MICHAEL FRIDJHON | Debt of gratitude owed to Moët & Chandon

South African bottle-fermented sparkling wine — what we call cap classique — dates from the early 1970s. That was when Frans Malan of Simonsig produced the first Cape fizz made by the traditional (French) champagne method. Slowly at first, but then over time other local producers entered the market. As more people talked about the category, more people began to drink it.

By the mid-1980s, after the “Rubicon” speech, the collapse of the rand opened a meaningful pricing gap between champagne and cap classique. This coincided with greater availability of chardonnay and pinot noir, so increasingly South African bubbly could be made with the varieties associated with French fizz. Widespread availability, more local proficiency, and a new and serious pricing incentive all contributed extra traction to the category.

Then suddenly, around the time of the millennium, cap classique really began to take off. Some of this no doubt relates to its acquiring critical mass, some because the quality had really improved and some because a few big local brands were putting real marketing money behind the business. But I think the single most important reason for the spectacular growth of the cap classique class in the past couple of decades has been the visibility and massive sales boom of (French) champagne and for this local producers owe a debt of gratitude to Moët & Chandon.

Moët is the largest champagne brand in the world, selling more than 35-million bottles a year. This means that a bottle of Moët is opened pretty much every second of every day of the year. The company is part of the vast LVMH conglomerate, which also owns many of the iconic brands in the business: Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart, Dom Perignon and Krug, among others. It seems obvious in retrospect that LVMH saw, early on, the potential of the post-liberation market and invested heavily in it. Suddenly Moët was everywhere.

Moët remains the dominant brand in South Africa, offering styles across the full spectrum of consumer tastes. Some of its cuvées, such as the sweetish Nectar, which accounts for the majority of its sales here, have enabled it to reach beyond the market of the traditional brut. Despite its popularity here and internationally, Moët is more than merely an entry-level champagne. The current release I sampled is a wine of surprising precision, much of this due to chef de cave Benoît Gouez, who this year celebrates 21 years in the position.

I recently chatted to him about the challenges he faces creating, managing and planning ahead for the brand, which is ultimately the flag-bearer for the whole Champagne region. The changes he has wrought in his time at the helm of Moët have been substantial. Some were clearly matters of choice, others were the result of dealing pre-emptively with climate and market conditions.

For a start, Moët Brut Imperial is now significantly drier — down from about 12g sugar per litre at the turn of the century to half of that today. Gouez said this is both style (the main producers have all reduced sugar) and climate-driven: warmer conditions mean riper grapes with lower acidities and less need to coat the more austere fruit of yore with a Mary Poppins solution. The bubble is finer too, which may also reflect the state of the market, where champagne sales generally have slowed down and this means that the wines can age on the lees for longer. In fact, maturation time has pretty much doubled over the period.

The net effect is that the Gouez’s wines are brighter and more linear. This is certainly evident on the 2016 vintage Brut. It’s the current release yet it’s had the benefit of 10 years of ageing. I’m not sure the 2002 would still have been in the market in 2012. Moët doesn’t make vintage champagne often (only 77 vintages have been released since the house was founded in 1743). When it does, in Gouez’s words, it seeks fruit with a special “charisma” as well as the ability to stay the course.