The 7 Grapes of Champagne | Explained

Hello and welcome to a new RT1Exchange video. After looking into the fine wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy in previous series on this channel, let's embark on a journey learning about arguably, or maybe not arguably, the finest sparkling wines in the world. Of course, I'm talking about the wines from Champagne. I'm sure you already know Champagne is not a style or a type of wine, right? Champagne is a region in France, just about an hour, an hour and a half outside of Paris. It is a cold region with a unique terroir allowing to produce and craft extremely fine wines as we know and understand. But what else do you need to know about Champagne? In this series, we're going to cover the different terroirs that make Champagne so unique, the producers, a little bit about winemaking, and more and more to come very soon. So step by step, you get a general yet detailed understanding of the region and its wines. But first, in today's episode, I want to get you to understand an essential part of what makes Champagne wine what it is, and that's the different grapes that they grow and use to make their delicious bubblies. Let's go! And I am going to keep things simple in this series, always. There is no need to be complicated to overcomplicate wine. Yet, we're going to get into some very interesting details, the nitty-gritty of what makes a good wine, a good Champagne wine. One crucial aspect you need to understand about how Champagne is made, and most sparkling wines around the world in fact, is that they are made blending wines made from red grapes and wines made from white grapes. There are not many wines around the world that are made in this way. In fact, it's generally forbidden by law in Europe to make wines blending red and white grapes, even for making rosés, and that's because authorities in Europe in particular generally don't want wineries to blend things too liberally or tamper with blending too many things. But Champagne is a notable exception, and we're all very glad that it is, because blending red and white grapes allows them to craft fine, complex and balanced sparkling wines. What happens here in a few words is that for making bubblies, you need to produce and pick grapes that are not very ripe. Grapes that are still rather tangy and acidic rather than the sweet ones. If you've tasted grapes, you would have noticed that the sweetness level can be quite different. So they want to obtain a refreshing, crisp and refined Champagne and not a heavy, flabby sparkling wine, if you wish. So for this, you need really crisp and not so ripe grapes. Grapes in Champagne are picked at a sweetness level that would give a 9-11% alcohol wine maximum, against a normal 13-15% for still wines. When grapes are underripe, even red grapes give a juice that is white when you press them, because the red pigments that make grapes red stay in the skin and don't color or give color to the wine and the juice. This is why you can make white wine out of a green-white juice, even coming out of red grapes. Champagne, or Champagne, I should say, you know, I am French, we say Champagne, uses almost exclusively 3 types of grapes, 2 of which are some of the most famous grape varieties in the world. I'm sure you've heard about them already. We'll see in a minute that 7 grapes are actually allowed and were traditionally used to make Champagne, and they are fascinating to explore, if you're looking for tasty curiosities, different things from Champagne, but we'll get back to this in a minute. For now, let's talk about those 3 main grape varieties that virtually all Champagnes, with rare exceptions, are made from. The white grape used for making Champagne is the all-famous, the almighty Chardonnay. The great advantage of Chardonnay in Champagne is that it's a rather neutral grape, not a lot of powerful flavors to it when you think about it, compared to a Riesling, a Muscat, a Viognier for example, so this allows to make fine and zingy Champagnes with delicate notes of citrus, some lemon and a bit of lime, and a delicious underlying brioche character that we love coming from Chardonnay. Chardonnay often provides the backbone of acidity in blends. Champagnes made exclusively from Chardonnay are called Blancs de Blancs, understand white wine, blanc meaning white in French, made from white grapes. So, 100% Chardonnay Champagnes can be some of the finest Champagnes, like those coming from Grand Cru villages, in particular of the Côte des Blancs, which is a sub-region of Champagne that crafts the finest Chardonnays on this really characteristic chalky limestone soil that is the best in Champagne for Chardonnay. The two red grapes in Champagne are the famous Pinot Noir and the less famous Pinot Meunier. So let's talk about those. Pinot Meunier adds layers of delicate red berry notes, and I can see there is a bit of Pinot Noir here because it's got this slightly pinkish hue. Pinot Noir brings in fruitiness and hints of grapefruit as well, still with a good solid acidity. It adds complexity and depth to the blend, some liveliness as well. Pinot Meunier is a cousin of Pinot Noir, hence it also being called a Pinot, it's really not grown much outside of Champagne. Meunier adds a lot of up-front fruitiness to the Champagne, an oilier, smoother texture, less acidity, and a more relaxed expression. It's a little bit easier to understand, it softens the blends, making them more appealing and gentle when you taste them. It's a really fascinating grape, and I love the influence of Meunier in Champagne, but often top Champagnes have less of it, or no Meunier at all, because it can lead to slightly, perhaps arguably, possibly, admittedly, slightly simpler and less profound blends. Blending those 3 though, from different areas of Champagne, as we'll see in future episodes, Champagne winemakers are able to balance their wines, combining different characteristics of each grape for more complexity, more depth, and overall, more elegance, the art of blending. This is one of the many secrets of Champagne, and we'll talk about them all in this series, trust me, but this is one of the very important keys to really understand Champagne. And did you know you can taste Champagne not only in a flute or a coupe, but in a standard normal wine glass shape? But that's another topic. I won't go into a lot of detail about those grapes, the forgotten grapes of Champagne, because they are quite anecdotal and rarely used in Champagne. Yet, if you want to impress your friends with the completeness of your wine knowledge, I owe to give you the possibility to do that. You must know that there are not only 3 grapes that everyone knows and always talks about in Champagne, but in fact, there are 7 of them, 7 that are allowed, and sometimes even used. The other 4 are Pinot Blanc, which is a very common grape used for making sparkling wine, and a white grape of the Pinot family as well, that is often used for making sparkling wines, Crémant, in other regions of France, but around the world, like in Alsace and Burgundy. It's allowed in Champagne, but rather rare. You also have 3 local grapes that are called Petit Mellier, Arbanne, and Frommanteau. Petit Mellier and Arbanne in particular make very characterful Champagnes I've had the opportunity to taste. If you want to try something completely different that is still called Champagne, you can find variety of wines made from those, such as the Petit Mellier made by a producer that's called Duval Leroy, or the Arbanne made by Moutard, or there is one also by Serge and Olivier Auriol. One of my favorites of all Champagnes, and made by one of my favorite producers, which is Moutard, this wine there is called Cuvée des 6 Cépaches, which uses 6 of the 7 grapes that are allowed in Champagne to craft a fantastic, must-try wine if you're curious. And that was what you needed to know in short about the grapes that are used in Champagne. In the next episode of this Champagne series, I'll give you an overview of the different sub-regions of the large wine regions of Champagne. It's quite large, and we'll talk about why they actually matter. This will be a really important aspect to understand if you want to get into the detail of how wine and Champagne is made so great. So make sure to stay tuned as we'll talk about this. We're going to be learning and exploring the whole world of wine on this channel, so make sure to also check out the other series that I've already made, the Bordeaux and the Burgundy series, very detailed and complete about those regions. Again, make sure to stay tuned to the channel, I'll leave you to watch the other videos if you're interested, and I will see you soon, in the wonderful world of fine and rare wine, with the RT Wine Exchange platform. Cheers!