Champagne [Boxed Book & Map Set]: The Essential Guide to the Wines, Producers, and Terroirs of the Iconic Region - Hardcover

Liem, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1607748428 ISBN 13: 9781607748427

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2017

Synopsis

Winner of the 2018 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award in "Reference, History, Scholarship"
Winner of the 2017 André Simon Drink Book Award
Winner of the 2018 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Award for "Wine, Beer & Spirits"

From Peter Liem, the lauded expert behind the top-rated online resource ChampagneGuide.net, comes this groundbreaking guide to the modern wines of Champagne--a region that in recent years has undergone one of the most dramatic transformations in the wine-growing world. This luxurious box set includes a pullout tray with a complete set of seven vintage vineyard maps by Louis Larmat, a rare and indispensable resource that beautifully documents the region’s terroirs. With extensive grower and vintner profiles, as well as a fascinating look at Champagne’s history and lore, Champagne explores this legendary wine as never before.

About this title

About the Author

PETER LIEM is an American wine writer and the author of ChampagneGuide.net. Following nearly a decade in the wine trade, he was a senior editor, critic, and tasting director for Wine & Spirits, and his writings on sherry, champagne, and other wines have also appeared in publications such as The World of Fine Wine, The Art of Eating, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION 

I enjoyed my fair share of champagne as a young wine professional, but the first magical champagne, the one that really pushed the boundaries of what I thought champagne could be, was the 1979 Salon. I tasted it in 1996 at the wine store in San Francisco where I worked: we were selling the 1979 for $99, which was expensive for the time, but not nearly as prohibitively priced as the same bottle would be today.

Most champagnes are blended wines, which offer a multifaceted harmony, with diverse components coming together to create a complex whole. In contrast, the Salon, which comes exclusively from one village—Le Mesnil-sur-Oger—felt distinctly narrower in scope yet no less complete. Tasting it, I immediately knew it was different than any champagne I’d had before, and I was filled with questions: Where was Le Mesnil? Why did its wine taste this way? Did all Le Mesnil champagnes taste like this? And perhaps even more importantly, if the Salon was indicative of Le Mesnil, what did champagnes from other villages taste like?

***

The contemporary movement in Champagne is more than the rise of grower estates, or the reduction of dosage, or the creation of single-vineyard wines, or the practice of organic and biodynamic viticulture. All these things are emblematic of Champagne today, yet they are reflective of a larger transformation, which is, rather simply, the acknowledgment of champagne as a wine like any other. While both consumers and producers were content in the recent past to treat champagne as a brand, or as an object of lifestyle, or as an entity in the wine world that was somehow less serious than Burgundy or Barolo, the prevailing attitudes have shifted, at least in the arenas that matter. Champagne is now subject to the same questions asked of any other wine and held to the same standards—and now that it’s being held accountable, it must provide satisfactory answers.

One of the primary functions of a truly fine wine, no matter where it comes from, is to say something about the place where it was grown. Terroir is a subject that hasn’t been adequately explored in Champagne, and yet, it plays a fundamental role in the creation of the wine’s character, just as it does in any other wine region. It’s for this reason that I’ve focused on terroir as the theme of this book.

It is still not yet possible to write a comprehensive analysis of Champagne’s terroir, given the lack of tools and information available compared with other historic regions. However, it’s my hope that this book can in some small way help to push the dialogue further toward acknowledging champagne as a terroir-expressive wine, and to provide a foundation for envisioning that. The complexities of that discussion are still to be revealed as champagne continues to evolve, and that is part of what makes Champagne such an exciting wine region today.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1607748428
• ISBN 13: 9781607748427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 328