by Andrew Chalk
Champagne Pommery is an easily recognised brand in the US, identified by the striking blue label used for its most popular expression Brut Royal, The company goes back to 1858 when it was founded by Alexandre Louis Pommery and Narcisse Greno to engage in the business of wool trading. Alexandre passed just two years after the founding and it was his widow Louise Pommery who pivoted the business to Champagne production.
Two landmarks figure in the company’s early years. First, in 1874, Champagne Pommery claimed it was the first house to produce the dry style described as ‘brut’. It seems hard to believe, given the ubiquity of dry Champagne nowadays, that Champagne at that time was a sweet wine.
Second, between 1868 and 1874 the château, known as Domaine Pommery, was constructed in Reims under the close direction of Mme Pommery. The result of this is that Domaine Pommery is the most visually arresting piece of architecture among Champagne châteaux. It comprises five buildings that appear to have been designed by five different architects, each without regard to what the other was doing. Part French chateau style, part neo-renaissance, part Elizabethan neo-Gothic, all were based on the styles of the stately homes of her five favorite English and Scottish customers.
Beneath the edifices run 18 kilometers of cellar tunnels supported by Gothic and Norman style arches.
Vranken has owned Pommery since 2002 under the Vranken-Pommery Monopole Group. The years since then are considered a period of the brand re-establishing itself in world markets. First, under cellar master Thierry Grano and, since 2017, under his protege Clément Pierlot. Pierlot started at Pommery in 2001, so the succession maintained continuity in operations.
Clément recently came through Dallas on a US trip. He brought me up to date on what is happening at Champagne Pommery and tasted me on his wines.
WINEMAKING IN CHAMPAGNE
In discussions with the cellar master of a distinguished producer in one of the talismanic wine regions of the world, it seemed like a good chance to find out how the career path differs from that in the USA.
Training
First, the path to cellar master (head winemaker and viticulturist). In the USA an aspirant would aim to go through the Oenology and Viticulture program at the University of California, Davis to get world-class training. On graduation, take a position with a large established winery to pack in lots of real-world experience. Then, step into an assistant winemaker’s shoes at a mainstream or boutique brand, or start his own winery. Along the way, there could be several employer changes and maybe consulting stints on the side.
I expected Champagne to be totally different. Specifically, a more traditional apprenticeship model. But I was largely wrong. Clément graduated in enology and viticulture from the University of Montpellier (one of France’s top wine schools), spent time with the CIVC, Champagne’s wine regulatory body, and then joined Champagne Pommery. I had also expected enology and viticulture (agronomy, in the idiom) to be treated as separate subjects but they were taught as two parts of a whole, intrinsically linked.
Two very different wine histories, one ancient, one new, but credentialism rules in both, so does the belief that the winemaker must also have a good understanding of viticulture.
But, after graduation, he discovered “the Champagne region is totally separated from the wine business, it's another world. If you wanted to enter the Champagne region, 20 years ago when I arrived, you had to choose between viticulture and enology. I went to vineyard management, I was vineyard manager for Pomeroy.”
However, new winemakers like him wanted to change things. “...step by step, I think the split between enology and agriculture has been less and less, and new winemakers like me decided to gather the viticulture part and the winemakers part.” But it is a work in progress. “There are not so many houses like this. I would say maybe Roederer Estate, Bollinger, and us.”
For nineteen years Clément worked his way up under the highly respected Thierry Gasco. He described how it was in the last four years that Thierry handed over the reins. “During two years, we worked together and Thierry Gasco signed the wine. And two years after, we worked together but I signed the wine. So that's how we did the transition”.
Scope of Work of the Cellar Master of Champagne Pommery
Clément oversees a range of Pommery brands from Champagne. The avant-garde POP (Product of Pommery) line, the mainstream Royal line, the food-friendly Cuvée Apanage line, the Prestige vintage-dated Cuvée Louise, and the tête de cuvée Les Clos Pompadour grown entirely on the small vineyard inside Domaine Pommery.
Undergoing a ‘Discovery of Chardonnay’ In Traditional Method Sparkling Wine Everywhere in the World
However, this understates his responsibilities. Pommery wants to undergo a discovery of chardonnay everywhere in the world under the Louis Pommery brand. “So the Louis Pommery brand is a project based on the expression of the chardonnay in different terroirs with the know-how of Pommery, of course, but the idea is to respect the terroir and the expression.” In the last decade the house launched overseas ventures in the United States and England. There are unreleased projects in Belgium, Argentina, and Japan.
Louis Pommery England
Louis Pommery England first planted 40-acres in 2017 at the Pommery-owned Pinglestone Estate near Alresford, Hampshire. The area is between London and the south coast and in the broad area of Southern England producing sparkling wine (the only style of wine from England that has thus far emerged as world class). It cannot be understated how important was the 2014 arrival of Pommery, and its subsequent investment in English vineyards. As the first Champagne house to do so, it validated sparkling wine viticulture in England. Just as Drouhin validated Oregon Pinot Noir. This was, so to speak, ‘the smart money’ making an investment. Pommery were followed by Taittinger in 2015, who planted in 2017.
