great question. So we're going to start off with a couple grower champagnes for the sake of our dosage trial. I use air quotes. So, we have two, two wines side by side here. I have the Margaine Demisec. Demisec is essentially half dry. You at home, if you ordered the Grand Cru Battle Royale, also have, or ordered the dosage trial, it should be said, have a Grand Cru from Guy Lamagneur. Guy is a grower in the Côte de Blanc. This comes from a grower in the Monton de Rennes. I will talk over those distinctions, but these are both lines that both come from grower producers.

Now, grower-producer is a distinction from the kind of large recolant manipulant. So there are a lot of really fun, you know, kind of acronyms for the sake of champagne, which makes it a little bit like Washington, D.C. There are, you know, just two letters strong though. So it's not quite as insufferable, but the bulk of producers in the Champagne region, you know, come from the Champagne region. So they purchase fruit, the great houses. So, you know, about 60% of the wines that come out of champagne come from these larger houses that purchase grapes from a huge number of smaller growers that control about 90% of the vineyard acreage. Now, starting in the 30s, a lot of these growers, you know, started to realize they could make more money.

They essentially got forced into it because the houses started to pay less and less. So, you know, a lot of these wines that come out of Champagne come from these larger houses. So, you know, a lot of these growers started to realize they could make less for their products. And there was a glut of grapes. But increasingly, these smaller growers have started to realize that they can control the means of their own production and create more value themselves by making their own wines, as opposed to selling their fruit to these larger houses. So, grower producer refers to someone that is both growing their own grapes and making their own wines, whereas the predominant modality in Champagne historically were larger houses buying fruit from a bunch of different vineyards that they didn't own.

So that is the, you know, the distinction here. And we have two grower producers that we're celebrating. Margaine, one of my favorite. They date back several generations, strong Margaine. This is a demi-sec. And it should be said that that's all about that dosage. Dosage is a sweetening liquid. It can be either concentrated grape must, or it can be kind of essentially wine that has a bit of cane sugar added to it. And you add a little bit of that after, after disgorgement. And this sounds like, you know, kind of the worst type of, you know, kind of artificial intervention, you know, when it comes to winemaking. But it should be said that it's hugely significant, hugely important for the sake of giving balance to the wines.

So, you know, adding this dosage gives balance in a way that is impossible if you don't add sugar. And, you know, you can think of sugar and acid as opposing forces. If you add more acid, the sugar becomes less apparent. If you add more sugar, the acid is muted. So, if those two are in balance, then everything else kind of has a way to shine. And I want to taste these two wines. And, you know, I'd love to hear from those of you at home. You know, this sits, and we can measure these things empirically, and producers do. So, this sit's the Margaine at 30 grams per liter residual sugar. Our, you know, kind of palates biologically are configured to perceive sugar.

Sugar, you know, above the threshold of, you know, 8 to 10 grams per liter in a wine as acidic as champagne. The other wine that we have against this, the Guy Lamandier, sitting at, you know, 6 to 7 grams per liter of residual sugar. Now, I ask you for those at home, you know, which of these wines, you know, not only do you prefer, but, you know, how do you differentiate them? For me, what I love about the Margaine is, you know, there's a subtle perception of sweetness, but the quality of fruit is very different in it. So, I think, you know, it doesn't taste cloyingly sweet, but it does taste much riper in terms of the taste.

So, I think, you know, the quality of fruit, and, you know, that's kind of a welcome change for it, and then it will necessarily go with different types of dishes than a bone-dry champagne will, and it's become hugely fascinating in the wine, kind of fashionable, it should be said, in the wine world to double down on dryness, to say, you know, like we say with beers, you know, you thought your IPA was hoppy, try my IPA. It's even like, you know, 10 times as hoppier. In champagne, they've gone kind of a similar route, and, you know, people have said, you know, this wine is artificial, you know, we should be making, you know, our greatest wine should be non-dosé, they should have no dosage out at all.

The problem being, you know, those wines can be severe, you know, they can be, you know, kind of harsh on the palate, they can be, you know, kind of aggressive, you know, lemonhead-like in their own way, and adding a bit of sugar, you know, will illuminate other aspects of the wine, will allow the fruit to shine, and, you know, there should be a sense of balance that, you know, transcends the dosage. I don't think you should have a sense of the sweetness in the wine, it should just, you know, have elegance and balance. So, you know, the greatest sweet wines, you know, be it in champagne or otherwise, are the ones, ultimately, I find that don't taste sweet. Joan, does anyone have comments about these two wines side by side?

Yes, there were some comments. I think someone had mentioned that it smells like freesia. I think it smells like what? Is that right? Let me double check. I think so. Not a ton of comments, but I still have more questions, if that's okay. Can you clarify what Blanc de Noir is? Absolutely. You know, I put the cart before the horse on a lot of the, you know, champagne vocabulary for the sake of, you know, that history lesson that, you know, hopefully, you know, some of you tuned in for. There may or may not be a test later, but Blanc de Blanc, Blanc de Noir. It gets to the question, you know, what are we dealing with for the sake of our source material here in champagne? So, we have two wines here.

