The warming climate has changed the centuries-old Champagne equation. As Roederer’s Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon recently told me, “We used to look for ripeness. Now we look for freshness.” Today, at Roederer, Bollinger and other top producers, the technical director is also the viticulturalist—and independent growers, themselves, have increasingly relied on their own talents to produce wines that speak of a place. Forty years ago, when I was first running panels for this magazine, Champagne spoke of Champagne. The characteristics of wines from particular villages and particular hillsides were rarely detailed beyond vin clair. Now, they speak clearly in many of the best wines.
That led me to wonder, do the growers of sparkling wine in North America see any of this same benefit? Our latitude is mostly below the 49 degrees north of Epernay. Perhaps, as tasters have come to expect more site expression in the wines of Champagne, we are also learning to detect it in the best wines, made with that intention, from our own continent.
To find out, we gathered a team of tasters we respect in the New York trade, along with ten sparkling wines, from the Bay of Fundy to California’s Pacific coast. They were all wines that had shown at the top of our tastings, other than the Vermont and Canadian wines, which had made indelible impressions on us out in the wild. Here’s what we found.
NEW YORK’S FINGER LAKES
42.5° NORTH LATITUDE
I first learned of climate change—then called global warming—in a scientific journal from the 1960s. It pointed to the success of Dr. Konstantin Frank, a viticulturist from Odessa who planted vinifera grapes in a region once thought too cold for them. Frank’s legend was soon followed by Hermann J. Wiemer, from Bernkastel, in Germany’s Mosel Valley, who established a nursery in 1974 with vinifera vines selected to withstand the cold. Upstate New York growers planted their fragile Vitis vinifera as generations had done with native grapes—on the shores of deep-water lakes carved out by retreating glaciers, in layers of shale, mounding topsoil on the vines in the fall to protect them from the freezing temperatures.
At first, it was riesling that responded well to the sometimes-extreme conditions. Then chardonnay became reliable, and now pinot noir is the grail. Today, Finger Lakes wines are enjoying a moment—many of the New York City sommeliers and retailers at our tasting are champions of these wines; some went to college in the region, others travel there frequently; most stock one or more producers at their store or restaurant, excited to sell local products. That enthusiasm is focused around vineyards on two lakes: Keuka, a narrow meander north above Hammondsport, and Seneca, east of Keuka, a deep crevasse that runs straight north from Watkins Glen.
TASTING PANEL
North American Sparkling Tasters
Featuring:
Rebecca Banks, Balthazar
Hannah Bersabe, Ferns
James Conley, Keens Steakhouse
Christy Frank, Copake Wine Works
Natalie Grisndstaff, Craft
André Hueston Mack, Vyneyard, & Sons
Jeremy Noye, Zachys
Claire Paparazzo, Hotel Chelsea + El Quijote
Chaz Williams, Fotografiska Museum
Middle left to right: Jhonel Faelnar, Atomix; Jamie Ritchie, Sotheby’s; Erin Healy, Gramercy Tavern
Bottom left to right: Kenneth Crum, Air’s Champagne Bar; A.J. Ojeda-Pons, Temperance Wine Bar
Dr. Konstantin Frank 2018 Finger Lakes Brut
Jeff Zick grows the fruit for this at Frank’s Keuka Estate, planted in the early 1980s. While mean temperatures have risen since then, so have the frequency of extreme weather events. He says that winter continues to be the biggest challenge he faces, followed by rain and humidity during the growing season. “Last year, it rained all summer long,” Zick reports, “and this year we were almost in a drought, then it started raining at the beginning of harvest, and it is still raining consistently at the end of September.”
Eric Bauman makes the wine, a blend of chardonnay and pinot noir with five percent meunier. He ferments the base wines in stainless steel, allowing little to no malolactic conversion. Typically, he uses younger sparkling wine in his dosage, leaning toward a fresh style.
NATALIE GRINDSTAFF, CRAFT: It has a really enjoyable lemon-lime fruit. I found this to have the most pronounced minerality. It’s different from Champagne. Not chalky, necessarily, more like a dusty minerality. It leaves my mouth salivating and tasting like minerals.
JAMES CONLEY, KEENS STEAKHOUSE: I get the lemon-lime notes, but what thrills me is the freshness, and it sounds like it was the goal of the winemaker to create that freshness. Beautiful ripe green notes, greengage plums, maybe green apples, with a certain fatness in the finish.
