More and more champagne houses mention the disgorging date on the label. A champagne often spends several years in the cool cellar of the producer, resting on the dead yeast from the second fermentation. Removing the lees is called disgorging.
It is quite fashionable today to put this date on the label, along with information about the grapes, the reserve wine and perhaps which villages the grapes come from. This is relevant information for the consumer, some houses think, but not all.
Pommery recently launched their new prestige Champagne called Apanage. And Pommery is not into consumer education.
Nathalie Vranken, who owns Pommery with her husband Paul-François Vranken, says to Drinks Business that Pommery sells a dream and that putting the disgorging date on the label would be like asking Karl Lagerfeld which fabric he is using.
She does not believe that the customers care and she is probably right. Most of them do not. But for some houses and some producers the information they give their customers is a way of showing that champagne is a serious wine and not only a luxury product.
