GrapeRadio did an excellent interview awhile back with Ruinart’s chef des caves Frédéric Panaїotis – he came across as such an engaging guy with a kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm for the Champagne he was making. Give it a listen if you haven’t already. So when I got word Frédéric was going to be pouring the Ruinart line at Chelsea Wine Vault I was at least as intrigued to meet him in person as I was to get a rare chance to taste “the other Dom.” The '96 Dom Ruinart absolutely floored me recently and I’d resolved to get to know the house a little better. Frédéric poured a nice set of wines and put on a great show too:
Ruinart N.V. Blanc de Blancs – Made from three vintages of all premier cru vineyards in the Cote de Blancs and Montagne de Reims, according to the spec sheet. Opens with a sweet, creamy aroma and is thick, almost gelatinous, on the palate despite its prickle, a fizzy lemon cream filling. On the finish it turns more serious with a backdraft of metal shavings, but, as Frédéric explains, this Champagne is intended to be all about the fruit. They don’t use older reserve wines and don’t recommend holding a bottle beyond a year or two because it’s not meant to develop past its fruity stage. He says chardonnay in Champagne usually tastes austere and lean but that he aims for a different style here – “friendly aromas, tropical fruit that is quite specific to our style.” Hey, I like my Champagne austere and lean! But this is pretty tasty too – almost reminiscent of a junior version of a Vilmart Cuvee Creation in its fruit profile though obviously much simpler in personality. 9 grams per liter dosage.
Dom Ruinart 1998 Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs – Frédéric says this is the easiest wine to make – you just take Grand Cru grapes from the best vintages and it makes itself. In contrast to the N.V. this is pure mineral. What the N.V. showed on the back end, this is spackled with from the get-go from top to bottom and the attack comes from all corners – but oddly finishes with a nice touch of sweetness. It comes across as even more minerally than the '96 which combined the metal-shavings element with luscious fruit. Both are superb wines, just different in what they’re choosing to emphasize at the moment. The fizz was much more vigorous in the glass than the N.V. Frédéric had played an interesting trick. After eliciting comments on the difference in fizz he revealed that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the wine… he’d nicked the bottom of each bowl that the Dom Ruinart was poured in. “Never trust the glass, always trust your palate,” he said before explaining that the fizz is a factor of the second law of thermodynamics, not the quality of the wine. That said, the extra mousse clearly benefited the wine, a nice lesson to keep your Champagne glasses properly “seasoned” for their best performance! 7 grams per liter dosage but the difference in perceptible dryness between this and the N.V. is much, much larger than that.
Dom Ruinart 1996 Grand Cru Rosé – A light rosé – Ruinart calls the color “autumn glory” with “glints of pink gold,” which Frédéric attributes to the age it’s given before release and not any material difference in the blend or production vis-a-vis the much darker N.V. rosé. I admit it, I am almost never a fan of rosé Champagne, even one as marginally rosé as this. If they want to make something non-white in Champagne I wish they’d just leave the pinot on its skins and make a nice still red wine. This one’s no exception, though admittedly it isn’t showing a whole lot and may develop more character with time. I do appreciate the fact that it’s on the crisp side and not cotton-candied as rosé Champagne often is, something I appreciated even more when coming back to it after the much sweeter-tasting rosé N.V. Some of the minerality of the blanc de blancs Ruinarts eventually surfaces on the finish here. Interestingly, this has the highest dosage of the four wines today at 10 grams per liter. I would have guessed the opposite. It tastes bone-dry.
Ruinart N.V. Rosé – A deeper rosé here with a bona fide ruby color. Flatter fizz than the Dom version (even after I transferred it to the nicked glass!) and not nearly as crisp, especially with its Ocean Spray fruit-juice flavors. It is amazing how sweet this tastes even though the dosage at 9 grams per liter is exactly the same as the much dryer-tasting blanc de blancs and a gram less than the Dom. The impression is so sweet, in fact, that Frédéric recommends serving it as an after-dinner drink or with less-sweet desserts. Can’t disagree with that, maybe it would show better in that context, but in this context I unfortunately did not enjoy it at all.