Hermann J. Wiemer
2017 Seneca Lake Cuvée Brut
Over on Seneca Lake, Fred Merwarth of Hermann J. Wiemer has found that growing seasons vary wildly one to the next—some generous, others, significantly smaller. Merwarth finds his chardonnay performs consistently, but it’s challenging to get pinot noir to fully ripen and develop flavor potential on the vine. “Many times we are picking pinot noir for acidity and chardonnay for flavor depth,” he says.
That depth and articulation came through during a recent visit to the winery, when he poured a range of sparkling wines. His Blanc de Blanc from Standing Stone expressed the freshness and driving acidity of chardonnay grown close to the eastern shore of Seneca; his Blanc de Blanc from the biodynamically farmed HJW Vineyard, set back from the western shore, emphasized richness.
In 2017, Merwarth blended the Cuvée Brut from HJW and Magdalena, both on shale soils on the western side of Seneca, the latter warmer and further north. This wine, 65 percent chardonnay and 35 percent pinot noir, fermented with ambient yeasts, was disgorged in March 2022.
JHONEL FAELNAR, ATOMIX: It definitely shows richer, riper fruit, which is really classic to [Wiemer], even when you taste the still Dry Rieslings, there’s this roundness. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this tropical, but it has this riper grape character to it that’s very appealing.
ERIN HEALY, GRAMERCY TAVERN: The fruit tastes healthy, like well-ripened chardonnay. It’s very pleasant and herbaceous, not in a green, unripe way, but in a tarragon, chive and parsley way, green mixed herbs, more reflective of terroir than of winemaking style. For me, this is indicative of the work they are doing, to better express grapes in the terroir that they have, rather than trying to replicate something that is, maybe, more Champenois.
Ravines 2013 Finger Lakes Sparkling Brut
Morten Hallgren, a Dane who grew up at his parents’ wine estate in France’s Côtes de Provence, takes a different approach to the Finger Lakes. He has sought out limestone soils for his estate vineyards and also buys fruit from the Argetsinger Vineyard, a limestone hillside at the southeastern corner of Seneca lake, where this wine grows. In the current climate, Hallgren finds disease pressure to be the biggest challenge, especially for pinot noir. Most recently, the buds on the vines struggled to survive this past winter. On the positive side, he says, “We’re in a wine region where the various components of the wine ripen in sync: sugar, acid, aromas. By the time we reach the right sugar levels, we already have ripe aromas and we still have a firm acidic backbone.” Hallgren’s goal is to integrate that fresh sparkling wine acidity into textural richness through extended aging on the lees.
CHRISTY FRANK, COPAKE WINE WORKS: I went to school up in the Finger Lakes, and it’s a very cold place. Knowing the cold, and knowing that it’s limestone, this very much reflects where it’s from. I love the balance of the fruit and ripeness with that cut that comes from the soil.
A.J. OJEDA-PONS, TEMPERANCE WINE BAR: One of the tell-tale signs [in all three of the Finger Lakes wines] is the acid, which is very different from the acid I find in Champagne. The acid is not as bracing, as racy, but it has an elegance, a linear, pin-point aspect to it, compared to wines from the more full-on limestone, the chalky soils that you find in Champagne. Acid carried a lot of the flavors of the fruit and the minerality throughout. I think of it in musical terms: It’s high-pitched, but it’s a different wavelength.
NOVA SCOTIA’S
GASPEREAU VALLEY
45° NORTH LATITUDE
Benjamin Bridge
2016 Nova Scotia Brut
Northwest and across the peninsula f rom Nova Scotia’s capital Halifax, the Gaspereau Valley looks out onto the Bay of Fundy. It’s a fruit-growing district where, in 1999, the McConnell family planted 70 acres of vines. The vines have thrived for the same reason the fruit trees do: the action by the Bay. Twice a day, the tides create a vertical shift in the water level of 46 to 55 feet, encouraging cool breezes and moisture in summer, moderating the temperature and humidity in winter. The McConnells have found the harvest for their sparkling wine can last into November, with ripeness in check.
