Roederer Rings the Climate Changes - Wine-Searcher

Roederer Rings the Climate Changes | Wine-Searcher News & Features

"All the rules we learnt don’t work any more," says Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon, chef de cave of Roederer. He's talking, of course, of climate change and of, as he puts it, the "unbelievable speed" at which the nature of the fruit in Champagne is changing. So fast, in fact, that he's going back a couple of hundred years to learn how to deal with it.

Roederer's archives go back to 1832 and, says Lecaillon. "I'm making wine close to then in terms of fruit." If this sounds counterintuitive, remember that Champagne then, although we can't be sure what it tasted like, seems to have been drunk with food as a matter of course.
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So one one might infer that it had a certain amount of weight. Lecaillon says that Pinot ripens more easily in Champagne than white grapes do, even Chardonnay.

"Now Chardonnay has 92-93 days from flowering to picking, but Pinot Noir is at 86-88 days now. In the past Pinot ripened early, Chardonnay was harder to ripen, Petit Meslier was difficult and Arbane was even more difficult."And those last two, as a result, fell out of favor. But that means that white grapes can be a weapon against climate change. "We have enormous tools against climate change," he confirms.

The most obvious change that Roederer has made is to end the production of non-vintage and instead launch Collection, which is a multi-vintage wine rather in the mould of Krug or Jacquesson, with every iteration being different, according to the nature of the base year and the reserve wines used to balance. There is no focus on consistency, no intention of making a wine every release of which tastes the same. "House style is not a target anymore," he says. "It's a consequence."

And Chardonnay, from being 40 percent of the blend of Brut Premier, is now the main grape in Collection.

A few years ago – as recently as 2019, in fact – Lecaillon was talking of the search for freshness, as opposed to the search for acidity. Now he says he's on top of freshness, and what he's searching for is finesse, lightness, low alcohol. Now he's getting 10.5-11 percent potential alcohol at picking instead of 9 percent from Roederer's own vineyards – which means that no chaptalization is necessary for these grapes – and more dry extract, more phenolics, but less acidity and less nitrogen. In the 1970s, by contrast, acidity was high but alcohol and structure were low. "We had to find the ripeness that nature was not giving us, and we did it with Brut Premier."

Blending was a weapon then, and it's a weapon now. Trial plantings of Petit Meslier, Arbane and Pinot Blanc are going in, and he's testing out a field blend, as well. Everything is pruned on the Chablis model rather than traditional Champenois cordon; he wants as vertical a canopy as possible, for perfect sap flow, and shelter for the clusters. It's all about slowing down the vines.

He's tried permaculture and doesn't much like it; it's fine for five years, but then the vines lose vigor and yield. So they till four times between April and July, just 5-7 cms (2-2.75 inches), to get rid of weeds and surface roots, and all Roederer vineyards now are biodynamic. "It's a fact: the vines are deeper-rooting," he says. Horses work the vineyards for the first few years of the vines' lives so they can root nice and deeply without soil compaction. But it's not a question of a single solution: success will be made up of many different solutions.

In the winery, the old idea that only the cuvée was good enough for a top Champagne has gone out of the window. "Using the cuvée only was good when the tannins were not ripe. But good tailles can give salinity and length," he says. He uses 5 percent tailles now in Collection.

Oak, too. Oak can be used to give roundness, but it can also be used to give not roundness but a bit more briskness and a longer finish. This is fermentation in oak that we're talking about: Roederer has four conical casks, 20 years old; conical because the shape is achieved by sawing the wood, not bending it. Lecaillon didn't want the flavor of oak that you get by bending staves, and instead he has a very light, white toast designed specially for Roederer.

But by the time the casks are 40 years old they start to taste a bit like Cognac, so at that point they're shipped to Portugal, where the winemaker at Ramos Pinto loves them, and swears that Tawny aged in these casks is fresher and more mineral – win-win.

Crucial blend

Much of the story, though, is the blending.

"The future of wine will be more and more about blending," he says. "Of course there will still be single-vineyard wines, but there is a resilience in multi-varietal, multi-terroir wines." But as we've seen, it’s not about creating consistency, but making the best possible wine every year. "It's a different vision of blending."

It might involve searching for the most shy wine in the line-up of vins clairs rather than the most obvious one, to create the link between the base year and the reserve wines. It might mean understanding that some wines need more elevage before even being considered for the blend.

"Chardonnay is an example," he says. "If you taste the vins clairs before Easter, it's a waste of time. They can be unbalanced and reductive. We never decide on Chardonnay before Easter. So we never bottle our vintage before June."

Of course, it's all about how you use reserve wines. Roederer started a new Réserve Perpertuelle in 2012, which was the same year in which they started this journey towards Collection and away from Brut Premier, and Réserve Perpetuelle gives smoky notes and roasted coffee as well as salinity and a waxy texture. They're using a higher percentage of Réserve Perpetuelle now.There are also the oak reserve wines, but these are not designed to give any oxidative notes, to which end the oak is younger these days: four years old instead of eight. Using reserve wines can mitigate the effects of the weather.

The amount of malo has gone down, as you might expect, and so has the dosage. This used to be 13 grams per liter in the 1970s, and gradually went down to 9 g/l, then 8 g/l, and now 7g/l in the most recent release of Collection, 244.

Pressure in the bottle is another weapon: more pressure equals more feeling of freshness. What used to be 5 bars for Brut Premier is now 5.8 bars for Collection. But in an unripe year the pressure can be reduced.

Where one really sees the evolution of a new wine, though, is in Lecaillon's dissection of each year's blend. We're used to Champagne producers waxing lyrical about the extraordinary beauty of every wine; these analyses, though, are rigorous and not the least bit poetic. The first attempt at Collection, 238, was based on 2013, and the wine we tasted last week was disgorged in 2017: all the samples were disgorged four years after picking. This wine had too much malolactic fermentation, too much age of oak Reserve and at 9 g/l, too much dosage. "Too much malolactic impact," reads the verdict. "Powerful but firm and a lack of texture and deliciousness."

The next wine, 239, based on 2014, still has too much malo and too much age of oak Reserve; but the dosage, at 8 g/l, is judged to be right. "More precision here with round creamy texture from malo but taste a little on the sweet side. Lack of seamless integration. More elegant and fresh but finish on the acid, dry and firm. Still on the BP [Brut Premier] side and could be more delicious."

It doesn't pull its punches, does it? Only with Collection 241 do all the ducks line up perfectly and the notes become approving. But the next blend, 242, has its faults: too much oak Reserve, not enough Taille Pinot and not enough oak fermentation. "Very difficult vintage with huge botrytis pressure – Pinot & Meunier Rivière because rot on Montagne," the notes explain. And in fact it is a lovely wine, silky, precise and caressing. Clearly I'm not as fierce as Lecaillon in my judgements.

Those first versions of Collection, from the trial 238 to the released 241, Lecaillon regards as Chapter I of this story: moving away from Brut Premier, but still Pinot-dominant. From 242 onwards he calls it "stretching finesse", and it’s where Chardonnay moves into pole position.

And that's Chardonnay oxidized before fermentation, so that it goes scarily black, and loses its floral and citrus notes and all you get is chalk, chalk, chalk. It's those archives again.

"They were oxidizing juice in 1959," he says. "I didn't wake up and invent it. …But I've said enough secrets now. It starts to be dangerous."