Wither old rosé?
By Todd M. WernstromLong considered the pink stepchild of "real" Champagne, rosé-colored bubbles have picked up steam in the marketplace in the last decade, not to mention legitimacy. Naturally, the question now directed toward all serious wines has arisen: How do they age? François Peltereau-Villeneuve, vice president-general manager of Laurent-Perrier's U.S. operations, offered, "They are great when released - their color, the freshness, the aromas - waiting is not going to make them better." His statement, one he is certainly well qualified to make given that Laurent-Perrier's NV Brut Rosé is the world's most popular rosé, and in fact, the one that in large measure created the market for rosé Champagne worldwide in the first place, points to the conundrum that is Champagne.
"We release Champagne when it is ready to be drunk and rosés are no exception," Peltereau-Villeneuve said. Clearly, there are two types of Champagne drinkers: those who would wholeheartedly agree with his statement - or more likely, wouldn't even have considered it because they like bubbles and they like them when they're most bubbly - and those (like me) who go both ways. We love them young, but put a few years of maturity on a bottle, and that's when the sparks really start to fly. Champagne is, after all, one of the longest-lived wines made, owing mostly to its incorruptible acidity.
But while aged blanc Champagnes are easy to find - and surprisingly affordable, with the exception of Krug and Dom, which retain their stratospheric pricing, though for very different reasons - old rosés are scarce. So the chance to try one with Veuve Clicquot chef de caves Jacques Péters was irresistible. Clicquot has recently begun re-releasing older vintage wines. Among the first of the "Rare Vintage" collection is the 1985 Rosé (disgorged about one year ago). The wine was tasted along with Clicquot's NV Rosé (dubbed the rosé expression of Yellow Label), and the 1999 and 2000 Vintage Rosés. What a difference a decade and a half makes.
Age is a relative thing, particularly for Champagne. A six- or seven-year-old Champagne, rosé or otherwise, is still excruciatingly young. And that doesn't even take into account the nature of the vintage; the 1996s may take at least another decade to really show how great they are, and they're already uniformly terrific. But for Champagne, six or seven or ten years is infancy - anyone who has recently opened a 1996 or a '95 can vouch for the still-piercing freshness of these wines.
So I expected the younger Clicquots to be very different from the 1985. Both of the younger vintages - and the NV, for that matter - were just gushing with red fruit, verve and a green apple freshness. The '99 suggested more minerality; the 2000 had a toasty and doughy quality. The three of them were fragrant and deep, and had a lovely suppleness, no easy feat in the face of their bone-dry character, particularly the vintage wines. All of which made perfect rosé sense: lots of fruit, vivacious and quite pretty to look at.
The 1985 was jarringly different; it was as though the wine had no connection to its progeny. The pale orange hue was, indeed, beautiful, but where the younger wines were all about fruit, the '85 was all about earth tones: orange peel, cedar, leather and toast. Lean and sherried, it was very fresh and also very pinot-y which, perhaps, is the key to understanding - and thus appreciating - older rosé Champagnes. "Rosé can age a very long time," Péters said, but agreed that they do age very differently than blanc Champagnes, regardless of the proportion of red grapes to chardonnay in either. And this is probably a function of how rosés become rosé in color.
There are two ways that a rosé can gain its hue: In the less commonly used method, red grape skins are allowed to mix with the juice; far more houses, however, simply add a particular amount of still pinot noir (the variety that seems to be the grape of choice for this aspect of the rosé-building process) to the juice. The latter practice allows for more uniformity of color from year to year. (A rosé that looks pale salmon one year and blood orange the next would be a marketing nightmare, causing consumer confusion by the pronounced change, something that blanc Champagnes are not in danger of doing.)
While a young vintage or non-vintage Champagne may show citrus or apple or stone fruit, it's likely to evolve predictably into something nuttier, perhaps yeasty and buttery as it enters its second decade. No such certainty exists on a rosé time line. "It's because of the addition of the pinot; it's very dominant as a still wine," Péters explained. He quickly added that, "Older blancs you can have as an apéritif or maybe after a meal, but older rosé is better with food." He's right, of course. The veal chop we lunched on worked with the '85 in a way that a blanc Champagne could not (this might be non-rosé Champagne's only deficiency as a food wine); the younger rosés were not great matches either because, as expressive and pleasurable as they were, they simply don't pack enough brown matter for red meat - not to mention having a bit too much exuberance.
The Rare Vintage collection is a great idea, one that I hope other houses adopt, particularly with regard to their rosés. For a mere $90, you can experiment at the table (the other member of the collection, the 1988, a blanc, is $85) in a way that would not even occur to most Champagne drinkers, be they fans of early releases or admirers of bottles of a certain age. But just keep in mind, that an old rosé is probably going to more closely resemble an old red Burgundy than a mature blanc Champagne, which, I think, is all to the better anyway. Ultimately, this type of wine is one that belongs on the table, a place where the Champenois have been trying to get us to put our bottles for a long time anyway.
And while it's not easy to find them, they can be found. I came across an offering from Sonoma's Rare Wine Company, a great source for older and scarcer bottles (www.rarewineco.com), and took an opportunity to test my rosé-Champagne-as-more-of-a-still-wine theory by ordering a 1969 Canard-Duchêne Brut Rosé. It was "only" $95, a small price to pay for theory validation. After an initial burst of freshness, this impeccably cellared wine evolved into a mix of leather, orange peel, forest floor, and finally, just a touch of mocha.
L-P's Peltereau-Villeneuve left me with one final thought on the subject: "Champagne is not Burgundy or Bordeaux. Champagne is for fun; not to sip and analyze."
I know what he means. What could be more fun than serving an old rosé with a steak? And it's certainly a whole lot cheaper than a similarly aged Burgundy or Bordeaux.
Todd M. Wernstrom is the executive editor and frequently writes about French and Italian wine.