I’ve always thought of the age of NV as from the vintage, but have been very aware of disgorgement. I don’t know if this is standard or not, but it gives me the best basis for comparison as disgorgement dates even for the same wine can differ.
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Of course there is not universal transparency on either vintage or disgorgement. It’s gotten better, but still not 100%, even among good producers.
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I always base the age from the disgorgement date. Granted there will be variation on an NV due to when it is released, but assuming a similar profile year over year, disgorgement has been an easy constant.
While the official limits are 2, 6 and 12 g/l, you have to remember that there’s always 3 g/l tolerance. That means you can actually have an Extra Brut at 9 g/l and Brut at 15 g/l. IIRC, this tolerance used to be 5 g/l, so a Champagne with 17 g/L RS (obviously a Sec Champagne) could be actually labeled as Brut without problems. However, very few producers use this leeway for their advantage - it’s just to ensure a wine doesn’t need to be relabeled if there are some inconsistencies, seeing how especially Champagnes produced at a smaller scale aren’t particularly homogenized products.
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Tom Stevenson wrote a related article for World of Fine Wine back in 2008.
I’d be interested to know what his current, or more recent, thoughts are. I think it’s fair to say there are more successful versions now than there were back then.
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I find the topic very interesting, but I don’t have much to add.
I’m quite curious to learn how the low/zero dosage grower champagnes age, but that’s going to take a while before we know. I could see it both ways.
As far as NV, the fact that it’s labeled NV and almost all of this through history has not been labeled with vintage information, that robs us of having experience about how the wines age.
Even now, as a small percentage have vintage info in fine print or code somewhere, hardly anyone makes note of it or adds that to their mental inventory to learn anything from it.
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Which is why I start counting upon acquisition with NV. You are never really sure what it is you have.
That was an interesting article. Especially the part where it claimed that brut natures needed to be ready on release. I am not a fan of lower dosage champagne overall. However, my experience is that a few years does help add some needed complexity to the low dosage champagnes. Although I agree that the overall drinkability age is much shorter.
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Except for those who provide disgorgement dates.
I’m not sure I agree. It may still be the minority in the grand scheme of champagne, but it’s very common now to see notes on CT with the disgorgement dates listed, and the critics list base vintage and disgorgement dates more often than not in their notes that I’ve seen. I’m sure there’s a ton of NV champagne out there that doesn’t fall on my radar, but I would say in the land of those growers discussed on this board, it’s quite common.
I know I always try to provide disgorgement info if it’s available.
wine lists in the city (this city, anyway) have been getting better at listing as well.
interesting thread. my recollection from drinking old, big-house bubbles is that the sugar content used to be massive which helped with ageing. given we are a good 2 decades into the grower movement, there should be good examples. i often miss ray t, but he would be very active on this thread as had deep thoughts/convictions on the matter, from our various conversations.
hopefully brad baker will chime in as well.
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2 decades into the grower movement, yes, but does that equate to into the low dose movement? It’s a genuine question on my part, as I truly don’t know - I was late to the party with champagne. I know that some growers I follow, like Boulard in my OP, have moved to significantly lower dosage just over the last 5-8 years, and WK has commented on how Hebrart has moved to lower dose over just the last few vintages, and now bottles both a brut and extra brut version of his BdB and rose. I think Gilman wrote a piece about Marguet as well, commenting that changes there, including a move towards zero dose, are more recent.
I’d be very interested to hear from those more familiar with the history as to whether the low dose move has been in parallel to the grower movement, or whether it’s generally a more recent shift that has take place within the grower category.
calling it a “movement” may be putting the cart before the horse; isn’t it more likely that good producers are finding their wines don’t require as much sugar to make balanced champagne? better farming, lower yields, better winemaking in general, climate change, etc.
from a historical perspective, champagne today is already so low that i’m not sure this even has anything to do with the grower aspect. i just read that 1990 dom was 6 g/L; neither grower nor recent.
Yaacov, you’re the one who set up the connection by saying that because we are now 2 decades into the grower movement, we should have some examples. I used “movement” because you had said “grower movement” so I wrote “low dosage movement” to emphasize a parallel, not because I think it’s some kind of collective activism.
I think dosage may be a moving target as so nicely put by Aurelien Laherte in his zoom session. With global warming I believe ripening is sooner, and this makes harvesting time imperative to control the final sugar content (as always!). Do they harvest a slightly riper grape to make no dosage? I always imagine a wine maker uses a dosage to make up the difference and achieve the wine they want. The result of a 6g/l dosage in 1990 may be vastly differently than one now. Great topic for more knowledge.
I’m still drinking Pierre Peters NV with disgorgement dates back to 2011. Not the driest NV out there, but the wines are in great shape.
understood! thanks for clarifying.
for those keeping score:
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Grower “Movement” = confirmed
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Low / No Dosage “Movement” = tbd
Low / No dosage “trend” perhaps?
doubtless, some producers will do it because they think it’s trendy, but not the best producers.
is there any reason to approach dosage differently than how we think about oak? or sulphur? or stems?