There are now Taste Champagne events being held across Australia, Hong Kong and soon New York, but if it is to be truly successful then it has to make its name in the UK, says co-founder Tyson Stelzer.
For those not familiar with the Taste Champagne format can you give a brief background to how and why it was started and how it has evolved.
I created Taste Champagne six years ago as the ultimate showcase of the grand diversity of Champagne, the only event in Australia where négociant houses, growers and cooperatives can stand together and pour their cuvées freely for the wine trade, media and champagne-loving public.
Taste Champagne began as just one event in Melbourne for a few hundred guests, and has grown into the biggest global Champagne showcase. Over the past six years we have hosted 25 events, now spanning six states of Australia, Hong Kong and London.
Taste Champagne made its name in Australia and here in Hong Kong before its inaugural event in London in 2019
Champagne deserves a dedicated annual showcase, devoted exclusive to champagne only. This is the largest and most important opportunity of the year to taste the full diversity of champagne and to engage with its makers, principals and importing agents in person.
As the ultimate chance to taste and compare the full expanse of the diversity of champagne, Taste Champagne offers trade, media and public guests an annual opportunity to write their champagne buying lists for the year.
At a time when the market is becoming increasingly fragmented and factions of support for growers and houses are splintering off, Champagne is strongest in its unity, and this is the mandate of Taste Champagne.
Taste Champagne London is run by me and my events manager Jody Rolfe, who shares my love of Champagne!
You are hosting your second Taste Champagne event in London on March 25. Tell us about the first event and what lessons you have learnt from year two?
Matthew Jukes described the 2019 Taste Champagne event as “Without doubt the most impressive Champagne tasting to be staged in London”
It was an honour to host the inaugural Taste Champagne in London last year, described by Matthew Jukes as “Without doubt the most impressive Champagne tasting to be staged in London” and Jancis Robinson MW as “The finest generic tasting of champagne the capital has seen for some time.”
Hot on the heels of the resounding success of our inaugural event, it’s our great pleasure to announce a greatly expanded event in both scale and scope in 2020.
2019 showed us just what a tremendous thirst for champagne exists in its most important export market, empowering us to step up to a bigger venue, rally more houses to present, and extend the program with masterclass sessions.
The biggest change is the venue. Why have you decided to move the venue to Lindley Hall near Victoria?
Last year we filled Spitalfields venue with 46 houses and this year we will fill the much larger Lindley Hall at Royal Horticultural Halls with 56 houses (and counting!). The natural lighting in this glorious and expansive space will provide the ultimate environment that Champagne deserves to show at its best.
Taste Champagne is moving from last year’s Spitafields venue to a more familiar home at Royal Horticultural Halls
What else can we expect this year in terms of the range of Champagnes to taste and the houses and importers involved?
We are delighted to announce that thanks to the support of 56 houses presenting 292 Champagnes (and counting!), Taste Champagne London 2020 will be our record biggest event yet, featuring a spectacular line up of 52 prestige cuvées, 17 from magnum, 66 vintage, 47 rosé non-vintage, 124 non-vintage, three ratafia, six museum cuvées from the 1990s and 11 from the great 2008 vintage!
Taste Champagne is again championing the key underperforming categories in the UK market this year. Our showing of prestige cuvées represents more than six times the market average, of rosés almost double, of vintage cuvées a huge 17 times and of growers an incredible 10 times. Don’t miss these crucial growth categories.
The 56 estates showcased celebrate the grand diversity of Champagne, hailing from a geographical kaleidoscope of 27 villages across the Marne and Aube.
What about special tastings and masterclasses at the event?
Taste Champagne 2020 will introduce specially focused masterclass sessions for the first time, hosted by Champagne’s top chef de caves.
Perrier-Jouët will be hosting a blanc de blancs masterclass, showcasing three vintages back to 2002 of its uber-rare pinnacle cuvée, Belle Epoque Blanc de Blancs.
Deutz will explore the terroirs of Aÿ in its single vineyard cuvées and a comparison of its William Deutz prestige cuvée in a three-decade trilogy from 1988, 1998 and 2008. And there will also be a Charles Heidsieck masterclass.
Please note masterclass places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first-in basis.
Taste Champagne is the UK’s trade one major opportunity of the year for importers and merchants to shine the spotlight on what they are doing with Champagne in their portfolios
Who do you see as the ideal visitor to Taste Champagne – your key target audience?
Taste Champagne Trade & Media tastings are reserved exclusively for wine media, retail wine buyers and sommeliers. Wine professionals currently employed in these fields are invited to register.
Taste Champagne Public Tasting is open to the general public.
Taste Champagne London 2020 will be held on Wednesday 25 March 2020 and welcomes wine professionals and media between 11am and 5pm and public between 6pm and 9pm.
How do you see the overall Champagne market as a whole? What styles do you think are really setting the benchmark for the category?
Champagne in the UK has hit a dismal 17 year low, with imports dropping to their lowest point since 2001, following a decline triggered by the GFC and exacerbated by Brexit. Among Champagne’s top 1o markets, the UK ranks last for grower Champagnes, and among the lowest in average spend per bottle, in diversity of brands and in affection for prestige and vintage.
So dramatic has been the UK Champagne crash – plunging more than 30% in volume since the GFC in 2007 – that the country looks set to relinquish its mantle as Champagne’s biggest export market this year. The US is hot on its heels, and rising fast.
