Video Transcript: Everything You Want to Know About Charles Heidsieck Champagne
Written By: Anonymous on Mon, Aug 18th 2008
Brian Freedman: Welcome to the Classic Wines Minute brought to you by classicwines.com; I am your host Brian Freedman. We are here at Brasserie Cognac in New York with Christian Holthausen International House Communications Director of Piper-Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck. Thank you for joining us all the way from Paris today.
Christian Holthausen: Thank you very much for the invitation.
Brian Freedman: Today you are actually going to be tasting us on Charles Heidsieck.
Christian Holthausen: Absolutely and I am delighted to be here. It's always a pleasure for me to be in New York and in the United States to talk about Charles Heidsieck, because Charles Heidsieck has a very unique history with the United States. Charles Heidsieck was the very first owner of a champagne house to set foot on American soil in 1853.
He has founded his house in 1851 and while most of the champagne house owners in those days were going to Russia, he really saw America as a real boon market. In that year he was selling about 500,000 bottles just to the population of New Orleans which was about 360,000 people. To contextualize that we now produce about a million bottles for the entire world.
So a very rich history in the United States, certainly going back to the Civil War era.
Brian Freedman: And certainly the reputation continues to grow to this day.
Christian Holthausen: Absolutely.
Brian Freedman: Especially with these two wines that we are tasting today, we do have the Charles Heidsieck Brut Reserve Non Vintage which is the classic house style of Charles Heidsieck, and we also have the 1995 Blanc de Millénaire which I have been waiting a long time to taste. This is really one of the highlights of my day today. What's the difference briefly between non-vintage and vintage champagne?
Christian Holthausen: Well, the most important wine any champagne house is their non-vintage; this represents 85-90% of your production and Chef de cave or wine makers in champagne, judge each other based on the quality of this particular wine. This is the most important wine for a house. As defining the house style, the house style of Charles Heidsieck is defined as being voluptuous and generous and you are looking to find that here. Of course in various vintage offerings like the Blanc de Millénaire in exception of the years when we make that, you are looking for really the wedding dress expression of the Prêt à porter collection that we find here.
Brian Freedman: Christian, I can't possibly top that.
Christian Holthausen: Okay, that's good.
Brian Freedman: You were outstanding, thank you so much.
So let's actually taste this and why don't you take me through what we are tasting here?
Christian Holthausen: Absolutely, this is about a third, a third, a third of pinot noir, chardonnay, pinot munier, very rich style, about a 40% reserve wine, long periods of aging on the lees and this is a kind of champagne that stands up with a lot of rich foods. The sommelier here, Alessandra Rotondi is one of the best sommeliers in New York, she is absolutely fantastic and this wine with the Lobster Bisque mushrooms is extraordinary, it is absolutely fantastic. Most people think that a non-vintage champagne is just for oysters or just for cavier, but it can stand up to things that have a lot of richness, a lot of cognac, a lot of sherry things like that.
Brian Freedman: Especially, a house style like the Charles Heidsieck which really does blanket the palate, there really is a sense of luxury to it, of depth that a lot of the house styles don't necessarily achieve, so there is something very different going on here with the Charles Heidsieck Brut Reserve.
Christian Holthausen: Absolutely, absolutely.
Brian Freedman: Excellent. So let's taste this because I don't want to cheat you out of that.
Christian Holthausen: I do drink quite a bit of it at home but it is always a pleasure to taste wine especially in New York.
Brian Freedman: Alright now, wine number two here, this is the Charles Heidsieck 1995 Blanc de Millénaire. Now you will notice here we are tasting it at a regular wine glass, I think this will surprise most people but when you are tasting champagne and especially a great vintage champagne like this treat it like a wine, don't be scared to take it out of the flute and put it into a wine glass, you will be able to develop more aromas, get your nose in there, when you swirl it you will really get more out of it.
Christian Holthausen: Absolutely and coming from Europe it is always very frustrating to try and place your nose into something this small, because you can't really appreciate all of this fantastic aromas. So for us it's always a treat to be able to have it in a wine glass so that we can really appreciate all of the aromas that are going on, certainly a great wine like this.
Brian Freedman: Now there are some much deeper aromas happening here. you are starting to get some of those bottle age characteristics that we have been speaking about. A wine like this what would you pair this with?
Christian Holthausen: This is absolutely fantastic with -- really anything with a cream sauce, a mushroom cream sauce is absolutely fantastic. Here scallops, it's gorgeous with. This can actually pair with a lot of different things. It's a 100% chardonnay, the chardonnay here are coming from the Cotes de Blanc, so we are looking for very rich buttery chardonnay, so we need to have something that's going to be able to match it in terms of weight and also in terms of texture.
Brian Freedman: Yeah, this is to me the perfect champagne for the dinner table not just for the cocktail hour.
Christian Holthausen: And the Charles Heidsieck champagnes in general it should be said really scream for food, they are champagnes that really need food, these are not your classic aperitif champagnes, these are champagnes for the table for sure.
Brian Freedman: I think it's time for lobster and scallops and a whole smorgasbord of luxurious fooods.
Christian Holthausen: At here at Brassiere Cognac, it's fantastic.
Brian Freedman: Absolutely, especially with the fabulous sommelier, Alessandra. Well Christian, thank you so much for joining us.
Christian Holthausen: Thank you very much.
Brian Freedman: Cheers to you, and thank you to Brasserie Cognac. Thank you to the house of Charles Heidsieck for their fabulous wines and from all of us here at classicwines.com; I am Brian Freedman. Cheers.
