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The evolution of Dom Pérignon in ‘a new climatic era’
Chef de cave Vincent Chaperon is overseeing a radical change at Dom Pérignon and its production model. Giles Fallowfield speaks to him about the warming climate and extreme weather of recent harvests.
The 2015 vintage of Dom Pérignon was the hottest vintage in Champagne since records began (even eclipsing 1976 and 2003 harvests) and also one of the driest, with virtually no rain between May and mid-August.
Among the current challenges, selecting the precise picking date for individual plots in the grand and premier cru villages has become of paramount importance in Chaperon’s fight to preserve the complex style of Dom Pérignon wines. In particular their longevity, so the programme of making long-lived, slowly-evolving Champagnes of the highest quality for later P2 and P3 releases can be maintained.
Speaking at the launch, Chaperon said that as a result of the drought like conditions, soils performed very differently over the vineyard, depending on how well they retained moisture.
Pinot Noir
He gave the example of Pinot Noir in the Aÿ grand cru lieu-dit of La Côte in the vineyard just above the village cemetery where Dom Pérignon has a 10-hectare south-facing plot that sits directly on chalk.
He said: “Here where it was very hot and dry, the vines were suffering in 2015 and not ripening properly producing some vegetal notes and harsh tannins. While our north-east and eastern facing plots in Verzy and Verzenay on the north side of the Montagne with more grass and vegetation [between the vine rows] preserved more moisture and produced better balanced grapes.”
“The great thing with Dom Pérignon, where we have access to 900 hectares of premier and grand cru vineyards, is we have the chance and possibility of selection and in a year like 2015 where a vegetal character and phenolic aggressiveness can be a problem, that’s very important.”
Balance
On balance, the Pinot Noir, which makes up 51% of the 2015 blend (the other 49% is Chardonnay), generally performed best in 2015, said Chaperon.
But while warmer summers are leading to higher potential alcohol levels in the vineyard, he says they don’t have to go above 11deg potential alcohol. More commonly he picks Pinot Noir at 10.5-11deg “to get the balance I want in the grapes”.
He continued: “It’s about getting the right balance between the ripeness of the fruit versus the necessary structure and tannins. You sometimes lose a lot of acidity and vibrancy if you leave picking until 11deg potential alcohol.”
In terms of the volume produced, because of this strict selection process, he said production is down for the 2015 to around 70% of a “normal year”.
Assemblage
Chaperon added that the team started to change the winemaking approach in 2008, vinifying more and more separately by climats.
For him it’s very important to see Champagne first and foremost as a ‘vin de assemblage’ – within assemblage he includes dosage and the whole maturation process and assemblage starts before tasting the vins clairs in the winery.
“Today in Champagne you have to be in the vineyard tasting grapes. You have to go back earlier in the cycle looking at all the factors that affect the material you get to blend with. It’s very important, especially in dry hot years like 2015, to help you select precise dates when to pick any particular plot.”
He is also “changing the way we taste still wines”.
“We are stopping smelling but go instead straight to the palate,” he continued, “the wine’s texture has become the most important factor, how the wine touches the palate.”
Tactivity
He called it ‘tactivity’ and the tasting team are now looking at the touch, shape, volume (wide or thin), suppleness, weight (light or heavy) and grain in the mouth (silky or velvet) in their analysis.
One of the factors making DP more accessible, with much more personality showing at the time of launch, is the extra time on lees – but most importantly, a longer post disgorgement ageing period, which is particularly true for the P2 and P3 releases.
Chaperon wrote tasting notes for the 2015 wine at the time of disgorgement in January 2023, describing it as “somewhat dark at first” but even at that point noting its “impressive mouthfeel”. Eighteen months later as we tasted the wine together, he said how “very quickly that [character] changed between six and 15 months [on the cork].
He described it as a wine of “authority, generosity and sucrosity”, thanks to the ripe fruit; open and exuberant with an intense, developed mid-palate.
“There’s more dry extract and tannins, you can feel that. The phenolics have taken over the role of providing freshness and vibrancy,” he noted, “it’s less about acidity.
“It’s driven from the attack to the finish, ending firmly on the tongue. There was too much focus in the past on acidity, 25 years ago, now there’s less because there is much more to say.”
Power
Generosity and power is something that they saw the 2006 vintage of Dom Pérignon, which was tasted beside the new wine, in its P2 version.
Chaperon said that his predecessor Richard Geoffroy was worried that the ’06 was showing too much character, power and structure at one point in its evolution. It needed the extra time they gave it before release – it was the first wine to be launched after ten rather than seven- or eight-years ageing – with the higher phenolic content helping to keep it fresh.
But while 2006 was another very warm year in Champagne, the main difference between the two for Chaperon was “in ’06 we had rain, the vineyard wasn’t suffering from drought. We had sufficient water especially at the end of August when we became worried we were not going to get enough maturity. So we had to wait for the right time to pick to reach it.”
Flying solo
Chaperon has officially been the chef de cave at Dom Pérignon since the start of 2019, but as he told the drinks business after the 2015 launch tasting (15 July), his mentor and predecessor Richard Geoffroy wasn’t really around for the 2018 harvest, so that in effect was the first DP wine he made solo – and what a vintage to start with.
Upon first meeting Chaperon more than two decades ago, he was working at Moët, becoming part of the Moët & Chandon winemaking team a year after joining the house in 1999.
He started working more directly with Geoffroy in 2005 (Moët wines then, as now, are ultimately the responsibility of the Dom Pérignon winemaker). Not long afterwards – Chaperon said the very hot, dry mid-August 2003 harvest was a watershed moment for all in Champagne, “the dawn of a new climatic era” – Geoffroy decided the current R&D programme was no longer fit for purpose and shut it down.
He gave Chaperon the job of redesigning, re-organising and running it, which he did for a decade from 2008 until 2018.
Crossroads
At that point, just after the Millennium, Champagne was at a crossroads. It had reached the maximum possible level of production (with all the defined vineyard area planted), and was starting to face up to the major issues of global warming and the consequent far more erratic and extreme weather pattern, while at the same time having to take a much more environmentally-sustainable approach to farming without recourse to the widespread use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers.
This triple whammy required a major rethink in terms of R&D.
He said: “The first thing I did was to build a ‘pilot winery’ which became super important in order to test all the experimental work that was going on in the vineyard.
“In terms of size, it was somewhere between a laboratory and a full-scale winery with some 50 vats and sizes going up from 600 to 2,000 litres. Large enough in scale at around 20Hl to properly test out experimental batches of wine.
“About the size of a small vigneron in Champagne.”
Raising value
According to Chaperon, the Champagne model has been changing from one aimed at driving volume to one designed to increase quality and raise value.
He concluded: “We started a programme examining the available rootstock for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir about ten years ago through observation. Looking for things like more resilience to disease (botrytis, oidium, mildew), heatwaves and drought; plus suitability for an organic farming approach.
“Planting those vines that look promising in our experimental vineyard near Reims with the idea of creating a new genetic pool. The last time we did this was in the 70s when the main aim was to find ways of increasing production. But now the aims are very different.”
“Similarly, we have created our own yeast for fermentation purposes and this was newly selected between 2005 and 2010 whittling down some 250 strains collected in the vineyard to get to the one of two we want to use.
New products
As for the future, he is also working on a project for a new addition to the Dom Pérignon range but won’t be drawn on any detail other than to say it’s about “space and time together” and relates back to the history of the brand.
As he pointed out: “I’ve only had just over five years in charge and maybe I need ten – it took Richard Geoffroy 25 years to develop the concept of Plenitude.”
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