You can imagine, you know, there's an imaginary tap bottle here, that is the Guimauve La Manger. These are both Chardonnay-based wines. Chardonnay in champagne gives, you know, bright, chalky persistence, elegance to the mix. Historically, you know, or kind of in the modern era, there is a Champagne Troika. Now, historically, I talked about how Pinot Noir was the dominant grape in the region, but now, it is very much a kind of a three, you know, kind of a legged stool of sorts. And the Troika is Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. Now, there are four other grapes allowable in the mix that no one talks about. Pinot Gris, which is also called Fromontou, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Messlier, and Arbène. There are some growers that are trying to revive these lesser-known grape varietals, but the big three are the most important.

And when people talk about Blanc de Blanc, they're talking about a white wine made from white grapes. The Mardin, technically not a Blanc de Blanc, it's actually closer to 88-12 Chardonnay Pinot Noir, so technically it's not Blanc de Blanc, but it's Blanc de Blanc-ish. The Guimauve La Manger, which is sitting to its right, is actually Blanc de Blanc, 100% Chardonnay all the time. And these different grapes thrive in different locations within Champagne, and that's something we'll talk about for the sake of the second flight, and I'll have imaginary bottles once more. But Chardonnay thrives in the Côte de Blancs. You know, it's not the biggest mental leap there, but Chardonnay loves east-facing sites in Champagne, and it loves the hardest, chalkiest, kind of thinnest soils throughout the region.

Now Pinot Noir, it gives Champagnes their structure, their body, their broad-shouldered kind of fuller-fruitedness, and it tends to thrive on these south-facing sites with slightly heavier clay soils. Historic villages like Ailly, which we'll get to shortly, the base of the Mont-en-de-Rheims, and then the north-facing sites on the northern end of the Mont-en-de-Rheims is a place where Pinot Noir will thrive. And then Pinot Meunier is kind of the least well-known of the bunch, but it is an early, ripener, is later to bud and flower, earlier to ripen than Pinot Noir. So it does very well in the Val-de-Marne, which has kind of even heavier clay soils. And in the Val-de-Marne, it should be said that, you know, you also, being in a valley, get, you know, a greater danger of frost as well.

And the fact that it buds a little later and ripens a little earlier, you know, helps mitigate some of that danger. So you can see the Val-de-Marne here. This is the Marne River snaking its way toward Paris. And yes, this is the very famous Marne River, the site of trench warfare throughout World War I. You know, I think you hear those names and, you know, it becomes very abstract, but, you know, the French and the Germans were essentially fighting over Champagne during World War I and then later throughout World War II. But this is Pinot Meunier country, largely. And then this kind of horseshoe-shaped region here is the Montagne des Rheims. You can see Rheims itself, ascension site of French kings once upon a time.

But the northern edge of this mountain, the south-facing slopes here are Pinot country. A couple east-facing sites here, that's actually where Margaine is, on one of those east-facing villages, are Chard country, because they have slightly chalkier soils and Chardonnay loves those east-facing vineyards. And then this is the Côte d'Abril. And then this is the Côte d'Abril. The Aube, which is where my red came from earlier, Pinot country, Cameroonian soils, closer to Chablis, which is just off the map to the south, right here. When we're talking Blanc de Noir, we are essentially talking white wine made from red grapes. So, you know, we talked about this previously, but the color in wine comes from the grape skins themselves. And for the sake of, you know, the greatest, you know, kind of white wines from Champagne, they are direct pressed.

And the Blanc de Noirs are direct pressed, which is to say the grape clusters are brought whole from harvested by hand, typically from the vineyard, to the press. And the presses in Champagne, there's a famous Champagne press that is a very shallow basket press. And they use that shallow press so there's not a lot of contact between the juice and the skins as the juice runs off the grapes. And this shallow basket press allows them to work with red grapes like Pinot Noir, like Pinot Meunier, and to make elegant, you know, crystal clear white wines for the sake of their Blanc de Noir. So Blanc de Noir would just be a, essentially a white wine made entirely from red grapes, which are pressed directly off the skins.

And I'm going to share an image with you all as well of a couple gentlemen. Working the Champagne press because, you know, pneumatic presses, bladder presses, which are large and cylindrical and much more soulless appearing, have, you know, taken over winemaking throughout other regions. But the Champagne press, you know, kind of has this psychological romantic hold over the region to this day and is still used to this day. And essentially what happens here, it's a very kind of, you know, kind of broad, shallow press. And you see that element there on the top that, you know, kind of folds down. And then, you know, presses through a screw. And this is essentially Roman technology, you know, through to the modern era. And the juice itself flows between these slats in the press, and out into a fermentation vessel.

Any other questions? Yeah. I've got a bunch actually, Bill. Does anyone make non-bubbly white wine from red grapes? Yeah. We just had one. So we had... This is the Pinot Noir from the Aube. And it goes under an a different label so, um, they can't call it Champagne as such; and it should be said linguistically, I find this fascinating, um, in French, uh, les Champagnes, with the capital C and the masculine refers to the region La Champagne, with a lowercase c and the feminine refers to the wine, but at any rate, um, you can't call um still wines from the region and they're both still whites and reds, but this is a still red; you can't call them Champagne; they go under the name Côteau Champenois uh, to distinguish them from the fizzy wines because uh, the Champenois beginning in the kind of late 19th century they started you know rigorously protecting their brand um and they wanted to make sure that no one was debasing their name debasing their product by calling their wines sparkling wines from outside of Champagne uh, by uh, you know, um, their um name and associating you know these inferior brands with theirs um, they were, you know, hugely, you know, kind of forward thinking uh, about protecting uh, their brand um, I think uh, that way; and you know, you really see the beginning uh, of uh Designations of origin, um, in their efforts to uh protect, um, you know, kind of the reputation of the wines of the region, uh, starting in the late 19th century.

