A Champagne Dinner

Oakland's waterfront

I have lived in Napa for nearly two years now, and, despite having visited San Francisco on a regular basis, on Wednesday I ventured with my wife for the first time to Oakland, San Francisco's neighbouring, down-to-earth city where boats come in from around the world to supply the Bay Area and beyond with food and wine. We did so to attend a champagne tasting on the waterfront, staying in a rather sketchy airbnb. Oakland's diverse range of residents were more occupied with the local basketball team's record-breaking progress than a champagne tasting, but I was able to discover a city that's edgy, awkward, and proudly different. And, just as exciting, I got to taste some great champagne in the company of very good food.

the restaurant

The tasting was held at Lungomare, a seafood restaurant located near Oakland's docks, surrounded by passing honking trains, angry trucks, and sleeping yachts. There were quite a few food and drink places in this industrial location, huddled together on Jack London Square. The restaurant was large, spacious, and airy, our tasting taking place in a small, enclosed, bright room. I have to confess to some snobbery: one guest was wearing a large Golden State Warriors cap (of the newly dominant basketball team) slightly askew, with a Stephen Curry shirt (the Lionel Messi of the Warriors), and a heavily tattoed arm. I wondered how she had got into an $85 tasting. I later learnt that she owned the restaurant. This is Oakland, and she turned out to be an awesome sabrer. 

 

the champagne

Gosset are the oldest existing house of the Champagne region, from long before champagne was sparkling, and the meal centred around their wines. One of the most notable features of the wines is that most of them do not undergo malolactic fermentation - of the major houses, only Krug and Louis Roederer equally refuse to soften the acidity of the wines from this cool, extreme climate. The acidity of the Chardonnay-only Blanc de Blancs NV ($90; ✪✪✪✪✪✪) was especially sharp, a wine for those who have acidity fetishses - one in which all should indulge from time to time. The 2006 Millésime ($100; ✪✪✪✪✪) had a softer acidity, tamed with some age, and rounded out with bready, nutty aromas. In contrast, the Brut Excellence NV ($45; ✪✪✪✪) is the one wine that does go through MLF, and felt much fruitier and forwarder as a result.

the pairings

The Brut Excellence was served with charcuterie and cheese, and had enough bold aromas to stand up to the meat and strong cheeses. The Blanc de Blancs was paired with an interesting avocado, crab, and peach dish, described by Gosset's assistant winemaker Hermine de Clermont Tonnerre (can there be a more French name?) as a battle between salty and sweet aromas. I found the sweetness and richness of the avocado and peach too much, but the piercing acidity of the Blanc de Blancs was well matched by the salty crab. That was followed by the perfect, if somewhat unethical pairing of foie gras (recovering from a two-year period of illegality in California) and quail with the rich, mature 2006 vintage wine. The final pairing matched Gosset's biggest seller, Grand Réserve Brut NV ($60; ✪✪✪✪✪), with a sweet berry-based dish. Despite the often overlooked sweetness of champagne, this was a bit of a mismatch between the sweet berries and the acidic wine.  

the sabring

Sabring a bottle of champagne - that is opening a bottle with a sword - is something I had not seen in person until this evening. Our Stephen Curry-loving owner gave a masterclass in how to sabre a bottle: using the blunt side of the sword, strike clean through the lip.

the bar

After all that champagne, one needed a beer. The nearby Merchant's Saloon was dirty, dingy, exciting, and everything I miss about living in a city. There was a giant screen showing the Golden State Warriors while the local fans cheered the team on. Even if a sport is a little tedious to watch, there's nothing like being in the presence of local fans who truly care. 

the market 

Our car was parked by the local market, which was active and awake before midnight. Having had some champagne and beer, we sensibly left the car to return via uber to our airbnb (we are so modern and immersed in Bay Area habits), where we found an Indian gentleman conversing in the hallway on his Mac, a one-sided conversation he was still engaged in when we awoke the next morning. We returned to our car to find it surrounded by palettes of fruit. We were let out by the morning market folk, with the kindly proviso that we shouldn't have parked there overnight. Seeing the city alive and slightly perilous in the morning was a reminder of how it lives and breathes twenty-four hours a day - helped, at some point of that day, by some champagne.

