OAK IN CHAMPAGNE A new chapter

Traditionally in common usage before being elbowed out by the advent of stainless steel, oak barrels are again playing a major role in shaping many of Champagne's most exclusive cuvées

- TOM HEWSON

Bollinger's archives contain an unusual letter, penned by Madame Lily Bollinger herself in 1963 and addressed, surprisingly, to the house of Krug. Having lost her husband Jacques, head of the house, in 1941, 'Madame Jacques' was entrusted with maintaining Bollinger's prestige at a time when Champagne's cellars were modernising.

At the beginning, she didn't know the daily work of the house,' explains Bollinger's current chef de cave Denis Bunner. "But she put her trust in André Bergeot, the cellar master at the time. She was loyal to oak, and she wanted to start an association to help keep the tradition.'

Krug, then, was first on the invitation list. But why the desire to establish such an association in the first place?

There aren't many places where the use of oak in vinification is much of a story, after all. Champagne, though, undertook a very particular journey through the second half of the 20th century that saw an almost-complete abandonment of oak by the 1960s and 1970s.

Before the 1950s there were 150 tonnelleries (barrel makers) in Champagne,' points out Sébastien Le Golvet, chef de cave at Henri Giraud. The advent of concrete and then stainless steel tanks in the 1960s proved particularly attractive to the Champenois, whose volumes could be sizeable and whose wines took much of their roundness and texture from- rather than oak - reserve wines [from previous harvests, stored and matured], ageing on lees, and dosage [the addition after secondary fermentation of a liqueur' mix of sugar dissolved in wines, according to the intended final style of the wine].