Can you talk a little bit about major labels versus grower champagne? Someone noted that when they visited Champagne, this region seemed to deviate from the other big wine regions in France about terroir, for example, and the other big wine regions in France about terroir, for example, seemed to pride itself on being a blend from something like over a hundred vineyards not grown by them. Yeah, that's a that's a really, you know, astute uh point and it should be said. that you know traditionally champagne has always been a blend this notion of single vineyard wines you know has you know kind of um you know kind of monopolized our you know bandwidth for the sets for the sake of prestige cuvées i think you know we have this burgundian notion that the greatest wines in the world are the ones that are you know are the ones that are you know are the ones that are derived from a single site um well you know not all single sites are capable of carrying a tune any more than you know soloists you know are capable of you know singing acapella you know they're great choirs too you know they sound A little different than you know, your singular soloist, but you know they're equally um, you know, profound and have their own rights and um, you know, the reason they did that historically in Champagne was because you have this recipe that encompasses different grapes that do well on different sites and because you're in a very rich and marginal climate from one year to the next, you know, maybe you have a better Chardonnay harvest, maybe you have a better Pinot harvest um, and you want to correct for that and you know further in they tend to keep preserved wines, so not only is Moët & Co.

or Moëtte um uh because it was a German name. actually originally um not only are they um you know kind of blending different sites but they're typically blending different vintages as well and that's all about consistency in what is historically a marginal climate now climate change has changed that you know to some extent better viticultural practices have changed that and they're still able to ripen their wines more reliably but champagne is still a very acid driven uh wine and you know until we raise another you know two to three degrees celsius it always uh will be um but you know many of the greatest wines in the region um you know are blends and you know much of the great work done in champagne is done in the cellar by blenders and you know uh the the people earning the most money in the cellar are the people who are the most money in the cellar in that moe uh you know um you know hennessy you know kind of uh you know hierarchy they're the people doing the blending they're the people at the end of the day tasting a hundred different tanks who can say astutely you know i want some of that less of that a little more of that and you know that is going to be your prestige cuvee you know those are the people um you know ultimately that you know are pulling down you know the you know crazy Luxury brand money, because you know they are the ones creating, um, you know, uh, the brand and you know ensuring consistency from one year to the next. Now, um, it should be said that you know we're celebrating smaller producers, grower producers.

That's not to say that the bigger houses aren't, um, making great wines. Actually, within the last 10 years in particular they've made huge strides, um, in terms of the quality of a lot of their entry-level wines, in terms of the quality of, you know, they're kind of more luxe uh wines. But you know, um, I get very cynical about them because the great houses, you know, they're not independently Owned anymore, you know they're owned by you know the Hennessy group; they're owned by these larger luxury labels. And you know, for me, you know there's this sense in which you know they do speak to a sense of place in some sense - in as much as you know uh they give you this broader arching kind of snapshot of a region or of a house style.

But in terms of you know the great fluctuations of these smaller sites and these individual vineyards, I feel like they have have less to say. Um, and you know sometimes they are more consistent than you know wines from the smaller houses, but you know for me what I enjoy about wine is the highs. and lows it's not you know necessarily you know the you know uh 75 degree days i like seasons um so does the do the champagnes typically not have years on the labels it varies some do some don't and um i will circle back um to that uh very shortly uh joan i want to talk over the classification system uh in champagne uh briefly but yeah so yeah a heart is black so it's name Scolder and inviting allowed um O in the uh bla sensor they do it, you know, by property.

So a chateau as such is first growth, second growth, etc. In Burgundy, it is predicated around vineyards. In Champagne, it's based on villages. So on this map, I think it's kind of helpful. You can see, you know, your darkest, you know, kind of paisley, uh, purple, uh, rain color here, um, you know, is, uh, those are your Grand Cru's, um, and then your lighter, um, uh, purple, those are your Premier Cru's. And this is classified by, uh, village. And, um, you know, there is a group, um, within Champagne, um, that, you know, determines these valuations, um, essentially from village to village and rates them on an 80 to 100 point scale. Um, the Grand Cru's sit at a hundred point. The other ones sit at, you know, the Premier Cru's sit at 90 to 99.

Um, it's wildly arbitrary. Historically, it was grounded in the price that these wines received. Um, you know, these classifications are, are widely ridiculed now because they're kind of overly broad. Uh, but, uh, broadly speaking in the heart of Champagne, there are 17 Grand Cru villages and 41 Premier Cru villages. Um, uh, the two wines that we have, um, uh, represented here, um, the first one, um, is from, uh, Lebrun, uh, Serenades, Patrick Lebrun, uh, who, who formerly, um, was the president of the Champagne Growers Union. He got kicked out because he got embroiled in all sorts of, um, you know, uh, French political, um, you know, scandal, um, in terms of his negotiations with the larger houses around great prices. But I won't bore you with that.