Jean-Benoit Deslauriers makes this wine from chardonnay grown in glacial till, a sea-bed pushed up into sedimentary layers of sandstone, clay and loam. He harvested the grapes at 18° Brix, aged four years on the lees in bottle, finished with a dosage of 11 grams per liter.
IRENE JUSTIANI, STARR RESTAURANTS: One of the tasting notes that I wrote down was salty-rock minerality: I’ve never had a salty rock, but if I ever taste one, that is exactly what I want to taste. I love the citrus, the minerality, the acidity. So structured, so pleasant, so well balanced.
TINA VAUGHN, THE SIMONE: It tastes cold, and it reminds me of briskness in Champagne. It also reminds me of oyster beds and chalk and all of those lovely things that I like in 100 percent chardonnay.
VERMONT’S
CHAMPLAIN VALLEY
44.16° NORTH LATITUDE
La Garagista 2021 Vermont Pétillant Naturel Ci Confonde Red
Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber were running Osteria Pane e Salute in Woodstock,VT, and added grapes to their restaurant garden in 1999. A decade later, they opened their winery in the hills of nearby Barnard. They have since developed two vineyards near the shore of Lake Champlain, including Vergennes, about five miles east of the lake, where they grow Marquette on what Heekin describes as a 500-million-year-old fossilized coral reef dragged up from the equator.
Marquette, a hybrid developed as a cold-hearty vine at the University of Minnesota in 1989, could be called a grandchild of pinot noir (Ravat 262, a direct descendent, is among its parents). Heekin selects the fruit for this wine from the first or second pick of the parcel. “I’m looking for a brightness and lightness,” she says, “a very specific moment when choosing when to pick. I can best describe it as a little explosion of light within the berry where there is balance between flavor, texture and acidity.”
Heekin foot-crushes the fruit and ferments it on ambient yeasts, then bottles it with enough sugar remaining to create the bubbles. So, rather than following the méthode Champenoise, this is a pétillant naturel.
CHAZ WILLIAMS, FOTOGRAFISKA MUSEUM: The fruit really stood out for me. I got blackberries, black currants, a long finish. I’m a really big fan of Lambrusco, so I really enjoyed this wine.
GABRIELA DAVOGUSTTO, CLAY: I work with these wines in the restaurant—La Garagista is the only sparkling from the US that I have. I like the juiciness and the acidity, and it pairs great with food.
WASHINGTON STATE
46.2° NORTH LATITUDE
Gruet NV American Blanc de Noirs
This is pinot noir grown in the High Desert of eastern Washington, the most northerly latitude of all the regions in this report—including Nova Scotia. It’s from a winery in New Mexico, founded in 1984 by the Gruet family of Champagne. Now part of Washington State’s Precept Wine, it offers pinot noir varietal character, simple refreshment and a value proposition that appealed to many in the group. Aged on the lees a minimum of 18 months, this recalls the Champenoise concept of blending fruit sources—an insurance policy to sustain reliable quality in the wine, rather than an ambition to express the character of the site. Under the humble “American” AVA, it’s the most affordable wine of the group.
IRENE JUSTIANI, STARR RESTAURANTS: So refreshing, citrus, herbaceous, stone fruits, it’s so pleasant and so easy to drink. You don’t have to have any food with it, but we always had it at Bar Americain with the big shellfish platters, with crudo or poke. It’s really good.
JAMIE RITCHIE, SOTHEBY’S: I think it’s great value for money.
OREGON’S
WILLAMETTE VALLEY
44.98° NORTH LATITUDE
Argyle 2011 Willamette Valley Extended Tirage Brut
At Argyle, Nate Klosterman farms grapes specifically for his sparkling wine. “The high elevations give us later-ripening fruit,” he says, crediting the water-holding capacity of the exposed volcanic soils: “That keeps the vines less stressed, and promotes elegant structure-flavor balance.” The higher sites are often more exposed to the winds from the Pacific coast; they accumulate sugar and respire acidity more slowly than vines in flood soils at lower elevations.
Klosterman says that 2011 was the coolest vintage in the Willamette since 1954—cold and wet in the first half of October, then dry and warmer in the second. The Argyle team harvested sparkling wine grapes from October 18 through into early November. This wine is 60 percent pinot noir, 40 percent chardonnay, a portion of the base wine aged in neutral barrels (20 percent).
