So many (French) champagnes these days taste oxidised. Are we buying bottles that have been hanging around for too long?

This is a timely question because more and more champagne wineries are producing wines with oxidative characteristics. I hesitate to call them oxidised, which literally means spoilt by excessive exposure to oxygen, but many modern champagnes have a slightly aldehydic bouquet. Acetaldehyde is the first stage in
the oxidation process, which begins with a wine being exposed to the air. It shows up as a sherry-like nuttiness on the nose with accompanying loss of freshness and fruit aroma. (We’re talking fino sherry, not oloroso. Fino sherry is deliberately oxidised in the barrel in a controlled way as part of its style.)

Many of the fashionable “grower” champagnes are going down this path. These are mostly very small wineries, only making wine from grapes they grow themselves. These makers are eschewing some of the ways of previous generations, which include a generally protective winemaking approach, such as adding substantial doses of the antioxidant sulphur dioxide. It’s a risky strategy. As a general rule, the bigger, well-known houses aren’t doing this because they’re more risk-averse.

The desire to use less sulphur is driven by health concerns (however ill-founded) and the wider trend towards making wine as naturally as possible, with as few additions and as little manipulation as is workable.

Another factor is the increased use of oak barrels to ferment and mature the base wines. Barrels are oxidative, so a wine containing little or no sulphur dioxide would be more vulnerable to oxidation. The fashion for using barrels is really just turning the clock back: in the distant past, most wine was made in wooden containers.

Generally, if you want to avoid oxidative champagnes, buy big-name, big-company brands.

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