Um, he is based in several villages here, uh, Abizé, Cremant, and Auger. So, um, he makes a Grand Cru Blanc de Blanc, and, uh, it's all Chardonnay all the time from Grand Cru villages. If you say Grand Cru, it's not to say that you have to have wines from one Grand Cru village. They can be a blend of multiple Grand Cru villages. Uh, and then you have, uh, the Gatinois, uh, which is a personal favorite, which is from the idyllic village of Ailly. Um, we talked over Ailly briefly. Um, Epernay, um, is the kind of historic home of a lot of the most famous houses in Champagne, but Ailly, um, also claims Dutz, it claims Bollinger, and it claims Gatinois. Um, Gatinois, um, lovely, uh, lovely, uh, people, um, make, uh, hugely elegant, uh, wines.

This is Pinot country. Historically, uh, would have been, you know, still Pinot for French kings, but into the modern era is, uh, Blanc de Noir. Um, the wine you're drinking here isn't quite Blanc de Noir. Um, it is about, uh, you know, uh, 80, 20, 90, 10, depending on the vintage. Um, uh, but it is a non-vintage wine because they add a portion of reserve wines to the mix. Um, this is the idyllic village of Ailly, and these are the vines of Buddingett. Um, and, uh, Gatinois, um, is, uh, currently run, uh, by a 12th generation, uh, winemaker, uh, Louis Gatinois. Um, his family has been growing grapes there since the 1600s, and they kind of trace the classic story of these smaller growers.

So they, you know, sold to the larger houses and still do to this day, but increasingly they reserve the grapes for wines made under their own, uh, label. And, um, I think it's really fun to try these two wines side by side because you get a fuller sense, um, from Le Brun-Severnier and the Gatinois of, um, you know, just how a wine from all white grapes and Chardonnay and how a wine from almost all red grapes and Pinot Noir differ one to the next. And, uh, it should be said, well, that, you know, the wines at Le Brun-Severnier, um, they are, um, you know, kind of emblematic of this, like, lovely kind of old-fashioned sensibility. So all stainless steel and, uh, not oxidative in the least.

I love this note from, um, the importer, um, Becky Wasserman. She says, um, uh, Patrick Le Brun's, uh, Champagne's in there. You don't have much of the new wave, um, winemaking, uh, umami. There's saltiness, uh, there's purity, um, on the lunar calendar days, uh, that do not emphasize structure. And she's talking about tasting calendars, mind you, um, uh, based on lunar cycles. Uh, they feel incredibly free of any clutter of winemaking like archers to the rest of Champagne's artillery. I mean, what a great line, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, you know, there's like that through line, um, for the sake of, of these wines. And, and I think, you know, that purity really comes through on his wine.

Now it can be a little severe, you know, and, and, you know, these are wines that, you know, actually they benefit from time in the glass. Um, you know, they benefit from aeration in the glass. You're going to lose a little bit of your bubble, um, but the wine will open up more for it. And then, you know, the Gamay, it gives you more of that breath, more of that flesh. And for me, I love the Gamay gives you, um, maybe even a little bit of this, like ginger spice on the palate. Um, and then, and then, and then, and then, people say, you know, kind of like a tart black cherry, um, you know, something a little earthier for the sake of those wines.

And then, uh, we didn't talk Pinot Meunier at all, but for those of you who are drinking Pinot Meunier dominant wines at home, um, we have, uh, one in particular from José Michel, um, um, and he's just outside of Épernay, uh, kind of in the Vallée de la Marne. Um, but, you know, those wines, um, are kind of more forwardly fruity, um, and herbaceous in a really lovely way, but, you know, they can just be, you know, a little more juicy and approachable and vivacious, um, and kind of flirty, uh, and fun. Uh, whereas, you know, the Chardonnay is a little more angular, um, severe and Pinot a little more, you know, self-serious, um, uh, in, in and of its own race.

Um, but, uh, you know, each in their own way, um, you know, kind of, uh, wonderfully terroir expressive wines and, you know, they're enjoyable, um, you know, as diversions because they're bubbly and fun and refreshing, but, you know, there's wine underneath, you know, all of that, you know, diverting, uh, CO2 as well. Uh, Joan, what other questions? Uh, do folks have here? Yeah. So I am getting some quick, well, some, some notes about people are getting bad cheese, funky skittles, or some of the, some of the responses on the smells and tastes. Um, but Bill, we are drinking a vintage champagne. Any significance? How long can you save bottles before opening? Uh, great question. Um, or it should be excellent question, uh, registered trademark. Um, so, uh, champagne ages beautifully.

Um, and we talked briefly about that process where those champagne bottles are laid on their neck and, you know, you do that, you know, kind of Pellegrino turning, um, but you don't spill as much. And then, uh, you pop the cork and you add, you know, your sugar water or sugar wine or concentrated must from, you know, further South in France. But should be said that, uh, disgorgement process is kind of like the beginning of the life of champagne or that champagne rests on the leaves. And I'm going to answer two questions at once here, because, um, there are different requirements. For vintage champagne. So, uh, you've got your non-vintage champagne and your vintage champagne, non-vintages, uh, blend. It would be better described as multiple vintage champagne.

