New taste

Press, 28 May 1981, Page 17

New taste

A champagne revolution is taking place in France this year with the launching of a sugar-free ultra brut by two big producers. With the price alone likely to make it exclusive, ultra brut is aimed at ending the link with dessert and renewing champagne’s almost forgotten reputation as an aperitif. "Sugar-free champagne will help to stimulate appetites and clear our senses,” says Jacques Puisais, chairman of the National Union of Wine Experts. The new connoisseur’s champagne, as it is being called, parallels a revolution in French food, ending the flirtation with popular taste and reviving exclusiveness, which was once its best selling point. With all leading chefs abandoning novelle cuisine and returning to traditional and higher-priced menus, the champagne makers are also realising that attempts to popularise the drink could end by ruining its reputation. Sans sucre was the connoiseur’s drink at the end of the century but disappeared as champagne makers responded to the popular demand for demi-sec, which in many cases could be translated as syrupy.

Demi-sec should contain 33

I ; to 50 grams of sugar to a litre; sec 17 to 35 grams; extra dry 12 to 20 grams; and brut not more than 15 grams. ‘’Everything points io champagne becoming an aperitif again,” says Bernard de Nonancourt of LaurentPerrier, which will market 300,000 bottles of ultra brut this year. Piper-Heidsieck will market 40,000 bottles,, and other producers will fol-1 low the example next year, j Ultra brut will be” promoted in several ways — as an “ecological” wine in some advertisements and as a diabetic wine in others. But the real pressure will be put on the women’s market, partly because it is slimming conscious but . more importantly because women are considered to be the main influence on taste and the quickest to see snob value. \

Wine dealers hope that by the end of the century champagne will again have the direct link with success and money it had a century ago. Ultra'brut will sell at'about $2O a bottle. j "The price of champagne ‘ goes higher anyway ■ whenever an economic • depression hardens,” a wine j dealer said. "With the shor- j tage. the price will have * doubled in the next three j years.” Copyright — London 1 Observer Service. I