2016 Champagne: Harvest Report

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | APRIL 11, 2017&nbsp;

My annual spring tastings of vins clairs suggest 2016 is an uneven vintage in Champagne. The wines I tasted were on the softer, more open-knit side of things relative to how&nbsp;vins clairs show in the very best vintages. Of course, vins clairs will go through several transformations as they are blended and bottled to become Champagne, and then aged prior to being disgorged and ultimately released, a process that takes a minimum of a few years. These are some early observations. The Growing Season Two thousand sixteen got off to a rocky
start in Champagne.&nbsp;A frost on April 27 and 28 lowered potential yields anywhere from 10% to
as much as 100% in the most extreme (but rare) cases. Rain during May through
July was three times higher than normal, which, among other things, led to high
mildew pressure and resulting in lower
potential yields. Warm, dry weather arrived in late July, when I visited the
vineyards, and continued into August. Temperatures were high enough to stress
the vines and even burn grapes in some spots. Conditions improved towards the
end of the season. Rain just before harvest was especially problematic in the Côtes
de Blancs. It is a year in which being able to be nimble in the vineyards was
absolutely critical. For that reason, on paper, 2016 favors small, grower
estates where proprietors and their workers can get into vineyards quickly, on
a Saturday or Sunday if needed, as opposed to the larger houses that by
definition have much less flexibility in their labor forces. On average, yields
are down 33%.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1491916399873-Chardonnay+copy.jpeg">Uneven ripening, with a high incidence of millerandage (shot
berries) in Chardonnay as seen on July 27, 2016&nbsp;

"Maturation for the Pinot Noirs was pretty
even,” Guillaume Selosse told me. “For the Chardonnays it was a different story
altogether. Ripening was highly uneven, not just within bunches themselves but
also from vine to vine, where there was a high degree of variation. These
conditions made choosing the right moment to harvest very difficult.” I heard similar comments at many addresses.&nbsp;A
contrarian view was offered by Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon at Roederer. “In my
view, 2016 is a Chardonnay vintage, but we had to wait until very late in the
season to achieve the levels of ripeness we were
looking for. The Pinots had a
slightly shorter vegetative cycle (Editors
note: the time between flowering and ripening) of around 88-89 days, but
the Chardonnays got the benefit of the full 100 days that is considered one of
the hallmarks of a high quality vintage.”&nbsp;

The 2016 Vins Clairs

In my view, 2016 is an average to perhaps
slightly higher than average vintage that, for most houses, especially the large
players, is probably best suited to reserve wines as opposed to&nbsp;tête de cuvées. I expect the&nbsp;tête de cuvées that are made to be bottled in relatively small amounts.&nbsp;The Pinot Noirs and Meuniers
are generally a notch or two above the Chardonnays. While I did not see any
wines with significant flaws, I have also been doing this long enough to know
the likelihood of a producer, small or large, showing a vin clair with an obvious
flaw is close to zero. It is hardly a
coincidence that this year producers showed fewer Chardonnay samples than in years past.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1491916543531-PInotVerzenay+copy.jpeg"> Pinot Noir in Verzenay, some of the best fruit I saw in July, 2016

Broadly speaking, the 2016s are soft, open
and diffuse. In other words the wines lack the natural tension and energy that
is a signature of the finest vintages in Champagne. On paper, the 2016s appear to
have a good amount of acidity, but in general the wines feel flabby and too
accessible. The
best 2016s I tasted were in the Montagne de Reims, followed by the Marne
Valley. The Côtes des Blancs appears to have been significantly affected by the
conditions of the growing season and a heavy rain just before harvest. I tasted
many Chardonnay vins clairs, including wines from grand cru villages, that are
diluted and lacking any real depth or pedigree. Numerous vins
clairs in the Côtes
des Blancs suggest producers allowed yields to be excessively high and/or
harvested too early.

2016 Looking Ahead….

At Jacquesson, Jean-Hervé&nbsp;Chiquet told me he
was leaning toward bottling his 700-series Champagnes and possibly
just the Terres Rouges among his single-vineyard wines. Taittinger plans to
bottle small amounts of their Comtes de Champagne Blanc and Rosé. Didier Depond will declare the
vintage at Delamotte, but not Salon. At Roederer, Lécaillon will bottle both
Cristal and Cristal Rosé. Other Chefs de Caves were more noncommittal.

All of the vins
clairs in this article were tasted during a trip to Champagne
in March 2017. Given the size of the region, along with my focus on top growers and houses, the&nbsp;vins clairs&nbsp;I tasted naturally represent a small sampling that skews towards the upper end of the qualitative range. Even so, the personality and potential quality of the vintage is evident.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1491916654056-VineyardsinOgerCover+copy.jpeg"> 

Vineyards in OgerYou
Might Also Enjoy

<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/champagne-the-season-s-new-releases-dec-2016">Champagne:
The Season’s New Releases</a>, Antonio Galloni, December 2016

<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/champagne-the-2016-summer-preview-aug-2016">Champagne:
The 2016 Summer Preview</a>, Antonio Galloni, August 2016

<a target="_blank" href="http://vinous.com/articles/2015-champagne-first-thoughts-mar-2016">2015
Champagne – First Thoughts</a>, Antonio Galloni, March 2016

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.vinousmedia.com/articles/champagne-2014-first-impressions-may-2015">Champagne 2014: First Impressions</a>, Antonio
Galloni, May&nbsp;2015&nbsp;

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