So there are wines from multiple years in the mix and people do that. They save reserve wines and add them to the product of one, um, you know, kind of year's harvest to ensure consistency, uh, over time. And, uh, non-vintage champagnes are made in select years where that is not necessary. They're made in select years from the chosen parcels. When growers say, 'You know, this, you know, particular, uh, product is so special that, you know, we want to release something that speaks to, you know, this, you know, moment in time. Um, and we're going to do that through the ages of vintage champagne. Now there were requirements for the aging of vintage champagne. So by law, you have to lay a vintage champagne down for at least three years on the lease.

So, you know, I showed you that sediment in the bottle earlier. You have to age the wine, um, during the secondary fermentation process. It's on the lease for at least three years, uh, to declare a vintage on it. So, you know, uh, musty yeastiness you get from champagne is a product of that autolytic process, which is a product of, you know, the breaking down of those dead yeast cells, that little cell of sediment over time, they produce all these chemical constituents that give you that funky moldy Brioche, um, toastiness, uh, that people associate with champagne. And then additionally, once you start that clock, um, and you have disgorged your champagne, you get additional aging processes, and they erode the fruit in your wine.

I think a lot of people tasting the Brune Sèvrenay against the Gatignois will notice also that the Gatignois much more fruity, whereas the Brune Sèvrenay is, is, is brinier, um, and, and, you know, seemingly more savory. And part of that has to do with the difference between Blanc de Noir and Blanc de Blanc. But part of that too has to do with the fact that the Brune Sèvrenay, those half bottles were actually disgorged in 2016. So they've had a little bit of time aging in a half bottle. And just like, you know, larger magnums age more slowly than 750s, smaller bottles age at a faster clip than 750s. So, you know, you have, you know, little half bottles there, you know, that have a little bit of olive age to them as well.

And that gives you kind of a riper, more sherried-like, you know, kind of an effect than you could expect of the wine in its, in its youth. But by law, to slap a vintage on the label, the houses have to rest their wines on the lees, um, said Sir Lee or Sir Lot, um, uh, for a bare minimum of three years. Now, a lot of houses will vastly exceed that requirement for the sake of their vintage-dated wines. But the longer you age a wine, the longer, um, you know, it has to develop those funky cheese-like flavors and the more it will taste just like Lee's and the less of a distinct kind of, um, you know, vineyard imprint, uh, it will have; it will taste more like, um, you know, the process of aging.

Then it will taste like, you know, its original self as it came off the press. If champagne sits on the lees, how is it not rosé if it's using Pinot? Um, it is not rosé because, uh, it has derived; it has picked up none of the pigments from the skin. So that large basket press, um, uh, allows the juice to bleed directly out of the grapes and not pick up any of the anthocyanins from the skin. So it's the pigments from the skins themselves that give you color in wine. Uh, the lees are very different; the lees are dead yeast cells, um, in, uh, the wine, um, left over after the fermentation process. And, um, those dead yeast cells don't really contribute any color, um, to the wine.

They just contribute this added perception of richness and weight, uh, in, in the wine. So once you start as Blanc de Noir, there's no going back. Is it true, um, what people say, the smaller the bubbles, the higher the quality? Yeah. Um, people do say that, Joan. Um, you know, I, I will say that, uh, I, I don't know, that hasn't been my experience. I think the bubbles do get, like, bigger, it should be said, as the, as wines get sweeter, um, because there's more surface tension for the sake of the bubbles. Um, I also find that, you know, um, the bubbles are bigger in wines that have more pressure. Um, and you know, that, you know, you think of, you know, how much pressure is the wine under?

Um, the changes bottle to bottle? You know, typically, it's like six to eight atmospheres for the sake of a bottle of champagne, which is, you know, why that can be dangerous, and we'll get to that a little later, um, when I embarrass myself for the sake of showing you how to, you know, open a champagne bottle in a really fun way, um, but, um, you know, uh, wines that are bottled at lower pressure, you know, closer to four or even, you know, three atmospheres of pressure, which is more like a pétillant naturel, or some of you purchased, um, the, uh, Gimonais eh, Cuvée Gastronome, um, which is from the Blanc de Bonheur, is called ‘Someone's d'amour’, or it’s in the region, reference Puchay.

long but bottled at a lower pressure closer to four atmospheres you know typically you can expect a finer mousse to that so finer bubbles so in my experience it has more to do with uh scientific factors and less to do with kind of the inherent quality of the wine uh got it um can you talk actually a little bit about mousse um yeah so mousse um refers to the um uh you know is the the french word um for the head um on on a wine um and it it you know traditionally actually referred to beer and cream you know so the the linguistically the french word um you know uh just referred to you know that that froth essentially essentially meant froth um more broadly uh the french actually invented a new word um for the the um you know froth on champagne

