The Somm Journal
Mijenta
Mijenta

Great Expectations

Vitalie Taittinger talks about the U.S. release of 2007 Comtes de Champagne

By Kyle Billings

A bustling restaurant during lunch hour in Beverly Hills inspires surprising truths from Vitalie Taittinger. She is the Director of Marketing and Communications of the Champagne House, her name ceding her familial pedigree. However, amid the din of business conclaves and the chimes of knives and tines, Vitalie insists that the ambitions of her youth didn’t include wine.

“At the beginning I would [have] loved to be an artist,” she says. “When I was young I was really inspired by Chagall, by Picasso, by Mondrian—by many of them.”

She eventually followed in the footsteps of her forebears, and now when discussing the United States release of the 2007 Comtes de Champagne, she is equally as forthcoming. She acknowledges that this particular year in champagne presented some unique challenges from both inclement weather and icy perceptions.

“2007 was not a good year for Pinot Noir because it [was] very complicated in terms of climate and everything,” she says. “But for the Chardonnay in Champagne it was a fantastic year. That’s why we have decided to do this Comtes de Champagne.”

Comtes de Champagne, the apogee of achievement from the house, has been a vintage Blanc de Blancs offering since its debut in 1952. It features Chardonnay featured exclusively from five of the esteemed Grand Crus of the Côtes de Blancs: Avize, Cramant, Chouilly, Mesnil-sur-Oger, and Oger. Taittinger argues that the purity of these crus breeds the distinction of the prestige cuvee, especially in an unusual vintage.

“We are able to produce a Comtes de Champagne only when the year allows us to have grapes that are not too mature,” she says. “It’s very important. This is a wine which has to last. To age a lot. So, we need to have potential at the beginning. And it was the case. And finally, you have a wine which is very delicate. It aged more than ten years so all the complexity is now quite well developed.”

In an era when so many other renowned houses are consolidated into group ownership, Taittinger is keen to acknowledge the benevolent pressure of remaining a family business and its effect on the quality of the wine.

“When you’re a family what you really bring to your wine is the heart,” she says. “It’s your name on the label. It’s eponymous so you have to pay your tribute to everything to really have the quality you want, and the taste you want. It’s a human adventure.”

Midway through savoring the contents of her glass, Taittinger’s blue eyes brighten as she hastens to burnish the spirit of artists she (still) admires.

“Exactly like the artist we are playing with the palate. Which is not a palate of color but which is a palate of cru, of the year, of the grapes.”

Not unlike the Chardonnay grapes of 2007, Vitalie’s portrait of herself as a young lady were an artist’s ambition that unexpectedly came to fruition.