When a bevy of champagne producers asks you to a birthday party, it seems rude to say no
I'm not mad about birthdays these days. Perhaps it has something to do with the number of candles required. But I made an exception when the Champagne Academy invited me to its recent 50th birthday party, a real treat as it was held in the Champagne region and hosted by the leading labels.
The academy was founded by the 16 members of the Club des Grandes Marques, the umbrella name for the leading producers of champagnes such as Krug, Bollinger and Louis Roederer. This exclusive producers' club is currently, along with other less known brands, enjoying a boom in sales, with upwards of 36 million bottles sold in Britain alone last year.
However, back in 1956 the champagne corks were not popping with the same regularity. The Cold War was at its height, and Europe was struggling to rebuild after the devastation of the second World War. In an attempt to foster some badly-needed interest in champagne, the grandes marques founded the academy to foster an appreciation of their sparklers by educating members of the wine trade in Britain and Ireland.
Each year, 16 candidates are chosen by the champagne producers to attend an eight-day course, into which they pack a series of lectures, tastings, lunches, dinners and visits to vineyards, bottling plants and cork manufacturers. Each of the 16 "houses" shares in the instruction and, most importantly, entertains all candidates. It is widely considered one of the most comprehensive and taxing short courses in the wine industry - and that's just referring to the mountains of food and champagne they have to consume.
At the end of the programme, candidates sit an exam, with the outstanding student receiving a silver champagne cooler, plus 16 magnums. Of the 16 candidates, Ireland generally provides two, but this year, because a British candidate pulled out late, there were three Irish involved: Clare Deveney, managing director and wine buyer of Cellars Wine Warehouse on Dublin's Naas Road; Gary Ring, the wine buyer for Supervalu/Centra in Cork; and David Orr, buyer for Dunnes Stores.
Said Deveney of her experience: "I have always enjoyed champagne but maybe never quite understood it. I certainly never would have considered food matching. This was all down to a lack of knowledge. This last week has changed all of that, I drank Louis Roederer Brut with duck ravioli in a cream sauce, guinea fowl with roasted potatoes accompanied by Krug 1995, sipped a Veuve Clicquot demi-sec (decanted) alongside a dessert of red fruits on delicate pastry with ice cream . . . It was the best week of my life."
The chairman of the organising committee this year is Irishman Mal Deveney, Clare's uncle and a member of the well-known Dublin off-licence family. On his shoulders fell the organisation and liaison with the houses. He had promised that the affair would be lavish because the Champagne houses take their rich and illustrious heritage seriously. But the black-tie dinner in Charles Heidsieck's candlelit cellar in Reims and the waves of extraordinary champagne that washed it down were truly memorable and matched only by the lunch and champagnes served at Moët & Chandon's garden in the beautiful town of Epernay the next day.
In Epernay, your correspondent was taken on a whirlwind tour of the cellars belonging to Pol Roger, one of the last remaining major champagne houses still controlled by the family that founded the company. Pol Roger's cellars are part of an amazing network of inter-company cellars under Epernay, where Champagne valued at billions of euro, sits silently awaiting its time to burst forth.
Hubert de Billy, a fifth-generation member of the Pol Roger family, showed the walls of bottles neatly stacked awaiting their day in the sun. He said that his company was the last major house to still practise "riddling" by hand. This is the operation whereby bottles are given a series of abrupt shakes and twisted periodically, causing sediment to detach from the bottle and collect near the cork. This tedious task is mostly automated elsewhere, but De Billy said that Pol Roger had continued the tradition because it felt the human touch made a difference. He also said that riddlers tend to be drawn from the people who provide the grapes for Pol Roger Champagne, thus they have a vested interest in ensuring the process is done correctly. Each worker would on average riddle about 60,000 bottles a day, a figure that made us swoon, even in the silent cool of the spotlessly clean cellars.
Pol Roger's top wine is Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, a tribute to the man who was faithful to the brand throughout his life and who once said during the first World War: "Remember gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne!"
And there is no doubt that Champagne's top wines are sublime and that its closely-guarded name is now a byword for the lighter side of life. Champagne producers can also be accused of charging large sums for very ordinary wines, but thankfully we didn't taste any of these over the weekend, and even the French team's disappointing result in the World Cup on the Sunday failed to dampen the festivities.
Perhaps they had in mind another of Churchill's quotations about drink: "In victory, deserve it; in defeat, need it."