Often people ask me, "why is Champagne called BRUT?"
“Words, words, words,” replies Hamlet when Polonius asks
what he is reading.
And Hamlet is
right. Words only signify what we say
they signify, and that often changes with the times and like the times.
A case in point
are the names, the labels, given to styles of Champagne. Champagne names do not always mean what you
might think, and there are reasons for this.
In the 1790s
when Champagne was beginning to achieve consistency in atmospheres of pressure
because bottles were stronger and corks tied down more firmly, when clarity
from lees was still a dream that was being experimented with in all the chalk
caves filled with bottles under Reims and Epernay, in this time refrigeration
was only as good as your climate, and was, as we know it today, almost a
century in the future. For preservation,
meats were salted or hung, which gave a pungent or a sweet and rotting smell to
larders. And the resulting dishes were powerful
in taste. In order to hide
over-saltiness or gaminess, sauces were devised that were stronger and
over-the-top flavorful and rich. And since
Champagne, like all other wines, was meant to accompany meals, though the dosage of sugars added in the liqueur d’expedition as the final cork was
put into the bottle was high, the Champagne tasted dry to taste-buds primed by powerful- tasting foods, and was therefore
called Sec, which means “Dry.” It tasted
dry therefore it was Dry, though it
was sweet. “Words, words, words.”
About twenty
years later, around 1810, the time when remuage
was being perfected, allowing bottles of clear Champagnes to be shipped around
the world, an Englishman approached a favorite Champagne house and asked for a
Champagne less Sec. In fact, though the man asked for a
Champagne less “dry”, he was really asking for a Champagne less sweet. Obligingly the Champagne house created for
England a Champagne they called Demi-Sec,
or “half-dry”, meaning what it was, a Champagne “less-sweet”. The weather in England may have had
something to do with this strange request.
Since 1800 the winters had gotten steadily colder; in 1810 the Thames
froze over, which had not happened since Samuel Pepys wrote about it in
1667. Likely most English took
advantage of this climate change to store foods, unsalted, in ice-rooms,
allowing truly fresh meals. And with
such came the desire to drink a “less-sweet” Champagne, Demi-Sec.
Things went
along like this for about another fifty years, and the 1860s saw the beginnings
of kitchens that had “ice-boxes” in which to “refrigerate” and keep foods
fresh, practically eliminating the need to salt for preservation. And once more the fresher tasting foods
brought palates in line for tastes in wine.
Again the Champenois attribute the odd request for a Champagne less “sec” to an Englishman, and so they
replied by once again cutting the dosage and
creating a wine they labeled this time in English to make certain the British
understood: “Extra Dry”. That
must have done the trick because for the next almost forty years labeling and
drinking of Champagnes stayed pretty much on an even keel.
Then once
again, it happened. To celebrate the change in Centuries, in
1900, Edward Albert, The Prince of Wales, future King Edward VII, sent his
cellar-master to Reims, to Champagne GH Mumm, with, yet again, an astonishing
request”: The Prince desired to
celebrate the coming new Century with a Champagne with less dossage.
Sacre Bleu! While such a request came as a shock to the
Champenois, no one dared say so to the Prince, or to his emissary. What they expressed in private, “C’est brutal
de boir un vin si sec,” they
expressed only on the label: BRUT.
And, once again the Champagne maker cut the dosage to a level considered brutally dry.
Of course the
taste the British express in Champagne has proved to be excellent, and today
when we drink Champagne most normally it is a “brutally dry” bottle labeled BRUT.
“Words, words,
words.” Yes words often are all
upside-down, as in Champagne labels.
Today the term “Extra
Dry” still proves to confuse consumers and wine-shops and sommeliers. It should
be dryer than Brut, but in fact it
has a dosage half again sweeter. This is
hard to explain without going through all the above explanation.
“Words, words,
words.”
Once again the
unthinkable has happened. There is today
a Champagne even more brutally dry,
called Brut Nature. It is a specialty of some Champagne Houses,
and is in fact the way all Champagnes are when they have finished their second
fermentation in the bottle, have spent years on their lees, and are about to be
riddled and disgorged for clarification,
just before being dressed and shipped to you and me. At this stage the Champagne is brutally dry,
or Brut Nature, or Brut Zero.
It is a Champagne for special
foods, like oesetra caviar.
In the last
twenty years this words confusion has been slightly rectified in
Champagne. Some terms have been switched
in the line-up, trying to make the dossages
and words more understandable.
1810 -1900 1990:
Sec:
between 50g of sugar and 32g per litre Demi-Sec:
50g-32g/l
Demi-Sec:
between 32g and 17g Sec: 32g-17g
“Extra Dry”:
between 17g -12g “Extra
Sec”: 17g-12g
Brut:
less than 12g/l Brut: less than 12 g/l
Extra Brut: 6g/0g
Brut Nature:
0g
Personally I like it better the
way it was. “Words, words, words.”
Sec, and Demi-Sec, and “Rich” or Doux Champagnes are great dessert wines;
Extra- Dry is marvelous with savouries like pates
and spicy soups and Asian foods. Whatever Champagne types you consume they
become far more than words.
They become dreams.
A votre santé!
Now, beside me
is an antsy Commanding General. He wants
me to get along with all these words, words, words, and start wording off about
him.
Caesar, I
promise your time is nigh. Soon, soon,
soon.
Madeleine de
Jean.
The Night Julius Caesar Invented Champagne ©
December 8, 2013
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