Red, White, and Blue Bubbles

This weekend was my first ever 4 July celebration, bringing to life Bruce Springsteen songs and Tom Cruise movies. During the day I received many comments, sometimes amusing, on how it must be for a Brit to be in the US. As most of my family are Irish I don't really care, but I still enjoyed making fun of the Americans having to rely on the French to be free of the British.

I spent the evening of 4 July at my wife's family home in Chico watching a spectacular firework display, followed the next day by a tasting competition between a Champagne and a California sparkling. A couple of days later I tasted an English sparkling wine, all of which made for a red, white, and blue stand-off.

California

The wine was Schramsberg's 2011 Brut Rosé, a blend of Pinot Noir (61%) and Chardonnay (39%). Schramsberg have successfully carved out a niche for themselves as California's premier indigenous sparkling wine producer, challenged only by Iron Horse and J Vineyards (sadly recently bought out by Gallo). They make their wine in one of the hottest parts of Napa Valley - site of Jacob Schram's winery, one of Napa's earliest - but source their grapes from northern California's coolest regions, Carneros, Sonoma Coast, and Mendocino. Despite those cooler climates, the wines are most definitely Californian: fruit forward with a much lower acidity than a region such as Champagne.

Schramsberg have been making sparkling wine since the mid-1960s - their 1969 Blanc de Blancs was served at the Nixon-Mao summit in 1972 - but there's still a long way to go before their wines match those of Champagne. That balance of acidity, sugar, fruits, and autolytic aromas is a unique combination that is very difficult to find in California. So it was with the Brut Rosé: an onion skin colour, a full, yeasty nose with aromas of strawberries, and a sweetness on the palate that the acidity could not counter. ✪✪✪

France

What distinguishes Champagne from every other sparkling wine is acidity: this is such a cool region that acidity is just as about as high as it could be. Most, though not all, Champagne houses put their wine through malolactic fermentation to soften that acidity, though even then it's still often noticeably bracing. Gosset, however, are a producer who do not do any favours for the drinkers' palate: their wines are made without any malolactic fermentation whatsoever.

The Gosset wine we tasted was the Grand Rosé Brut ($85; 58% Chardonnay, 42% Pinot Noir, 8% red wine) and I was expecting to be overwhelmed by the acidity. That acidity was a key characteristic of the wine, but it was wonderfully integrated with the sweetness (9 g/L of residual sugar), the red fruit aromas, and the light autolytic aromas. This really was Champagne at its integrated, elegant best. As expensive as it is, California really didn't stand a chance. ✪✪✪✪✪

England

And then came along the English, as they often do. The English inadvertently invented Champagne by making it bubbly, but the very recent movement of English sparkling wine was led by two Americans, Stuart and Sandy Moss, who in 1996 founded Nyetimber, whose 2003 Classic Cuvée won best sparkling wine in the world in 2009. Nyetimber's success revolutionised the tiny English wine industry; whereas plantings had previously been dominated by hybrids and German clones, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are now the two most planted grapes. There are many things set in place for England to produce quality bubbles, with the soils the same as Champagne's and a climate getting gradually warmer. The main disadvantage is that making wine is very expensive, and there's a great deal of vintage variation.

The main attribute of English sparkling wine is that acidity is even higher than in Champagne: these are wines that benefit from some sweetness, which is currently unfashionable. Balance that acidity and English sparkling wine could be as great as any in the world.

The wine we tasted was Gusbourne's Brut Reserve 2008 ($30; 36% Chardonnay, 37% Pinot Noir, 27% Meunier). Unlike the Gosset, the wine has undergone full malolactic fermentation, giving a pleasant creaminess to the wine and ensuring a balanced acidity - residual sugar is 10g/L. This was a yeasty, brioche wine, not as subtle as Gosset, but with very attractive mature aromas of bruised apples. ✪✪✪✪

By dad has a saying: the French are arrogant, but they have a lot to be arrogant about. Gosset were founded in the 1500s, and although Champagne has changed greatly over the last four hundred years, the region still produces the world's best sparkling wine.