and it became mousseau um so mousseau um entered the french um language in the 18th century with champagne um and mousse became mousseau because it was like even more mousse um but um you know uh the mousse um just refers to um the the effervescence and and tasters will refer to the mousse as a sensation of the wine on the palate Um, and, and you know that's a biological sensation. Um, and actually there are fascinatingly enough, there are um, uh, some um drugs uh, that people take um, when they um, are combating altitude sickness um, so you hear about um, mountain climbers who are on this drug and it interferes with your um body's ability to you know, whatever the taste receptor is for CO2, um, it doesn't bind the same way, so there are all these mountain climbers who talk about being on this drug and uh, drinking champagne, you know, having summited, and champagne tastes still to them um, because you know, the biological mechanism is is interfered with,  so it's Very much a tactile sense, um, and it's pleasant but, um, you know it will also interfere with our perception of the wine itself, so you know sometimes I actually like to swirl a wine so that loses some of its mousse to get a better sense of the base wine and then there are, um, sommeliers that will actually decant champagne, especially like really bone dry, you know, like older um champagnes, um, that are really acid driven. People will decant I don't I don't prescribe to that notion; I'd rather pour it in a glass of champagne and then I'm going to pour it in a glass of champagne, um, and use the glass as a mini decanter, um, it feels kind of like Morally, the base to the Clinton is to decant champagne, but um, it is you know worthwhile and for a lot of these you know, um, newer, um champagnes that are you know really dry, um, I do find that opening them the day before, um, and not touching them and coming back to the button the next day they will be much more expressive than they were the first day and you will not have lost, um, any of this. Do you have any thoughts on Dom Pérignon? He's a fascinating character; he's hugely misunderstood historically. Um, it's a great wine; it's expensive, um, you know, uh, I've had the pleasure to drink Tom Dom p; um, I've had the pleasure to drink.

some other wines from luxury houses um i had favors like bollinger makes you know kick-ass wines heidsick at the higher end makes great wines i have some like smaller houses like dutz is one of the old schools of wine that's kind of a little bit more traditional than the old school grand marks that i think makes exceptional lines picard some own one of the few independently owned houses that makes you know incredible wines um you know i i have less beef with um pairing on the products than i do with just this notion of wine as captive to um a larger array of global market forces that also encompass handbags that bothers me um you know uh and you know trading in wine um you know the same way you trade in diamonds and silk scarves that bothers me you know that that you know um unmoors it from its roots as a luxury go as a as a agricultural product and it makes it you know a commodity in you know the most cartoonish you know kind of uh way that you know luxury brands are um you know that said you know like i mentioned in my mailer you know uh you know jay you know wheezy nobody's rapping about jock his son you know people rap about crystal dom p for a reason you know because of their luxury signifiers and um you know with um you know dom Pum has really you know um cleverly attached their uh you know uh brand to this hugely influential figure who's you know equally misunderstood and fascinating, so Dom Perignon deserves a lot of credit um for making champagne what it is today.

He devised um all sorts of uh innovations, chiefly in the cellar uh that made uh champagne a greater wine than it ever was before. Things like pruning to favor quality, harvesting early in the morning to ensure the acid unwinds, harvesting in multiple passes to harvest the ripest grapes, sorting in the vineyard, using smaller harvesting baskets so the grapes didn't get crushed. He made some of the first Blanc de Noir. He was kind of a fierce guardian of quality in the cellar and a gifted blender in his time. And his wines sold for 10 times what the wines did in other villages throughout the region. What is missing from this list of achievements? Creating sparkling wine, tasting stars. He never tasted fucking stars. That never happened.

Dom Pérignon was hired to ensure consistency, to remake the Abbey of Hautevilliers and kind of replant their vineyards. He replanted them and made great wines. But the English made sparkling wines and the French weren’t making sparkling wine at scale until the 19th century. And Moët Chandon basically revised history for the sake of their own marketing purposes. And good on them. But I think it’s important to understand that the true history of the wine and the region. If money were no object, what would you drink? What champagne would you drink? Oh. Something old. Something historic. People talk about, I actually like wines with these like amazing stories. So there's this amazing story of the vintage of 1914. I actually don’t think any of these wines are available anymore.

But you’re in the middle of the Great War. And all the Champagne France, they lose tens of thousands of soldiers in a given day. Champagne suffers catastrophic losses. Who harvests the grapes? Children. So literally, the children and the region are going into the vineyard and harvesting, and it just so happens that the wines they harvested over months happen to be one of the greatest vintages of the century. And, well into the 60s people were cracking these bottles and celebrating this history and proclaiming their greatness. I don't know if any of them exist anymore. For my sake, I'm trying to think of some of the greatest champagnes that have had, I don't know? Some older, I've had some old wine, but whether it's good champagne, older stuff from the old, from like Cedric Boucher's father, um, that, you know, um, are super stunning.

Um, I, I like, you know, we talked about old wine and the pleasures of drinking old wine. I like, you know, the death rattle of old, old wine, old champagne has spent just a ton of time, uh, you know, Sir Lott. Um, I, I like, you know, kind of the opulence of, you know, the, the marts of the world, but then I think the great thing about um, champagne is the sentimental, emotional attachment of it. So, um, uh, this is, um, uh, John, I'm gonna take more questions, but I have to embarrass myself first. So, um, this comes from Jaqueson. Jaqueson is one of the Grand Marks. Um, uh, they buy some of their fruit, um, but they own about 80% of the grapes that go into their wine.

