In my world I just can’t get enough Champagne all year round.
Many others turn their focus to bubbly around the holidays readying themselves for the big blow out night that requires the popping of the corks at midnight. So, just in time for the celebrations there’s a new Champagne in town!
Champagne Collet is new to our shores but it has existed for nine decades and has a unique backstory. Unlike the grand marques owned by families for hundreds of years with their legendary widows like Madame Clicquot and Madame Pommery or founding fathers like Dom Perignon, Champagne Collet is first cooperative in all of France. In 1921 a group of viticulturists (grape growers), some 700 strong, who had diligently worked small acreage of Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards to sell their grapes to the big marques, banded together in a grape growers union and founded their own house of Champagne Collet in Ay.
Because the growers owned the top crus terroir, their Champagne is remarkably good and well priced for such great bubbly. I tasted through the line with Jeff Pogash, who is representing Collet and who, while working for years at Moet Hennessy, first introduced me to their range of prestige brands such as Moet & Chandon, Dom Perignon, Ruinart, Veuve Clicquot, and Krug. He assured me that I would be very impressed with the taste and balance of Collet.
And Mr. Pogash was right. I especially loved Collet Extra Brut ($53), combining Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, which has about a third of the dosage (extra sugar) of Brut. It was opulent with fresh grapefruit, Mirabelle plum and a hint of apple. It was beautifully balanced and had that nice acidity and tension.
I also found the 100 percent Chardonnay, Blanc de Blancs ($53) outstanding with lovely aromas and brioche flavors and great freshness. Even the entry level Brut ($40), also combining the three main champagne grapes, had a clean fresh effervescence and seemed to be an ideal celebration bottle.
In my search for special cuvées , I came across a micro-cuvée designer bubbly, Champagne Artéis & Co. It’s a collaboration between Champagne professional Fabien Gay, who developed the micro-cuvée, and artist and nightlife impresario, André Saraiva (owner of Le Baron), who designed the edgy street art bottle (which has “Je t’aime” written inside the wire cap). Communication and media entrepreneurs Fabien Moreau and Alexandre Sap also joined in to develop the hipster brand.
Gay lives in Epernay, France and works closely on the dosages and disgorgements for Artéis & Co with their elaborateur, a young vigneron in Vinay, Jean Philippe Diot. They’ve introduced three expressions, Brut, Rosé, and Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs. I tasted the silky-textured Brut 1999, their first release, which notes of dried fruit and honey, at the launch dinner in Manhattan. Artéis & Co. is available at André Balazs properties (The Standard in Manhattan, Sunset Beach in the Hamptons) for around $100 a bottle or on the website: www.arteis.co.
Handcrafted in Eperney since 1997, Champagne La Caravelle is the creation of the Jammet family, who owned the celebrated French restaurant La Caravelle (once located at 33 West 55th Street). Rita and André Jammet source their grapes from the best villages: the Chardonnay is almost entirely from the Côte des Blancs; the Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims and the Pinot Meunier from the Grande Vallée de la Marne. Try the elegant Rosé, which is salmon pink-hued and has red berries, pomegranate, fennel and flowers notes. Or the Cuvée Nina, which has an intoxicating bouquet of jasmine and a crisp flavor of stone fruit, brioche and gingerbread. La Caravelle is served at top Manhattan restaurants (The Lambs Club, Del Posto and Daniel) at around $22 a glass and $90 a bottle.
