How does aging affect champagne?
That's a really good question actually. Because most people think that champagne is young wine for early consumption.
But for me, champagne is one of those wines that can age the longest.
Imagine you go to a lumberyard to buy wood and you make a wooden box.
So the wood is quite rough on the edges so over time, the edges will get smoother, rounder, more complete, in a way
So that is what's happening, because the wine has high acidity in its youth,
has quite sharp, but distinct categories and qualities
it melts together, to give complexity, length,
and all those things. So it goes from youthful primary
aromas linked with fruits like lemons, apple
tropical fruits, stone fruits, those kind of things. Then we have
the secondary aroma spectrum, which is what is happening during
the process of making the wine. For instance,
those toasty notes doesn't come from the primary notes,
the toasty notes come from the actual time when the lees
are in contact with the wine. So the longer we have,
the more that toasty note will develop. And then we have
also different treatments of wood. If we have old barrels
that we use to let the wine breathe or
do we have stainless steel to keep a very fresh and pure wine,
that's one thing. And then we come to the tertiary aromas what will
happen during extreme aging, the acidity goes down,
we have different notes of mushroom and fungus
and truffles. And even, you know, spicy notes.
That you might link with new wood. But it isn't.
because it comes from that extreme aging. And also like
animal notes. You know, the beautiful note you have in for instance cured ham. Those kinds of characters
What is the perfect condition to age champagne?
I would say you have the same conditions as with any fine wine.
So a dark place, a humid place,
to have the corks in perfect condition. The bottles laying down so the cork doesn’t dry out.
No sunlight of course, because sunlight will also force the development to go very, very fast. So, a classical cellar I would say.
So does the size of the bottle change the aging process?
Absolutely, most people think it's just an image to you know, play with the big bottles. But the smaller the bottle is, the wine matures faster.
And why? That's because the surface between the wine and the cork
is bigger in percentage the smaller the bottle is. So we have 3, 4, 12, 15 litre bottles.
That little surface, that little gap becomes smaller which makes the pause or a slow motion to the development.
And then we have also certain bottles, I would say magnums and jeroboams are the perfect
size because the relation between that
little gap and the wine is in perfect harmony.
That's when the real magic happens. For me,
magnums and jeroboams are really interesting bottle sizes for
perfect maturation.
So, what are the best vintages in champagne?
That's really interesting also. When we look, for the last
say 170 - 150 years. If we look at really top, top vintages. If have a system from 1 star to 5. I would say that we have 1 vintage in every decade. That's how rare it is.
Where everything is, you know, the sun and the moon,
everything is in the perfect condition to give, you know,
the absolutely best fruit to be working with.
So I would say if we go from now and a little bit backwards we start to see a little bit of the 2015 is a really interesting vintage.
'12 of course, '8, when I would write my champagne memoirs, '8 will be top 3. Without a shadow of a doubt.
And '02, also beautiful, rich. We have the '96 for its acidity,
we have '88, '89, and '90 which is called the Holy Trinity,
we only had two times in the history
when we started in the beginning of the 1900's that we saw
3 vintages each of them are really good,
so '88, '89, and '90. I love the '85s,
'85s is also beautiful drinking now.
Then we go back to '76, no more in the 70's,
'66, '64,
I think is beautiful. In the 50's,
maybe 53's. Then we have '47
'48, '49, again a
Holy Trinity which is absolutely perfect.
The 30's, not so much because we had a
lot of trouble in the world because of the World War and other things.
We have '28, '21, '14, and '11.
That's how very rare it is.
But I would say we have so many great vintages
produced in a very recent time of '15, '12,
'8, and '2, focus on those
I think that we have more to come.
Bjorn, can all vintages be aged?
Now I'm going to sound like a politician,
really boring. Yes and no. Why's that?
Well the differences between the vintages are very, very,
all over the place. Take for instance, a very weak
I used to say weak instead of a bad vintage like 2001
it's supposed to mature fast. Not many producers declared it
but the ones that did it were very happy at that point.
So it's a champagne for drinking between 5,
8, to 10 years.
And if we take the next vintage at
2002 which was a brilliant example of
a super concentrated vintage because of the
maturity levels, the acidity levels,
that is what you need for you know, it to be stored
for a very long time. I think that champagne is maybe
one of the wines that can be
matured the longest. Even longer than top
Bordeaux sometimes. You can compare it to really premium Burgundy
because of the concentration and the level of
acidity sometimes. And the third part
is personal preference.
If I could serve a certain champagne,
youthful, fresh, most people will like it. Some people will say 'mmm
that's harsh, not so elegant'.
I would like to have you know a little more of the smooth character.
And then I bring out a 32, 35 year old champagne
and some people will say,
ooh that's really too much of the mushroom, where is
the youthfulness? So it's really depends on
your personal preference when it comes to mature wines also.
So yeah, a lot of answers to your question there.