THE HISTORY OF BLANCPAIN

ART DE VIVRE
Champagne vineyards near Damery.
to compose angry letters protesting this
admittedly extreme observation, pause for a
moment. Certainly most drinkers of champagne
– leaving aside the gesticulating jocks
shaking bottles and jiving around locker
rooms after a World Cup or World Series
(but then they aren’t drinking the stuff anyway,
merely bathing in it) – know that the
bottle may be a Moët & Chandon, Veuve
Cliquot or perhaps even Taittinger Comte de
Champagne. But those are just brand
names. Even though you can correctly
recount that it was favoured by Churchill,
can you identify the particular grapes are
used in a bottle of Pol Roger? Yes, it is a
cuvée prestige, but from which vineyards
does that Gosset Celebris, Grande Dame or
Dom Perignon originate? Can you name the
vineyards of Champagne and identify the
grapes grown on each one? Can you devine
the quality classification of each of those
vineyards? Ah, perhaps that rush to fire off
the irate letter might be slowed.
Devotees of most wines can reel off this
kind of detail. Burgundy fanatics happily
debate whether a particular producer’s Clos
de Vougeot (from a grand cru vineyard, of
course and made of 100 % pinot noir)
comes from the favoured upper slope near
the Château or from the less-favoured rows
adjacent to the Route Nationale. Similarly
Bordeaux drinkers know the Châteaux 1855
classifications (and the official 1973 amendment
and the even the unofficial “Parker”
amendments) and know the differences in
grapes between the Médoc and the right
bank. Napa Valley cab drinkers know what
the Oakville bench is. And the same can be
said for nearly all the other wine regions on
earth. Details of grape and vineyard are at
the forefront when wines are evaluated and
choices are made. What is wrapped up in all
of these details is the notion of terroir. A well
made wine will reflect, better said, will be
imbued, with the flavours and nuances of its
exact place of origin and of course its
cepage (grapes).
So what is the exceptionalism that places
champagnes on a different footing from
essentially all the other prestige wines in the
world, obscuring these details in the blazing
glory of brand names? How is it that even
the most rabid wine connoisseurs who revel
in their encyclopedic grasp of all of the
grape/vineyard pedigrees represented in
their cellars, simply glide by the vitals when
it comes to their bottles of bubbly?