Starting the day in a small four berth cabin on board a ferry with two other sleeping companions was not how I finished the 18th of May. Upon departing Zebrugge, which was just as big a hole as Hull is, except for the fact that they have windmills to generate their power rather than huge coal fired stations, we hit the road south towards Epernay.The Belgian border was a bit of a let down. I wasn’t expecting men with machine guns ready to blast anyone who tried to get through without their say so, but I was expecting a civil servant with a clipboard. We didn’t even get that. A couple of booths, that were falling down, marked the line of divide between these two nations and whilst it is great that as a subject of Her Majesty, I can travel anywhere within the EU without being strip searched at international crossings, I feel that the spirit of travelling has died somewhat as there is no sense of entering a new country.
We arrived in Epernay and had a wander up the Avenue de Champagne, looking all tourist-y with our cameras, before entering the huge building that is Moet & Chandon’s head office. This imposing, but remarkably tasteful, building dwarfs every other champagne house on this street. And this is what I thought the problem with Moet & Chandon was.
It is huge. The company, part of the LVMH group, is one of the biggest producers of Champagne, they have over 1000 hectares of land under vine and, at a million euros per hectare, that is a massive amount of money. So you would assume that such a big company would produce mass produced wine and not take much care in quality, but this is so far from the truth. Moet may be a huge producer of non vintage wines, but their care and attention, and willingness to experiment, is what is now making their vintage wines excel.
The 2003 is a perfect example. 2003 was a ‘challenging’ vintage for Champagne. An early spring caused early budburst on the vines and once everything was going swimmingly, there was four nights of frost! This wrecked a majority of the Chardonnay vines, and lost the company a third of their potential crop. After that frost everything continued as normal, and then along came hail which took out more vines. By the summer, there was a low yield, and then, to make things worse, came the famous heat wave, resulting in over ripe grapes. And this is where things got interesting.
If you take a house like Bollinger, they realised there was no chance of making their Grande Annee vintage wine from the 2003 harvest, so they opted to make a stand alone wine, reflecting the year but distancing it from the Grande Annee brand. This was a weak, flabby, low acid wine that, if we are honest, nobody liked. I applaud them for giving it a go, but this wine had very little structure and replaced Mumm 1995 as my least favourite vintage champagne and, in my view, shouldn’t have been released.
Moet did things a bit differently. As they were suffering from a heat wave, they treated the vines as hot climate producers do, and didn’t try to protect the wines. The result is apparent. Like the Bollinger, the 2003 Moet & Chandon doesn’t have much acid. Along with the 1976, this has the least acid (5g/litre) of any vintage Moet, but by not protecting the grapes, the 2003 has wonderfully mature fruit. A lovely smoky element is right up front on the nose, then bitter lemon pith aromas come through. Dirty potato skin is next, yet everything is wonderfully balanced, with a solid bitter backbone. This comes through on the palate too, a dose of spice, then apple cores and more smoke, all latching on to the pithy structure, and then lots of mature fruit to finish it off. What Moet have managed to do with this wine is provide structure where there really shouldn’t be some, and you really have to applaud their winemaking team for that, as they have produced, to my palate at least, a better wine for drinking now than the great 2000 vintage was.
We then had a sneak preview of the 2002 vintage. It was felt that this wine needed an extra year to mature, and due to the experimentation of the subsequent vintage being a success, the immediately (in relative terms) 2003 vintage allowed them to postpone the release of the ’02. The 2002 Moet & Chandon is a totally different beast to the ’03. A lot more fruit dominant, some sherbet lemon, with dust and toast too. The palate has a lot of acid, the dominant chardonnay coming to the fore, yet still with some red berries around the lemon and lime citrus fruit flavours. Fresh bread comes through, and a sublime clean finish. This is a very good wine.
Moet & Chandon keep masses of old vintages of wine, and the next wine we tried was the 1978 vintage. A severe, long winter, followed by bad weather throughout the summer was showing all the hallmarks of being a terrible year. For four weeks, starting in mid August, there was good, dry weather, which saved this year, and the 1978 vintage Moet was a stunning wine. Smoky tobacco, lots of honey, toast and earthy potatoes, mixed with loads of herbs, started this wine off, and then the palate was lovely and soft with gentle spice notes, candied fruit peel and a lime marmalade finish that was so, so good. This is a brilliant wine, a feeling echoed by everyone in the room, and what makes it extra special is that it is the first wine from my birth year that I have tried that was excellent!
A freshly disgorged 1961 magnum came next with, initially, loads of dried mushrooms, over ripe apple and earth on the nose. Very dry, after all there was no sugar added, with lots more mushrooms, tea and toffee apple on the palate. A creamy texture, great acidity, and flavours that evolved into more citrus, rather than richer over ripe fruit – it was just stunning. It was so good, it became my favourite champagne ever, beating the 1966 Dom Perignon.
When a champagne gets really old, it is increasingly hard to judge it as a wine as it isn’t how the creator intended it to be drunk, and this was certainly the case with the freshly disgorged 1937 magnum that we tried next. A lot of honey and toffee apple, then round, mushroomy and new potato skin, baked fruit and a musky element was on the nose. The mousse had pretty much gone, but the flavour was lovely, lemon marmalade, candied fruit and very dry, superbly balanced and elegant. Trying this aged wine, despite having nearly no mousse, was a very valuable experience, one which I will remember, as it made what came next a lot easier to understand.
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