The 2019 Champagne Summer Preview

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | JULY 24, 2019

I tasted a wide range of wines during two highly educational visits to Champagne this year. Our Summer Preview includes everything from reviews of new releases coming into the market, from both grower domaines and grand marques, as well as notes on a handful of collectibles. The pace of change on the ground is dizzying, which makes Champagne one of the most dynamic regions in the world today.

The essence of Champagne terroir. Left: Vines planted on 60-80 centimeters of clay topsoil over a bed of pure chalk. Right: Chalk remains cool and moist to the touch, even after a severe heat wave.

Champagne – Wines of Place

As I have written here before many times, Champagne is far more than a celebration or special occasion wine. All it takes is one look at the best restaurant wine lists to understand the mind share Champagne continues to garner. But what makes Champagne so unique? To, me, it ultimately comes down to terroir, that most defining but also elusive concept that is so central to the understanding of site-specific wines, starting with Burgundy, of course. While terroir is often interpreted as characteristics purely of soil, a more practical definition also includes microclimate, altitude, exposure and the whole range of site-specific traits that give wines their distinctive personalities. The two photos above explain what makes Champagne so special. They were taken in early July 2019, just after a brutal heat spike. On the left we see a vineyard in Cramant sitting on 60-80 centimeters of clay topsoil over a bed of pure chalk. The natural struggle the vines must endure to find nutrients through the clay and into the chalk is clearly visible. When I picked up a piece of chalk (pictured on the right), it was cool to the touch and moist. And that was after the heat wave. This, in a nutshell, is Champagne. Of course, there are many more layers of the onion to peel as we seek to better understand how place influences what we taste, but this is the starting point.

A moment of calm in the cave as Olivier Collin shows me his 2018s from barrel.

A First Look at 2018…