Um, the house is currently presided over by Jean Hervé, uh, um, and his brother Laurent, uh, Chiquet. Um, you can see them, uh, they're very, uh, Gaelic, uh, looking as, it's just, you know, uh, why the, the picture, you know, speaks a thousand words. They look like they, uh, make wine, uh, in, in champagne. Um, uh, at any rate, um, they preside over this historic domain, um, that began in 1789. Actually, Krug, more famous name, um, started as a, uh, offshoot of Jaqueson when Johann Joseph Krug left, uh, Jaqueson in 1843. Um, their forebearer invented the, um, wire cage, um, that goes onto, uh, champagne stoppers. Um, fast forward fascinatingly enough, and, uh, the brothers, Chiquet never stopped innovating, um, and they did away with vintage dated wines.

They said that, um, you know, we do not want to thrive, strive for kind of this artificial consistency in our wines. We want to celebrate, you know, um, one vintage to the next, uh, but we still want to be able to reserve wines and, you know, plug in the holes. Um, you know, we still want to be able to blend. We still want to be able to correct for the deficiencies of an individual vineyard and also add complexity with older wines. Um, you know, we still want to be able to blend. We still want to be able to add complexity with older wines to the freshness of younger wines. Um, you know, and so, uh, what they did is they started assigning numbers, um, to their wines beginning in 2003 with 728.

Um, we are now on 743. Um, uh, I love this wine, um, on its own because, you know, for me, it's very emblematic of, you know, this old story domain, um, that is now, um, you know, kind of, uh, they're in the Valdemarne, um, and they work with, um, you know, almost equal parts, roughly, mostly Chardonnay, actually 50% Chardonnay, but then equal parts, roughly, um, Meunier and Pinot Noir. Um, and, you know, they're, they're fearless innovators. Um, they're very much part of this kind of newer wave of producers that works more largely in oak, um, that, um, you know, uh, pushes the envelope in terms of dryness, dryness. This is essentially non-dose. And when people say non-dose, they mean no dosage at all.

Um, no corrective, um, liquor, uh, ended, um, added at the end of the process. Um, and the wines are stunning and they, they speak for themselves. Um, uh, this is equally special to me because, um, uh, my wife and I, um, uh, ordered this bottle, um, when we, uh, got engaged, um, and, uh, we were, um, you know, celebrating our engagement in Baltimore. Um, this is the wine we toasted it with. So, you know, not this very bottle as such, but, you know, um, champagne does that. Um, wine does that, but champagne in particular does that in a way that, you know, I can't think of, you know, um, any other wine, uh, doing, uh, this the same way. So, um, you know, I kind of want to toast to that emotional resonance.

And then, you know, I have some kind of like, uh, you know, deeper thoughts, for the sake of, uh, our current moment. I hope, you know, at the very least that, you know, I've given you a fuller appreciation of, you know, the, uh, seminal, um, kind of, uh, history of, of champagne and, you know, uh, you know, the true story of, uh, the people that, you know, made the wine into, uh, what it is today. It is a very different history than is commonly taught, um, in the trade press. But I, I like to think that, you know, uh, working a little harder, digging a little deeper gives us a fuller appreciation. Um, of what the wine is today.

And, you know, I think about that in, in the context of MAGA, of Make America Great Again, because, you know, um, the whole, uh, presumption here is that we were once great and no longer are, you know, which begs the question, you know, wherein lies our greatness, um, you know, as a nation, you know, is it like champagne tied to the myth of Dom P seeing stars, or can we accept the fact that it was actually an aging widow with a German who made the wine, uh, what it is today? There are all sorts of comparable analogies in American history. And, you know, uh, for me, you know, last night I looked at, um, an African American, Asian American, um, you know, uh, second generation, uh, immigrant, uh, woman, um, you know, being, uh, you know, on the verge of the vice presidency.

I looked at a Seamus Heaney quoting former stutterer, survivor of personal tragedy, um, ascending to the White House over, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, after, you know, over three decades of trying and, you know, I can't help but think, you know, is that not uniquely American greatness? And, you know, I think it is, and I think it's equally worth toasting to. So, uh, alone together, cheers to that. Everybody at home. Salute. Joan, what else you got for us? I think that's actually mostly it, unless I've missed any glaring questions. You went over quite a few of them that I had, but if you have any questions, put them in the chat now and I'll get them to Bill.

All right. So, uh, this is the, uh, grand finale. Um, I promise you all that I would embarrass myself. And, um, I should say first and foremost, um, if you decide to do this, uh, do not do it indoors. Um, I'm in a hermetically sealed pod, um, and no one will be hurt, uh, uh, you know, uh, when I, I carry out this fun experiment, but I want to give you the tools, um, to creatively open wine, uh, yourselves, uh, at home. This is a bottle of champagne, a bottle of rosé champagne. We didn't cover rosé at all. It should be said that, um, uh, rosé champagne is rosé not because, uh, the grapes have contact with the skins, um, early on, uh, and then are bled off.

