Wine: Hold the sugar please, champagne is having a dry spell

O ne in four of us apparently likes our champagne completely dry with “nil dosage”. If you have ever bought a bottle labelled Extra Brut, Brut Nature, Brut Sauvage, Brut Zero or Sans Sucre – rather than the standard Brut – you will have experienced this zero dosage style: champagne in its most naked state.

One in four of us apparently likes our champagne completely dry with “nil dosage”. If you have ever bought a bottle labelled Extra Brut, Brut Nature, Brut Sauvage, Brut Zero or Sans Sucre – rather than the standard Brut – you will have experienced this zero dosage style: champagne in its most naked state.

So this is champagne in the raw – with no additional sugary dosage. You might be surprised to learn they add sugar at all, but it is a popular method in Champagne as its northerly location in France creates grapes with very high acidity making tart austere wines. Historically, they have added sugar – and now the most popular style we buy is “Brut” – but our taste for drier and drier fizz is apparently on the up.

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“Brut” can have up to an alarming 12 grammes per litre of sugar. In contrast, “Extra Brut” has 0 to 6 grammes per litre and “Brut Nature” a mere 0 to 3 grammes per litre.

The trend for very dry champagne is not new; Laurent Perrier sold Grand Vin Sans Sucre during the Naughty Nineties. It became popular in the 1980s and is now being revived yet again with some innovative dry cuvees from top champagne houses such as Billecart Salmon and Pol Roger.

People want fizz crisper and drier than ever before,” says Alexandre Bader of Champagne Billecart Salmon. “For us it is much more difficult to make this style as you have to have exceptional raw material,” adds Bader, who with owner Francois Roland Billecart, set their winemaker Francois Domi the task of creating a new ultra dry cuvee.

So how does it differ from their normal non-vintage Brut? Billecart use a similar cuvee, but for their Extra Brut they add older reserve wines and give the cuvee extra time on lees to add creaminess. In contrast, Pol Roger use 10 per cent less reserve wine than in their standard non-vintage Brut and use younger riper fruit in Pure.

Other good producers of nil dosage champagnes are Laurent Perrier, Jacquart, Drappier, Larmandier Bernier, Pierre Gimonnet, Duval Leroy and Jacques Selosse.

Interestingly sugar is often used to cover up poor raw base or very young wine. “My feeling is that many people actually like a little more dosage than they own up to as sugar is a cosmetic flatterer,” says Simon Berry, wine buyer of Berry Bros & Rudd. Other leading champagne critics like Tom Stevenson believe that the sugary dosage is essential to add finesse and enable further ageing.

So my advice is to enjoy these new Extra Bruts in their flinty youth. They make perfect aperitifs for anyone counting calories – Kate Moss apparently drinks them.

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• www.scotsmanwines.co.uk

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