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.
