Champagne house Bruno Paillard has come out in praise of Krug’s decision to put disgorgement dates on their bottles.
Disgorgement is the process whereby the dead yeast cells that fall to the bottom of the bottle following the bubble-inducing second fermentation, are removed before finishing the wine, sealing it with a cork and sending it to market.
Those wines that have been disgorged more recently tend to be fresher but it isn’t necessarily so. A wine that was disgorged a year ago and spent the last 12 months on a warm shop shelf will not be as fresh as a wine that was disgorged two years ago and spent the next period in a cool, dark cellar.
However, Pailard is ecstatic at Krug’s news. “Tremendous! At last the fact that the wine evolves after disgorgement is recognized,” Paillard announced in a press release. The producer, founded in 1981, has been putting disgorgement dates on its wine labels for the past 30 years.
“I can only be glad to see that such a house as Krug who I respect – such as before them, Philipponnat, Charles Heidsieck, Lanson and a few small growers – at last recognised that importance of this information for connoisseurs,” added Paillard.
It will also be music to the ears of Antonio Galloni, who reviews Champagne for Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. He has announced that he will no longer review non vintage Champagnes that do not list disgorgement dates.
“If I rate producer X’s nonvintage Champagne highly, I want to know that my readers are going to be able to find the same wine,” reported the New York Times. “Without a unique identifier, which would be a vintage in any other wine, there simply is no way for the consumer to know they are buying the same wine.”
If you’re a wine connoisseur, and lap up extra information like a camel at an oasis, disgorgement dates could be of interest. But to many consumers, it adds yet another layer of confusion to the mysterious world of wine.
Laurent D’Harcourt, export director at Pol Roger agrees. “Sometimes it is a bit confusing. I think what is important is to have good distribution with good stock rotation.
“Charles Heidsieck puts the date of bottling and the date of disgorgement [on the label] and then it says it’s a non vintage. It’s a bit confusing.”
Indeed, I have to agree.
And Champagne houses are disgorging regularly – Pol disgorges every three months – which would make labelling each batch separately a bit of a headache in my opinion. Pol then lets the wine marry with the liqueur de dosage – a mixture of reserve wine and sugar – for three months in the cellar before release.
So, there are many variables when it comes to disgorgement, so it is difficult to say whether it will make us any better informed. It also seems to be a lot of effort for the benefit of a small number of people.
To make matters even more complicated, Taittinger is planning to add a smart phone code to their label so consumers can find out the base vintage of the champagne. Whatever happened to the principle, Keep It Simple Stupid?