Two interesting points about both transplants are, first, despite planting in what is considered expensive farmland in England, the land price was a small fraction of the price of high quality (so called Grand Cru) land in Champagne. Pierlot said that finding owners willing to sell was a harder task as the English hold on to land with a generational attachment. Second, both houses go to great pains to stress that their aim is to make great English sparkling wine. Champagne can only be made in Champagne. “Our aim is to make something of real excellence in the UK’s increasingly temperate climate, and not to compare it with champagne or any other sparkling wine.” said Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger when asked by a journalist.
When I asked Pierlot how much of his time the English operation took he gave me a stern stare and said ‘every month’. Apparently, its present stage of production is such that it requires a lot of his attention. The last four years have been the time that the winery would be building up its reserve wines as well as current vintage activities. Its current portfolio consists of just a non-vintage brut appellated ‘England’.
Plaudits are already appearing however. At the world’s most prestigious sparkling wine competition, the Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championships (CSWWC) in 2023, Louis Pommery England NV Brut won a silver medal with a blend of 50% chardonnay, 35% pinot noir, and 15% meunier. The wine had 12% ABV and 8g/l residual sugar.
Louis Pommery California
They started this venture from scratch in 2015. The grapes are a blend from different parts of California (Sonoma, Lodi, and Carneros).
At the beginning of the project they spent two years accumulating some reserve wines. The first wine released was mainly 2016. The one that we tasted (below) was mainly 2017 but had 10% reserve wines. The blend is 100% chardonnay.
Pierlot makes about one visit a year to the California operation.
We tasted the Louis Pommery Brut Reserve, California ($22) and the Louis Pommery Rosé, California ($27). They were very fresh and aromatic with citric notes in the nose and just a little autolysis, reflecting their comparative age (7 years) compared with most California sparkling wine. The prices struck me as bargains relative to other California sparkling wine brands.
These wines are available in all 50 states in the USA.
THE VRANKEN FAMILY
Brands in the Vranken fold include Champagne Vranken, Champagne Monopole Heidsieck & Co., and Champagne Charles Lafitte. The port brand Rozès. Quinta do Grifo in the Douro, Château La Gordonne in Côtes-de-Provence, and Domaine Royal de Jarras in the Camargue.
In Champagne, Vranken is the second largest producer. It is also the largest vineyard holder in Europe.
Some Champagne houses give the impression of being jewelry collections for rich owners to slip on their fingers when they are so moved. Others have heavy proprietor involvement in their management. I knew nothing about the Vranken family, let alone their involvement in the business. Pierlot recited the family, the sons and daughters, and their active roles heading Vranken America, Vranken Italia and Vranken France.
WINEMAKING
Some Reality Behind Champagne Regulations
When I studied Champagne for wine exams I was struck how tightly winemaking is regulate,. often with restrictions that we would never accept in the USA. For example, in Champagne, the earliest harvest date of the vintage is stipulated by the CIVC. I asked Clément about this and it turns out the process is not as dirigiste as the wine textbooks make it sound. The date is set at an in-person producer committee meeting in Epernay at the headquarters of the CIVC about two weeks beforehand. Other committees meet every few weeks on other issues. Each committee is composed of representatives of the Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC), the Champagne houses, and the Syndicat Général des Vignerons (SGV), the grape growers. So decisions have some claim to democratic legitimacy. Interestingly, Clément drives the 30 minutes to Epernay for meetings -- there are no Zoom chats in this model. I was amazed at the total amount of time, of such a key skill set, that this consumed. “This is all about relationships” he says “We have to talk eyes in the eyes”.
Blending For Scale
Clément impresses on me the scale of production, even for a comparatively small producer like Champagne Pommery. When it comes to blending, they have two stainless steel tanks, each of 500,000 bottles. This capacity of one million bottles takes a week to blend. So, in three weeks, they can blend the whole production of their biggest seller, Brut Royal, for a year. The composition of the blend at this scale is a scaled-up version of a laboratory blend in beaker-sized containers. The results are exact enough to ensure that a bottle of Brut Royal tastes identical in Reims, Paris, London, New York, or Tokyo.
Innovation in Riddling
Clément discussed an innovation in use at Pommery in riddling, the time-consuming process of moving the lees accumulated after the second fermentation to the neck of the bottle pending disgorgement. The second-fermentation yeast is contained in a bean made of an organic porous material. Like a tea ball, the yeast inside can affect the wine, but cannot leave the ball. As a result, to move the yeast to the neck of the bottle just tip it over and all the beans tumble down to the cork. No multi-week delays while five years of powdered particles are coaxed six inches to the neck. Of particular note is that the yeast is Pommery yeast, encapsulated by the Portuguese bean developer into the bean. Pommery is using this innovation in England and the USA. As he describes it, Clément is palpably excited “Yeah… I'm obsessed with it. I think it's the coolest thing.”
Red Wine Focus
Take a wine class and the composition of the red wine that tints rosé is almost certainly treated as a minor detail.This doesn’t do justice to Pommery. They make their own red wine in the village of Bouzy and have grape sourcing in Grands Crus, like Bersenay. They make a blend of different red wines in different years, all for creating rosé Champagne. “We have consistency in style and color”, says Clément.
