In Pursuit of Average

I recently had the pleasure of attending a Champagne dinner hosted by Veuve Clicquot.  That house is one of the oldest in Champagne.  Madame Clicquot was one of the early innovators credited with developing and marketing Champagne before the region rose to its current prominence.  Her influence was so great that the company still labels their best vintage cuvee after her nickname, “La Grande Dame.”  Their Yellow Label Champagne is probably the most popular Champagne in the U.S. and maybe the world.  Lovers of small productions, known as “Grower Champagnes” lament what they perceive as a decline in quality of the Veuve in favor of mass production as well as the way the large brands can push the smaller productions out of the market.

The fascination runs both ways.  The representative from Veuve was interested in the appeal of the smaller productions.  And they do have a distinct appeal.  Each small producer offers up their own style based on the grapes available, personal taste of the producer, and the limitations they face in terms of staffing and equipment.  The distinction extends beyond Champagne and into the wider wine world.  A vineyard can produce only so much wine.  After that a producer can choose to start making more labels, one for each source that the grapes came from.  That is what everyone complains about in regard to the producers of Burgundy.  Another option is to sort of pile all of the sourced grapes together into one bottling.  That is what everyone complains about in regard to California.  Just kidding.  There is a lot more to complain about in regard to both of those places.

It is a genuine quandary for a producer.  Single vineyard bottlings invariably leave one bottling in the group lot that just will not sell (there’s always one, just one if you’re lucky) and also puts the producer at risk of creating products that compete with each other.  The more generalized route makes it nearly impossible to produce a truly distinctive product.

Veuve Clicquot has taken an interesting approach.  Their outfit is perfectionist, but it is perfectionism in pursuit of consistency over time.   Instead of making the best non-vintage Brut in every batch they strive to make every batch taste like the one before and after.  They sacrifice the peaks to avoid the valleys.  The approach has clearly paid off for them.  I am personally a fan of Piper Heidsieck NV (which to be clear, is a mass market product in and of itself) but I have liked it substantially better in some cuvees than others.  The one I tasted most recently was very good and I am optimistic for future cuvees, but there is no way to really know until they are tasted.  Krug is either the best or the worst for this, depending on your view.  Their NV Bruts are awesome, but no two are the same and they don't really try to make them so.  

Yellow Label is Yellow Label, always.  That may not make it valuable to a Champagne enthusiast but it does make it a beverage of choice for corporate gifts, business dinners, and people who want to grab their bottle and go rather than having a half hour conversation with a store clerk about which Champagne to buy.  It may not be everyone’s favorite, but it is the one that everyone can agree on.  It also bears mentioning that while many people have no idea what Burgundy or Bordeaux are, everyone seems to know Champagne.  That notoriety owes something to a uniform approach and Yellow Label is the embodiment of that.

If any purveyor of Grower Champagne wants to send me a few bottles to rate against the Yellow Label, please let me know.  Tasting Champagne is an onerous burden, but one I will assume for the greater good.