Ratafia Champenois, The Other Wine from Champagne

Champagne’s mostly brut profile seldom works as a dessert wine. But there is an alternative, from Champagne, that rises to the challenge of sweetness whilst remaining delicate, elegant and fresh. Christina Kaigg talks to Gilles Dumangin about Champagne’s sweeter side and the merits of Ratafia Champenois.

Ratafia Champenois, or Ratafia de Champagne as it was termed before 2021, is produced in the style of a mistelle (other French examples include Jura’s Macvin styles, Cognac’s Pineau de Charentes and Pommeau de Normandy). Unfermented juice from the Champagne AOC is fortified with either Marc de Champagne, distilled from the solids left over from pressing, or Fine de Champagne – a distillate made from champagne still wine. The resulting fortified wine usually sits at about 18 percent alcohol and contains at least 110 grams per litre of residual sugar, balanced by the high natural acidity that champagne grapes express.

With Champagne producing some of the most expensive and illustrious wines in the world, why would winegrowers use their juice to produce a previously unknown fortified sweet style? 

“Ratafia is a very noble product because it actually recycles part of the juice…that makes sure that we use 100 percent of everything that we have at our disposal, part of the juice going into champagne and one part going into ratafia,” says Gilles Dumangin of Champagne Dumangin. He is one of Champagne’s most established Ratafia producers and a key figure in producing the briefing document that led to the granting of Protective Geographic Indication Status to Ratafia in 2016. 

“In Champagne, the measure of pressing is 4,000kg. You have to extract 2,550 litres to make champagne, but there’s plenty more juice in the grapes than that.”

The Champagne AOC previously allowed an additional 116 litres to be extracted from this measure, and that is the juice that is now permitted for Ratafia production. This juice, sourced from later in the press cycle, has lower acidity and a more expressive fruit profile, and would otherwise be wasted or sold for industrial use.   

“If everybody was using the actual juice allowance in Champagne, this would be a 30 million bottle [ratafia] industry, currently it’s probably closer to 1 million. There’s a lot of small, new producers coming every year onto the market and a lot of larger Champagne Houses are now tagging along with it.”

The support of organisations such as the Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne, in conjunction with an increase in internal communication amongst producers passionate about ratafia, has seen a significant increase in the number of ratafia producers, from 30 to 120, since 2007. The grower movement has also contributed to this increased interest, specifically the focus on sustainability and single sites.

“The new winemakers that are trying to make expressions of their juice into champagne… they are trying so hard, as we are, to do things in the vineyard to be a lot more eco-friendly. Using everything we have is part of that already. Also, it’s part of wanting to make expressions of terroir, even if you can’t include the name of the village.”

Kyri Christodoulou, formerly of Emperor Champagne, imported a range of ratafia producers, including Cedric Moussé that have been producing the same style since 1947 (including the distillation of their own marc), is quick to emphasise the suitability of ratafia for an emerging Australian market.

“From a producer perspective, not only are you not wasting anything but you’re making money from what would be waste,” he says. “In terms of how that translates to the market, some people get into it, when you look at ratafia and how it’s made, it’s very versatile and adds a point of difference to the production style, as soon as you introduce it to the right foods and the right audience.”

It’s clear there are marked differences in quality and producer styles, with a range of single varietal, single vintage, single barrel, and solera type blends providing a diverse spectrum of flavour profiles.

“They’re all so different,” says Kyri. “Some are like toffee and treacle and others are like a pure grape nectar - really elegant - others are nuttier and more complex.”

Whilst Dumangin’s range is particularly diverse in terms of production style - currently six expressions and counting - the hallmark ‘Craft’ Ratafia Champenois, is a blend of multiple vintages (2002-2013). Each are aged separately for an average of nine years in second-use Northern Rhone barrels, expressing notes of caramel and dried fig and showing a complexity rarely seen in younger expressions.

Other producers, such as Henri Giraud and JM Sélèque, blend their ratafia each year to create a réserve perpetuelle. This emptying and topping of a larger vessel is often compared to a solera-type system, often producing nuttier, slightly oxidative characteristics. While Giraud’s Solera S90-13 is rich in dried stone fruit, raisin, and toasted nut characters, Sélèque presents with elegant notes of caramel, red apple and ripe red fruit, perhaps a result of 35 percent current vintage (2019) incorporated into the blend.

For those looking to explore the grower conversation, single varietal expressions such as those of Egly-Ouriet (pinot noir) and Cédric Moussé (meunier) provide ample excuse to delve a little deeper into the mysteries of terroir in Champagne’s most underrated wine style.

Words by Christina Kaigg