As we taste through our samples, the details continue to emerge. Regarding the Champagne Pommery Brut Royal Rosé he explains the objective with the red wine “The color is very important as well. It's very signature for me, I think, this pale color, golden pink. And it's the idea to have something very fresh. Because when people want rosé, they want, I think, things like this. My imagination is when you are in your garden picking some fresh raspberries and strawberries. That's what you can imagine with this wine.” The red wine in this blend is 6% by volume. “It's really based on cold maceration to have a very fruity red wine. With no tannins, no structure, but only fruits.” I ask if he is deliberately looking for basically a fruit expression to be blended in and he confirms “Yes, because we want the wine to be the same philosophy as the Brut Royal. It has to be the same philosophy, with only some red fruits, red berries, and fruit notes. The wines are totally different, but it's the same spirit”.
Uniqueness And The ‘Perpetual Reserve’
As I press him on what makes Champagne unique, he offers “What is very different from the Californian wines and from the English wines, and that's why it's not to be arrogant, but it's impossible to copy champagne. Because in this wine you have the perpetual reserve, that means the wine that we refresh every year. And it's been here since decades because we are transmitting the perpetual reserve from one chef de cave to another.”
The perpetual reserve referred to here receives little emphasis in wine classes despite the same technology being the centerpiece of sherry production. The technology is what sherry producers call the solera, and the Champenois call the perpetual reserve. In the case of Pommery it is a store of 7 to 10 years of base wine from some 40 different villages. Some Grand Cru, some Premieres Crus, some undecorated but unknown gems. “Maybe 200 elements”, estimates Clément. I add that each village brings its own mesoclimate and soil as well. “And you have also this reductive nose. It's very closed and you have this toasted note coming. There's a nutty note. And this is linked to the cellars and to the aging in our cellars. And aging in pure, natural, chalky cellars, 30 meters underground.” He adds “It's impossible to copy.”
The perpetual reserve at Pommery is a minimum of 30% of the vintage and Clément says, tongue in cheek, that to marketing it is always 30%. In reality, the winemaker treats it like another instrument in the orchestra and it can go to 50%. “My record is 58%” he admits.”We don’t talk about that”. I put this down to the best of motives.
Aging
Likewise, he adjusts aging. “So we say to the sales department it's three years on lees. But some base wine could be 30 months, some over 40 months”. For Brut Royal it is around three years. But components of the perpetual reserve are 80 years old. And the average age of the perpetual reserve is around 20 years old. [Note: Based on the amount of wine added and removed at specific times from a perpetual reserve since its creation date, there are mathematical formulae to calculate its average age. A math degree helps. When I queried ChatGPT v3.5 it could not handle replenishment.
Another axis of adjustment for the winemaker is the dosage added at disgorgement.
All of the above allows the winemaker to maintain a constant house style despite Champagne being a viticultural region with some of the most variable weather across vintages.
MARKET POSITION
Pommery is available in all states in the US market. It would be considered one of the leading houses. However, this stature pales in comparison to Japan, where it is the premier brand. Part of the marketing there consists of a tie-in with singer Yoshiki. I do not know if marketing will take the same direction here (a hammered Taylor Swift tottering along grasping a bottle of Pommery Brut causing a national run on it?). In the UK they are well established, especially since their vineyard investment, but Champagne is an ‘old’ market and buyers switch preferences only rarely.
POP - An Alternative to the Purportedly Frusty Image of Traditional Champagne
Conscious of the weight of tradition and how it can limit marketing to new market segments, in the twenty first century Pommery introduced POP (Product of Pommery). The POP line is described by Pauline Vranken as “Slightly provocative, POP is above all an unconventional champagne, avant-garde, nonconformist and unique. Champagne dedicated to the curious millennial generation, unconventional customers, it was first made to be enjoyed with a straw. This champagne with an Extra-Dry dosage can be tasted anywhere at any time! POP has an elegant closure with real cork and a wire cage as in traditional Champagne.”
TASTING NOTES
Champagne Pommery is best known for the Royal line. In our tasting the Brut ($55) is gorgeous. “It is a modern vision of the first Brut in history, created in 1874. This is the modern vision.” I loved the vibrant nose. Very fine, very elegant. It's not just the fruits that are in there. It's not just lemon. It's also lime and even orange. Very complex. “What I try to do on this one is to have a perfect balance between the three varieties. So it's one third of each variety, Chardonnay, Pinot, and Meunier. The idea is to have something that is very harmonious. Because this one has to be simple. It's very complex, very difficult to make. It has to be very simple to drink. It's just harmony and emotion.”
The Royal Brut Rosé ($70) might be described as the brut with 6% of that fruity, limpid red wine.
The 2008 Grand Cru Royal ($70) is a different beast, exhibiting lots of autolyzed flavors and notes in the nose. It is exceeded only by the consummate, complete Cuvée Louise 2005 ($226). Complex in its nose and palate with a finish that lasts seemingly forever.
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