Uh, but typically because you actually have red wine, um, added, uh, you know, toward the end of the blending process. So in this case, uh, a wine from the Côte d'Azanne, which we didn't cover at all, it's another sub region, um, essentially a Southern extension of the Côte d'Or. Um, and, you know, we could, um, you know, take the foil, uh, off this bottle. And, you know, uh, when we do that, you know, obviously we want to be very careful that, you know, when you begin this activity, you want to make sure that your bottle is ice, ice cold. Um, André 3000, what's cooler than being cool, ice cold, um, cold. Um, so that's first and foremost, um, you know, uh, the organizing paradigm. Uh, then secondly, you want to look at your bottle.

Now, uh, this is, um, you know, uh, the closest thing we have to English bottles, uh, modern bottles; they have a seam. Um, we need to look for that seam because it is going to be the weakest part on the bottle. So there's a seam that runs the length of the bottle. I don't know if you can see it here, uh, but you can certainly feel it and you'll be able to find it on your bottle at home. But the seam is what we are reaching for. And then just to make this a little bit easier, I'm going to remove the rest of the foil here so that I have a smooth surface over which to slide my opening bottle.

So, uh, I'm going to take a little bit of the foil and I'm going to take a little bit of the foil and I'm going to take a little bit of vessel. Now I am fully confident that this bottle is very cold because normally I wouldn't want to remove this cage, um, which the forebearers of Jackie's son added to the mix. I wouldn't want to do that. Um, and take my hand off and normally should keep it on at all times. But for the sake of this exercise, um, I am going to remove the cage, um, and leave the cork, uh, in the mix. And then, um, I have a knife, uh, or imagine it as a saber, um, if you will. Um, and that is going to allow me to open the bottle.

So I'm going to take a little bit of the foil in this bottle, um, seamlessly, uh, without, uh, the, uh, aid of, you know, my wrist and my hand, because it looks fucking cool. That's why we do this if for no other reason. Um, now we're going to aim for that seam and we're going to aim for the point on the neck of the bottle where the seam because it should be said, uh, that is, um, and I, I applaud the person who, uh, uh, renamed themselves as it should be said, but, um, at the very least that is the weekend. That is the weakest point on the bottle. And that's where we want to hit this at its weakest point. And what we're going to do is we're going to dispel the cork with the ring of the bottle.

So the bottle will essentially break, but it will do so in a very clean way. So you will get a ring of glass around your cork and it will fly in a dramatic arc for your friends. And you'll do this outside and not inside. Um, and, uh, all your friends, uh, will, you know, uh, ring their applause. Uh, the knife is less important. You want to use the blunt end and you want to make sure that you don't tell your award-winning chef that you borrowed one of his knives to do so. That is a very important part of the process. And you want to hope that he is on the line and not listening, uh, when you do these things, uh, as well.

So I am, uh, removing the cork here and mind you, when you are opening at home, typically you want to leave your hand on the cork because, you know, at this point, you know, you are, you are flying, you know, blind and there's nothing to breathe. This cork from flying off, um, other than, uh, my, my saber, uh, here. So I'm going to, uh, relocate, um, my seam, which I've found. And then I'm going to show you our, hopefully, um, how saber. Three, two, and one. And we got a little squilling, but I came prepared with towels for once. So, uh, cheers to you all, um, at home. I will, uh, send around a better video. Uh, it gives you a fuller sense of how to do that. Mr.

Alton Brown, uh, at the very least, uh, has done it, um, and, uh, specifically in an outdoor environment. Uh, but I hope you all have a lovely week. Thank you so much for celebrating with me. Um, last question, Bill, if you, um, if you could, if Biden was a wine and Kamala was a wine, but Steven, if you could meet, please. Oh, Biden was a wine and Kamala was a wine. Well, obviously, Biden has a little bottle age. If you could mute Steven, Bill. Um, so it should be said that, uh, Biden, Biden would definitely have a little bottle age. Um, uh, Delaware doesn't really make wine. Also should be said Biden doesn't drink. Um, Biden says there are enough alcoholics in his family. Um, Kamala loves wine.

Um, uh, actually Esther Mobley, who's a amazing, uh, writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, um, has documented her, um, you know, kind of like going around to various wineries in Sonoma because she's like on the, like in the wine club and filling up her trunk and going away. So, um, uh, Kamala is my best hope, um, for a, uh, you know, on a file, um, you know, kind of, uh, at the upper echelons of power, but if Biden was a wine, I think he would be, you know, something really like stately, um, you know, and classic, but you know, maybe not French. So I think like Biden could be like, uh, an older Rioja, but something classic, you know, like, uh, like a Lopez de Jarrilla, um, you know, you know, kind of wine, um, you know, something that, you know,

is is you know strong and enduring um you know that that lasts for for decades uh upon end but you know it maybe isn't like you know the biggest you know most bombastic you know kind of powerhouse group forward kind of wine you know it's it's a little more you know uh elegant and sinewing in the hotel room right and then kamala has to be something from uh california um you know i don't know i can see her like you know she has like the you know kind of like suave you know um grace under pressure of like a russian river valley pinot um but i don't i don't know i need to do more digging i don't know what uh kamala herself likes to drink um so i need to you know dive deeper but i'm going with like russian river valley Pinot, uh, for um, you know the Vice President-elect, for the time being. But it's very exciting to, uh, you know, get to speculate on these things, so you know, Cheers to that.