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6 DRINKS INTERNATIONAL MOST ADMIRED CHAMPAGNES 2018 HOW WE DID IT Your at-a-glance guide to how the most admired champagnes academy works PIDJOE/ISTOCK.COM ur formidable leading retailers, wine writers, 30 brands which unmasks the Academy has MWs and marketing experts movement of trends among the chosen Roederer and asked them to name their biggest names in the category. as the World’s top fi ve brands. Over the following pages Most Admired When choosing their list, we IT’S NOW champagne expert Giles OChampagne Brand, replacing asked Academy members to Fallowfi eld examines the Bollinger. Pol Roger, famously consider the following: PARTY TIME results to give his verdict on the Winston Churchill’s favourite • The quality and FOR WINNER rankings. tipple, has climbed up from consistency of the brand, ROEDERER Champagne Lanson is one of fourth place to take the paying particular attention CHAMPAGNE the biggest brands to exit the runner-up slot, while last year’s to its main, non-vintage 2018 list. Coming in at 20 last winner has slipped to sixth line year, the brand known best for place in 2018. • Whether this quality and • The brand’s value at its price its Wimbledon sponsorship, has The Academy voting process consistency has been level fallen off the list completely. was unchanged for the poll’s maintained or improved in • The overall image of the It’s now party time for fi J h year and, as ever, we the past year brand Roederer and it won’t have to assembled a panel of judges • The quality of brand The results from the Academy look far for a champagne worthy drawn from a wide range of marketing and packaging members has revealed a list of of celebration. 006 How we did it Champs 2018 SUBBED.indd 6 23/01/2018 15:21 8 DRINKS INTERNATIONAL LOUIS ROEDERER LOUIS-ROEDERER.COM ouis Roederer has never finished outside the top five in the four EVERY YEAR previous years we EFFORTS ARE have run the World’s BEING MADE LMost Admired Champagne TO IMPROVE Brands supplement. And this QUALITY is the year it’s finally made the top slot, which has been hogged exclusively by Bollinger and have made over the past Krug for the past three years. few years. Being the modest What these three brands have man he is, he’d give the team in common is consistency. They much of the credit for this don’t make bad wines and every evolution in the Roederer year efforts are being made to winemaking. Collectively they improve quality, even when give great attention to the tiny they appear to already be at details, as we’ve reported in the peak of their game. That’s this supplement before. For what it takes to build a great example, the work they have champagne brand – consistent done on following the evolution quality over many years. This is of the second fermentation in what we ask our distinguished I note, for example, the 2012- grapefruit acidity keeps this bottle, which has in part led to voting academy to take notice of based blend of Brut Premier sparklingly fresh, there’s now the decision to give different first and foremost, consistency, that was in the market in late more depth, texture and mid- formats of the Premier Brut, plus evidence, most likely to be 2016/early 2017 had around 35% palate complexity, especially differing pressures by varying found inside the bottle, that the reserve wine in it from seven when in magnum, bringing the amount of sugar in the prise producer is striving to improve. different vintages, more Pinot something extra to the party. de mousse. In the case of Roederer, we Noir than usual (at around This is not just the result of While winemaking at know that the foundation for 46%) less Chardonnay and one major change in policy, Roederer is constantly evolving, that quality is the Rouzaud Meunier and didn’t go through but rather lots of tiny ones it’s only doing that in line with family’s 240ha vineyard estate, malolactic. While the trademark that Lécaillon and his team the changing character of the large enough to provide around juice being obtained from the two-thirds of the grapes it company’s vineyards, which needs, and mainly comprised THE ROEDERER ESTATE VINEYARD were for the first time 100% of Premier and Grand Cru organically farmed in 2017. The vineyards. This covers a total area of 240ha, enough to produce around 2.4m bottles area it is farming biodynamically of champagne. It is divided into 410 parcels, or ‘lieux-dits’. Some 130 are in continues to grow with the BRUT PREMIER BLEND Grand Cru villages and a further 73ha have Premier Cru status. All the Roederer ‘crystal estate’ on track to be So what helped