Cristal in Magnum: It’s Another World

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | DECEMBER 17, 2019

I have had a number of unforgettable and deeply educational tastings at Roederer over the years. This was one of the most fascinating. It is well known that wines show better from magnums. That is especially true with Champagne. But why? Roederer’s long time Chef de Caves Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon pulled out a remarkable selection of Cristal and Cristal Rosés earlier this year to show exactly why.

The obvious reason why Champagne shows so well from magnum is that while glass is a storage vessel for whites and reds, it is also, importantly, a fermentation vessel for Champagne. After the vins clairs have been assembled into blends, they are bottled the spring of the following year, with a touch of yeast, sugar and liqueur de tirage, that creates the secondary fermentation, and the bubbles. That much is pretty simple to understand, but there is more to it.

“In tirage, we add a bit less sugar to the magnums than the bottles to lower the pressure under which the wines undergo the secondary fermentation in magnum,” explains Lécaillon. “We do this because the wines really struggle through the secondary fermentation, which takes two weeks longer than in bottle because there is less oxygen. As a result, we have more residual sugar – 1 to 2 grams per liter, as opposed to virtually dry for the bottles, and that produces a lot more glycerol, giving Champagnes from magnum a richer textural feel.”

Roederer’s longtime Chef de Caves Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon

Lécaillon pulled out an extraordinary collection of magnums for this tasting held earlier in the year in Reims. “The best year of each decade,” he said. I imagine 2008 was excluded simply by virtue of being way too young in magnum and Cristal Rosés from the 1970s are painfully rare. (Readers will find plenty of notes on those wines in our database). So, that meant Cristal 2002, 1996, 1988 and 1979, followed by Cristal Rosé 1995, 1989 and 1982.