Champagne Salon

This show is sponsored by the Office of Champagne USA, asking you to join the growing movement of consumers demanding truth in labeling and wine. Go to www.champagne.us to sign the petition. In this village, Le Menil-sur-Rogers, it's a very tiny village in Champagne, but very famous for the reputation, for the quality of the grapes, and for the Chardonnay grapes. Not for all the grapes, for the Chardonnay. It's really the top of the top. Only one grape, Chardonnay grapes. Only one village, Le Menil-sur-Rogers, and only vintage. And we produce only three, three, four vintages by the year. We produce only 37 vintages in one century. And there are only one cuvee. There are no different, no range in the company. It's only one wine. The history of Mr. Salon is very special. We talk a lot about terroir in Champagne since a few years. That was not the case some years ago, I would say. And from the beginning, he understood the terroir of Champagne, and he wanted to extract what was for him, you know, the terroir he preferred. This vineyard is very special because it is located in Micoto, and receives the sediments from the top of the Coteau. So we really have a particularity in this vineyard, which is to have a root system that plunges very deeply into the chalk. It is not aged, it is a young vineyard. So we took this plot a few years ago. It is six years old now. It was planted six years ago. And so the goal is to have a vineyard in full balance with its terroir. And so we're going to work on it so that it lives as long as possible, that the root system is as well developed as possible and penetrates well into the soil. So we're going to work all year to have mastered yields. The key word of the year is mastery, respect. So we're going to avoid all excesses. We're going to work on the size to avoid having excess yields, which means that the vineyard could not reach, for example, maturity, or it would be too sensitive to rot. We're going to work the vineyard on the protection part, so that the grapes stay healthy until the end, while limiting the use of chemical products as much as possible. We are on Chardonnay. The vineyard is planted around 8,000 hectares in Champagne. So what we can see is a relatively large density. Here we have a size system called Cordon de Roya, which is a bit original in the region where the dominant is rather Chablis. The objective is to have a vineyard on which will start branches, and these branches will bear fruit, and to always have a little wood in the feet to be able to cut again the following year so that we have a possibility of rejuvenation in the future. I tried this size. There are other regions in Champagne where it is widely used, especially in the Blacks. The interest is that at the level of the ground, I have a relatively clear ground between the feet. So it allows me here to work under the row with mechanical tools without damaging the plants. So I still have an easier part to work under the row, and that's why I went on the Cordon de Roya option. I think the vineyard is a garden. When you put a vineyard in place, you don't put it in place for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. You put it in place for 40 years, even 50 years, even 60 years. So to get to an old vineyard, you have to respect it, and you have to work this vineyard every year with the objective of getting the best quality. I am very, very often in the vineyards. For me, it is important to be in the vineyards because I think you can't work for a vineyard of image and quality if you don't stay behind an office. So I am someone who is very, very present on the ground. The terroir of Le Menil is known to make very strong wines with a lot of acidity. That's why we need to age the bottles 10 years before releasing because it really needs time to get maturity. We age the wine minimum 10 years. It's the minimum. For example, for the Vintage 85, we kept the wine 14 years in the cellar before the disgorgement. If we need six months or one year more, we take this time for the top quality. When the wine is released, it's because the wine is perfect. It's perfect to drink. And after the disgorgement, you can keep the wine minimum 5, 10, 20 years. No problem for Salon. With the 96 Salon, it's fantastic to drink this wine now, of course. But if you have the opportunity to keep the wine 20, 30, 50 years, it's perfect. So here you see the yeast and the sediments that we have in the bottles for the second fermentation. So here the bottles of Salon will age. The caves here were built at the beginning of the last century. You can just see here where the cellars were rebuilt with stones. So we are really in the shock that we have in the soil here of Le Ménil. This is what gives the natural temperature here. This is here the 1996 that we riddle. And in fact, for Salon, we still make a traditional hand riddling. So we just put the bottles on the pupitre to start the riddling. And so here we have to wait at least one week before we start making the riddling. Because yes, the yeast needs to deposit. When Bernard is riddling, he's turning the bottles but also giving the bottles more inclination so that we get all the sediments near the capsule to be ready for disgorgement. In eight hours a day, he's able to riddle 50,000 bottles. Do you listen to music? Music is forbidden. I listen to the sound of the bottles on the pupitre. I've been doing this for over 40 years. So now it's a habit. This is the old ones, with the old models of the Salon fashion. What do you like about the riddling? It's to see the evolution of the deposit that goes down in the cup. So I look at the bubble. What is the bubble? Because the bubble is a compression chamber. Once it arrives in the capsule, it ejects the deposit. So you may be a bit splashed by champagne. It takes time to learn how to disgorge. If the air bubble is coming too fast, then the sediments are going down in the bottle. So it's really not to put it up too early. It's really to be in the right time to open it so that the sediments don't get down in the bottle. When Bernard began working and disgorging, it was cork before. We didn't have metal caps. Here on the old vintages of Salon, we have cork. For example, in 1959, we switched to a metal cap in 1966. What's the oldest bottle you've ever had? 1959. It's incredible because it was just disgorged from the sell-out. We do not add dosage after. It's really the pure expression of the wine. It's still fresh, bubbly, but with very matured flavors. For me, in 1959, it was like coffee notes. Like we say in French, torréfaction.