Musings about the Wild West of Disgorgement Dates

WINE TALK
1

We recently did a reorganization of the case open storage section of the cellar, which is a low-ceilinged alcove off the main aisle. Up to this point, we’d added cases as they arrived, with the result that the oldest wine was at the back and the youngest at the front, which is, obviously, the opposite arrangement to what we want for drinking purposes in general. So we pulled it all out and swapped back to front. At the same time, we decided to add information to some of the boxes themselves, particularly the disgorgement dates on NV champagne, so that we can drink the oldest first, in general, and have the info to hand when it doesn’t happen to be printed on the label or contained in a bottle code. I also tried to add the information to my bottle/purchase notes in CT so I could know what to look for when I head to the cellar to pull some bottles.

In the process, I couldn’t help but notice, and occasionally be confused and frustrated by, what I found in the disgorgement data: there are so many different versions of these wines, it’s not even funny, and consistency is very rare. Some producers seem to be on a pretty regular schedule with consistent time on lees and disgorgement. Until they aren’t. Some producers seem to disgorge more when they feel like it or need more for an importer. The result is that it’s often difficult to tie a particular bottling to a tasting note or a review. Let’s not even start on different lots within a bottling…

For instance, I went to label a few case boxes of Lilbert Blanc de Blancs based on what the label said – 50% base 2016, 50% reserve wine, disgorged summer of 2020 – but noticed that there are reviews from @William_Kelley for a 2017 base disgorged in summer 2020, with a note on 2016 base disgorged in spring 2019. Okay, no big deal, they disgorged some 2016 base in 2020 – lucky me, more time on lees! But still a little frustrating, if I want to be able to compare my impressions to his note.

20230225_085240
20230225_0852401920×2560 307 KB

20230225_085253
20230225_0852531920×2560 211 KB

Or I recently got the next year’s allocation of Filaine Sensuum Vertigo that I thought would be the next vintage, but turned out to be more of the 2016, but with another year on lees. Again, cool for me, but necessitates keeping careful track, especially when there’s nothing on the label and you just have to keep records somewhere after a bit of a treasure hunt to figure out what you’ve got.

Now, part of me finds all this randomness fun and fascinating. I’m not a slave to particular disgorgements any more than I am a slave to vintage. But part of me finds it a little stressful and confusing, as the organized nature of my brain wants to be able to tie what I’ve got to what others have written about. It also makes buying more opaque as, short of confirming with the seller, it’s sometimes tough to tell what you are getting, even if there is a disgorgement date listed on the website! I manage to keep good records in my own CT notes (I wonder if there could be future functionality that has entry fields for disgorgement date, though I realize that could be a slippery slope because what then about base? Assemblage?), but find myself getting confused when I step away from the cellar and read other notes and records.

In the end, it’s all part of the endless complexity that is learning about champagne, and unless you are on the hunt for a very specific bottling, it’s all good in the end (or at least it usually is), but it sure makes things complicated!

2 Likes
2

Sarah,

At least more and more bottles have details now. We can celebrate that. :smile:

I agree that the tracking disgorgements and base vintage can be challenging. Most producers will disgorge NVs across a 12 month period and you often get the end of one batch corresponding with the start of another. Some smaller producers do disgorgements to order and by request so that leads to lots of disgorgement dates. Cellar space can also dictate when bottles must be disgorged and leave.

Where it really starts to get challenging is if the producer drops the dosage on the later disgorgements of a specific base vintage NV release to correspond with how the wine has changed with the extra lees aging. This is more common on vintage releases, but you can see it on some NVs as well. There are producers who do dosage on request too. Some smaller producers are also starting to use more reserve wines to release wines with younger base vintages, this can lead to instances where you might have something like a 2017 base with a large majority of reserve wines released one year and the next release sees the base go backwards to 2016 with much less reserve wines.

2 Likes
3

it’s a real problem for those of us attempting to understand champagne or a bottling. So many have absolutely no information available. I’m frankly stymied by champagne, makes Burgundy seem easy to understand.

And I seem to remember, but I don’t remember the French word for it or the exact situation, that if a house runs out of something, they just “borrow” or buy elsewhere and put their own label on it, a completely different wine. Is that still done?

4

Alan,

You are thinking of ‘sur lattes’ which translates to ‘on slats’ and refers to the classical storage method of having bottles stored sideways on slats of woods as they age on the lees and await disgorgement. It also has the common meaning of a producer buying wine they didn’t make (that is stored on its side awaiting disgorgement), slapping their own label on it to claim it as their own, and then selling it without the consumer knowing that the wine in the bottle isn’t what the label claims. Normally, the producer buying the ‘sur lattes’ bottles disgorges and dosages the bottles, but the wine inside usually came from another producer - very often a co-op. Decades ago, this was done by larger producers when they had too much demand and too little supply - usually around NV wines.

Around 20 years ago, in different announcements, the growers, co-ops, and houses agreed to stop this practice. For the larger producers, the reasoning behind stopping was more over the growing risk of speculation and the trading of sur lattes than for what I would call better reasons such as the wine in the bottle not matching the label. While all in Champagne have agreed to stop, I am not sure if it is truly enforceable from a legal aspect. Most larger producers have stopped the practice and the possible offenders I have seen or heard of recently are actually on the smaller producer side. The thing with ‘sur lattes’ is that if you want to have a chance to pull it off, you need to have an identical bottle to the bottle you usually use for a cuvee. The bigger producers seemed to at least understand this.

What you can legally do, is launch an ND (Negociant Distributeur) brand such as what Savart and Bereche have done and buy bottles from someone else that you disgorge and then choose how to dosage. You can also inherit wines via families merging and release something that you didn’t make and have no real history with except through marriage. Many of the older Diebolt-Vallois vintages that were released in the late 90s through the early 2000s are an example of this.

As an aside, many have told me that some of the ‘sur lattes’ NVs that came from the Palmer co-op and were labeled and sold as a different, big house NV were actually better than the normal big house NV bottling. :laughing:

1 Like
5

Yeah, I have the Vintage59 Lilbert wines and they are generally the same (although I don’t think I have the stock that you do) but vague “Season Year”.

I just got a meagre allocation of the Filaine Sensum and it was more 2015 at a higher price rather than the 2016 I expected. For Filaine Speciale and DMY, I write the release year on the back when I get it because until this last release, there was no base vintage information. I too started putting the disgorgement (or whatever I could glean) in the Purchase Note and Bottle Note fields of CT. It helps.

6

this is the most significant insight. we went - in short order - from no info, to some info, to it basically being standard across the industry.

i also think this has a second order effect of encouraging champagne producers to focus on overall quality, lest certain disgorgements are preferred over others. and of course, there’s the “collect them all” psychological element.

truly an amazing trend imo. more transparency always leads to better outcomes.

7

No question it’s getting better and better in terms of transparency. I can certainly see the logic that it might impact quality as well. I wonder, though, if the increased transparency, and the appreciation for it from the consumer, will lead to more regular schedules and consistency? Will it be as easy and as acceptable to be loose about disgorging some here and there in the future if buyers are all on top of the details?

1 Like
8

good and valid questions. it’s rarely clear where leadership will emerge early on, but there’s clearly a lot of opportunity to lead in this area.

though, it can (and will) be fetishized by some which could lead to a backlash to the backlash. I wonder if some editions of Krug GV sell better than others?

9

I wonder if you’ve seen in your data (or even actively recommend to restaurants) to price eg. 164 above 166