ERIN HEALY, GRAMERCY TAVERN: You feel the late harvest—I would not be shocked if there’s a small percentage of botrytis here. The first thing I wrote was beeswax, honey, chamomile–not necessarily typical of pinot noir. For sparkling wine in general, you are talking about freshness; you’re not talking about late harvest. So, to get those flavors in a wine I think is quite yummy. Even if it’s a bit confusing, it doesn’t taste like a fault.
JAMES CONLEY, KEENS STEAKHOUSE: Where I do find this to be a Willamette wine is in the fruit flavors—I find them to be pushed, or amplified, a Willamette power-fruit expression. And I think that’s because of the late harvest.
A.J. OJEDA-PONS, TEMPERANCE WINE BAR: The acid is still vibrant, the fruit is still so crisp. You still get that citrus and green apple, so it doesn’t feel tertiary, as I imagine it could have been.
CALIFORNIA’S NORTH COAST
38.5° to 39° NORTH LATITUDE
Schramsberg Vineyards 2013 North Coast J. Schrams Noirs
Jack and Jamie Davies purchased a 19th-century winemaking estate on Diamond Mountain specifically to make sparkling wine aged in its caves. They had started in 1965 with Napa Valley fruit, venturing to Carneros in 1983, then outside of the region for the first time in 1987, in search of cooler sites. Their top wine, J. Schram, carried a Napa Valley appellation through the 1997 vintage. That wine, based on chardonnay, is now labeled North Coast (about half the fruit grows in Napa Valley Carneros). The 2013 J. Schram Noirs, based on pinot noir, is two-thirds from far-coast sites in Marin, with contributions from Sonoma Coast, Napa Valley Carneros and Mendocino. Of all the producers in this tasting, Schramsberg’s model is the closest parallel to a traditional Champagne house, in terms of blending a wide range of terroirs. While their wines are not about site expression, they have a strong following in the sommelier community.
Hugh Davies collaborates with Sean Thompson and Jessica Koga on making and blending the wines from a large collection of growers. The harvest dates for this 2013 ranged from August 16 through September 9. The team barrel ferments 30 percent of the lot, then ages the blend on the lees for eight years.
JAMIE RITCHIE, SOTHEBY’S: The wine has some class and structure, some finesse. I think the style fits with the collecting community and that the quality of the wines gets the respect to stand alongside older Champagnes. The wines also age well—I had a Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs 1977 blind in Hong Kong which was outstandingly complex—and I think that helps with their following.
“Getting just the right amount of morning sun exposure is key to deeper, fuller flavors—opening up the vine canopy just enough to let in morning sunlight. And not overdoing it with varietal character. We don’t want a cuvée to scream pinot noir or chardonnay.” —David Munksgard, Iron Horse
Iron Horse 2013 Green Valley of Russian River Valley Brut LD
This wine comes from the Sterling family’s estate in Sonoma County’s Green Valley, planted in the late 1970s. They originally set out to make sparkling wines as they waited for the vineyard to mature. Today, sparkling wine is the flagship of the estate. The Goldridge soils, the morning sun and the coastal fog that lingers over the vines combine to form the terroir of the estate. That coastal fog offers some degree of protection from California’s summer heat farther inland.
David Munksgard, who got his start in the Finger Lakes, made this wine from his top selections of pinot noir and chardonnay, a 50-50 blend, harvested from August 23 to 27. It saw no malolactic conversion and no barrel aging. After the wine’s extended aging on the lees, he freshened it with a dosage that included some 2019 chardonnay enriched with a little 1987 Blanc de Blancs.
LD references Late Disgorged, the way that Bollinger’s RD references a recent disgorgement. In fact, the team at Iron Horse disgorged two magnums specifically for this tasting.
KENNETH CRUM, AIR’S CHAMPAGNE PARLOR: I feel like the Iron Horse is probably the most expressive of terroir [of these ten wines], it not only speaks to the soil, but the issues they might have with sun exposure, or having to harvest unexpectedly for other reasons. However, I also find it derivative. The long lees aging gives it reductive Burgundian notes. Many growers in Champagne, like Selosse, are trying to make wines in this style. Out of the three California wines, it demonstrates that style the most uniquely.