Roederer clear vintage wines – that’s Cristal Blanc and Rosé, the regular vintage, Blanc 100% farmed this way by 2020, the final hurdle to the number de Blancs vintage and Rosé vintage, plus Brut Nature vintage – are 100% says Lecaillon. “Farming in one spot? From my perspective, produced from this estate. this way is generating more it’s undoubtedly partly down to The wine that is bought in from growers under contract is all fermented in a freshness, more chalkiness, the quality of the Brut Premier different part of the winery in Reims, across the road from where the estate more intensity, more complexity. blend. I believe head winemaker wine is kept. It has forced us to think Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon – who The largest part of the Roederer estate is in the Côte des Blancs where the differently at blending. The focus has worked at the house since house owns 126 parcels covering an area of 84ha. This is in villages including: is now on texture and soil site August 1989, amid the three Avize, Cramant, Oger, Mesnil-sur-Oger, Chouilly and Vertus. In the Montagne expression rather than on grape great vintages of ’88-’90 and de Reims Roederer owns 112 parcels covering 69ha in the villages of Verzenay, variety percentages.” is widely regarded as one of Verzy, Beaumont-sur-Vesles, Ambonnay, Bouzy, Louvois, Villers-Allerand, Écueil So the Roederer style the leading winemakers in the & Sacy. The Roederer vineyard holdings in the Vallée de la Marne total 172 continues to evolve dynamically, whole appellation – has taken parcels covering 68ha in the villages of Aÿ, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Dizy, Champillon, which seems likely to keep it it to another level over the past Hautvillers, Cumières, Damery, Mutigny and Epernay. in the top-rated brands of our few years. survey for years to come. 008-010 Champs 1-3 2018 SUBBED.indd 8 24/01/2018 10:41 MOST ADMIRED CHAMPAGNES 2018 POL ROGER that time called Pol Roger PR POLROGER.CO.UK Réserve Speciale, which was a 50/50 Chardonnay and Pinot andwiched between Noir blend, also entirely sourced Bollinger and from Grand Cru vineyards. Roederer last year They were both produced in third spot, this until the end of the ’80s and, if time round Pol it hadn’t been for the power of SRoger makes it to number the Churchill connection, this two, splitting winner Louis might still be the style of Pol Roederer from third-placed Roger’s prestige line today. Charles Heidsieck. This is now As we have seen in a number the third year in a row that Pol of recent tastings run by The has achieved a top-four finish – Finest Bubble in London, more evidence, if it was needed, at which Pol Roger vintage that Pol is a great favourite and Winston Churchill have among the professionals in the been shown together blind, drinks trade and it’s the brand’s many people take the view best result in the five years that the higher proportion of of the World’s Most Admired Chardonnay in the straight Champagne Brands. volume of vintage champagne vintage gives a better balance This hasn’t happened by compared to champagne’s and oaen more complexity, chance. A great deal of work norm, which is less than 10% especially in magnum, a format has gone on behind the scenes of any house’s production. This to which Pol seems ideally to take Winston Churchill’s IMPRESSIVE is sensibly used to preserve suited. favourite champagne to another Pol’s reputation as a producer My introduction to vintage level of consistent quality. Chief OFFERINGS HAVE of age-worthy, quite muscular Pol Roger was with the Blanc executive Laurent d’Harcourt, BEEN MADE champagnes that oaen show a de Chardonnay vintage, oaen who Joined Pol from Bruno NEARLY EVERY lovely silky richness. the unsung star of the range. Paillard’s operation, started EVEN YEAR In reality these are the wines It comes exclusively from five working with the larger-than- on which the house’s reputation Grands Crus – Oiry, Chouilly, life Patrick Noyelle on the for quality and it’s hard-to- Cramant, Avize and Oger – export side of the operation these wines perform when they match image are built, rather and provides further strong in January 2006. So he’s been are released, compared with than the Brut Réserve. The evidence that Pol Roger’s in the business a dozen years, the highlights of the previous longer ageing that non-vintage Chardonnay vineyards are quietly and unassumingly at the decade, where impressive cuvée gets, along with the something special. helm since the ebullient Noyelle offerings have been made nearly increasing portion of reserve A blind tasting of Pol Roger retired in 2013.