However, a closer look reveals that there is encouragement to be read into the trends, and Champagne in the UK is far from losing its bubble. In spite of collapsing volumes, the value per bottle is on the rise. The British uphold their title of consuming more Champagne per person than any country outside continental Europe, coopérative imports are at a five year high, rosé sales remain buoyant, and Champagne lovers are now privileged to a greater diversity of houses than any time in history. And, ultimately, even after a decade of decline, the UK still remains Champagne’s largest export market.
How do you see the future for Champagne in the UK within the overall sparkling sector in terms of its biggest opportunities and challenges?
Champagne is at a crossroads in terms of sales and perception in the UK
Taste Champagne London 2020 comes at a crucial and dynamic moment for champagne in the UK. Champagne is fast on the move and never before has an annual update been more pertinent.
No French wine region has been revolutionised over the past two decades as dramatically as Champagne. And no appellation has needed it more desperately. Champagne is a very different place to what it was 20 years ago, or even five years ago. The dynamic on the ground in Champagne is ever more complex and changing rapidly. Champagne finds itself in a very difficult place climatically, politically and economically in 2020. (I grapple with each of these scenarios in great detail in The Champagne Guide 2020-2021, as per the sample chapters linked at the beginning of this document.)
And yet, impossibly and triumphantly, Champagne is emphatically in the best place today that it has ever been. Not in spite of the rising challenges it is facing on so many fronts, but because of them.
Across the sweep of history, it has been during the eras of prosperity that Champagne has become notoriously complacent in its viticulture, lazy in its winemaking and tiresomely fabricated in its marketing, for which it has been widely and rightly chastised.
And it has been from times of hardship that Champagne has made its greatest advances. Almost a century ago, it was ultimately out of the crisis of phylloxera that Champagne’s appellation system was born. The string of vintages that followed the region’s obliteration during World War II rank among some of the greatest of the century. And the global financial crisis of the past decade provided the much-needed impetus for Champagne to get its supply and demand balance in order and rethink the expansion of its appellation.
Champagne’s modern challenges in climate, politics and economics have not been insubstantial. In response, its top players have never worked harder and have never been stronger. Over the past decade, the region has entered a phase of fundamental change in the way its grapes are grown and sourced, the way its wines are made, how its companies are structured and even how and where its cuvées are sold.
Taste Champagne provides a crucial and unique forum for champagne’s key markets to keep step with this rapid pace of change, through an annual opportunity to connect with the full spectrum of its key brands, cuvées and personalities.
What would you like to see the Champagne industry do more in terms of presenting a collective message about its activities around the world?
Taste Champagne holds events around the world in order to champion the latest trends to more international buyers like this one here in Sydney
At a time when sparkling regions across the planet are rallying to craft ever more refined alternatives, Champagne must raise its game by upholding its quality, and marketing its only true point of difference: terroir. The complexity of Champagne’s terroir is second only to Burgundy, and its complicated production is second to none, and herein lie its fundamental points of difference that deserve to be front and centre.
Taste Champagne is devoted exclusively to championing Champagne – houses, growers, coopératives, non-vintage, vintage, rosé and prestige. There are some champagne events that align themselves only with growers, and others whose allegiances are tied exclusively with large houses. Both extremes fly in the face of the fabric of modern champagne and of all the structures and relationships that define it. Taste Champagne is here to champion champagne in its full and glorious diversity.
As global economies, erratic harvests, incentives from négociants and even the French taxation system itself increasingly unsettle the balance of champagne growers and houses, champagnes greatest opportunities in forging into the future depend intricately and fundamentally on its solidarity and cohesion. Presenting a united front is mandatory if champagne is to maintain its edge in the midst of an increasingly competitive sparkling market. This unity and solidarity is the mandate of Taste Champagne.
What other plans do you have for Taste Champagne for the rest of 2020 in terms of events and activities?
Taste Champagne enters its seventh year in Australia this year, with events across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide in August. Taste Champagne Hong Kong will return in 2021. And stand by for news of the inaugural Taste Champagne New York!
Can we expect to see Taste Champagne return to the UK in 2021?
Absolutely! An exclusive, annual showcase is vital in Champagne’s biggest export market, and Taste Champagne is now a regular fixture on the UK Champagne calendar.
Taste Champagne 2020
For more information on Taste Champagne London 2020 you can go to its website and sign up.
Full list of cuvées
http://tastechampagne.events/london-cuvees/
Tasting book
The Champagne Guide 2020-2021
Tyson Stelzer’s sixth edition of The Champagne Guide was launched in London in January 2020.
Double the size of past editions, the fully updated hardback and ebook of 584 pages feature up-to-the-minute overviews of 139 houses and reviews of more than 800 cuvées.
The Champagne Guide 2020-2021 features all-new chapters on how to crack bottle codes to decipher disgorgement dates, Champagne’s response to climate change, the move to sustainability, the threats to the existence of grower producers, the future of champagne prices and champagne faults.
The Champagne Guide 2020-2021 is available now as an ebook from www.TysonStelzer.com and as a hardback in all good bookstores at a retail price of £30. Autographed copies will be available at Taste Champagne London.
Here are some sample chapters
https://www.tysonstelzer.com/champagnes-fight-against-climate-change-intensifies/
https://www.tysonstelzer.com/has-the-grower-bubble-burst/
https://www.tysonstelzer.com/green-champagne-the-quickening-march-to-sustainable-vineyards/