JHONEL FAELNAR, ATOMIX: The Iron Horse reminded me of a richer house-Champagne style. It has the Maillard-reaction toasty character that sets it apart from the rest. It has that youth coming through—it’s late-disgorged but is holding that fruit intact. And a little bit of that smoky, brioche-y, baked bread note.
REBECCA BANKS, BALTHAZAR: For the Iron Horse, I agree with that house-Champagne style. But one thing that was different from that—I got this salty minerality. The wines before it had more of a flint, schist, very wet rock note that I found astringent. This wine had that saltiness, which really balanced out the richness of fruit. I love that.
Roederer Estate 2013 Anderson Valley L’Ermitage Rosé
While other champagne houses settled in Napa Valley and Carneros, Roederer looked northwest, to Anderson Valley, along the Navarro River where it heads to the Mendocino coast. According to Arnaud Weyrich, the winegrower at the estate, the biggest challenge “is making a sparkling wine from California that would not be too ‘Californian’—not too rich in maturity.” He tries to grow grapes that hold their acidity, and look for subtle rather than overt fruit aromas. He harvested this wine in the third week in August, timing it to keep the pronounced “lemon-juicy side of things” that he finds in just-ripe Anderson Valley fruit. He maintains that freshness by blocking malolactic conversion, then enriches the blend with reserve wines aged in cask—five percent of the blend in this L’Ermitage Rosé. The color comes from a small addition of red wine, pinot noir allowed to macerate on the skins.
JAMIE RITCHIE, SOTHEBY’S: The Roederer is shy at the moment, a little reserved, a beautifully integrated wine, beautifully balanced.
IRENE JUSTIANI, STARR RESTAURANTS: I really like the fact that you get a lot of red fruits, a little of the creaminess in the mid-palate, but then it’s shy. They weren’t being pretentious; they were more like, “This is what we have.” I kept looking for more in this wine, and what I found was a tiny hint of tangerine, of tangerine zest, and I loved that.
In the end, there was no agreement as to which wines were the most terroir expressive. The group generally found that the sophisticated styles of the West Coast wines were more intentional than the East Coast wines, which seemed more naked to their place. Or is that just because their place tends to be cold, like the place where the méthode Champenoise developed? We wondered if the opinions would be different at a tasting closer to the Pacific.
JAMES CONLEY, KEENS STEAKHOUSE: If you understand you will get full ripeness every year, then you’re harvesting is a conscious decision. When you’re in a colder climate, you might be thinking, “Are these things ever going to get ripe enough?” I think that impresses the terroir on them, because you’re getting the ripest grapes you can get.
GABRIELA DAVOGUSTTO, CLAY: I feel that the wines from the Finger Lakes are trying to be more terroir-driven. You taste them and you’re like, “These are from the Finger Lakes.” Are they as good as Champagne? Maybe not. But they are from a place. From California, they tried to be what I expect from a great sparkling wine.
TINA VAUGHN, THE SIMONE: I find that with wine, Champagne, and any cultural thing—food, music, dance—I think the hardest thing to do is to educate and to release. Release what you’re already thinking. And I will say that this group, these groups have taught me to release my prejudices about wine.
If a chef is allowed to cook, without all the pretense of having to run a restaurant, and worry about cost, and buy the product, and choose the linen, and worry about a staff and the bottomline, the chef can cook like a dream. You just want him to cook all the time. And I find the same thing about winemakers, if we can trust a winemaker to look at his area, and look at his weather, and choose his grapes, and make his wine, and trust enough to taste it and sell it, and for the guests to be educated about it, I think that all doors can be open.
I try to get out of thinking about anything as Champagne in this group and think of it on its own merits. And, with that said, I’m with the Benjamin Bridge, still, and with the wine from Vermont. Because they’re not afraid to just make what they can make and present it to you well.
A.J. OJEDA-PONS, TEMPERANCE WINE BAR: If you take something like Benjamin Bridge and La Garagista, you have something really specific. It’s very hard to compare them to other wines, because they are so specific about where they come from. You go to these three wines from California, and you say, yes, I understand the style that they are going for. Yes, they have some similarities to some of the Champagne wines, the richness and concentration, but not that sense of place I found in the Finger Lakes or in Nova Scotia and Vermont. It’s important to say, as a big continent, this is what we can do on either coast.
Joshua Greene is the editor and publisher of Wine & Spirits magazine.
This story appears in the print issue of Winter 2022.
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