Cheap Champagne – Oh dear….
Popping the cork may be a dissappointment
‘Tis the season to be jolly… And it’s also the season when all the supermarkets start discounting Champagne for the Christmas period. Some of these bottles can be snapped up for less than £10.
But what can you expect when you get the bottle home, nicely chilled and with a thirsty group of friends and family waiting in anticipation to sample the elegant bubbles within?
Read on to find out more
Well, unfortunately not very much. Yes it’s fizzy. Yes, it’s from the Champagne region in France. But that’s about as far as it goes when we compare it to the top quality wines on the market.
But why?
Well, firstly Champagne grapes are difficult to grow. Champagne is right on the limits of sustainable viticulture and hence grapes are often affected by frost and rot. It’s a risky business. The losses experienced can make it an expensive business to grow grapes this far North.
Then there’s the price of land in the region. As the area is strictly defined, being within the delimited Champagne zone can add many hundreds of thousands of Euros to the price of a parcel of land.
Also, the major Champagne houses especially don’t have enough land to fulfil their wine making demands and therefore buy-grapes from a number of growers. There is a well developed market for Champagne grapes and this means the market sets the price. Read, expensive. Especially when the grapes are in short supply.
Then there’s the wine making process. Non-Vintage Champagne has to be stored before release for at least 15 months. And that’s a lot of cash-flow tied up for a long time.
There is of course the prestige of the Champagne name, which does mean a good margin for the producer and usually a bad deal for the consumer. And finally, HM Revenue and Customs likes to take a slightly larger share of duty, let’s say nearly 30% more, on sparkling wine than on still wine.
How do they make Champagne for £10 per bottle then?
Basically, by being slightly less choosy on some of the points above.
In selecting the grapes for the base wines, producers may be prepared to accept slightly lower quality grapes. Leading to a wine that is, at best, unbalanced and at worst showing off-flavours from rotten grapes.
Then, they may buy the grapes from lower quality land within the region. There is a strict hierarchy of vineyards in Champagne from Grand Cru to a simple cru. The price of the grapes from the more lowly areas is considerably lower than a Grand Cru. And grapes sourced from some of the less fashionable areas, such as Côtes de Sezanne are a lot cheaper than those from the Côtes des Blancs for example. There is often a good reason for this price differential – quality.
The top growers will achieve a good price for their grapes. They will have worked with the producer on, preferably a long term contract, to manage yields and produce healthy grapes from a healthy vineyard. But cheaper grapes are available on the open market, especially if you’re prepared to shop around.
A lot of the flavour of sparkling wine comes through a process known as Autolysis, which adds complexity and finesse to the wine. Research has shown the autolysis only really has an effect on the flavour of the wine after at least 18 months maturation. The minimum period of ageing is 15 months for NV Champagne and you can be sure that the cheap Champagnes will not spend a day longer in the cellar. But that will be at the expense of complexity and flavour.
And finally, there’s not a lot we can do about the duty. But the impact on the value of the wine in the bottle is greater at the cheaper end of the market (see our blog on wine pricing )
So, is a £10 bottle of Champagne a good buy?
Generally no. Too many corners have been cut to be able to make a wine of sufficient quality. There are some bargains out there, but they are few and far between and it’s really unlikely you’ll find anything worthy of the name Champagne at under £10.
If you want something fizzy at that sort of price range, think the new world where the following offer a good deal:
or if it really must be Champagne, try a grower’s Champagne. They have lower overheads and control of their grape supply so can be a lot more competitive. Here’s a really good example:
