A Comprehensive Workshop

Tyson Stelzer offers a 2 day intensive that takes place once per year in Brisbane, Australia. This workshop provides a deep understanding of how the various factors in champagne production affect the taste of the finished champagne. I cannot imagine a more effective way to truly experience how production techniques impact the final product. I traveled from London to Brisbane for it, and it was absolutely worth the journey.

Who Its For

• Champagne lovers who want to get a little geeky about how champagne is produced
• Wine lovers who want to better understand how different factors affect the taste of the champagne

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Key Takeaways:

• By tasting the still wines and finished champagnes prepared specifically for this course, you will gain a deeper understanding of how things like dosage, lees aging, blending, and terroir impact the taste of the final champagne.
• Classes are limited to 12 people, providing ample opportunity for discussion with other students and Tyson.
• There is no exam.
• Tyson makes all the information incredibly approachable, and each day culminates with a meal and paired champagnes so you can apply what you learned and reflect on the day.

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Masterclass Overview

Like all of Tyson’s experiences, this one was meticulously planned and every detail of the weekend was considered. Days started with casual discussion over a light breakfast before getting to work. Tyson prepared beautiful booklets with all the supporting information, so time could be spent focused on the discussions and the tasting samples instead of feverishly scribbling notes.

Tyson first demonstrated how he tastes the wines, going over the detailed mechanics of not only how to aerate the wine in his mouth, but also multiple techniques for spitting (without getting it all over yourself).

The masterclasses were accompanied by either finished champagnes or vins clair (the still wines from which champagne is made). There were numerous samples specifically prepared by producers just for this class – one included a single champagne which had 3 different levels of dosage so you could truly experience how this impacts the overall flavor.

Day 1 covered terroir. By tasting wine which was stereotypical of a certain village (such as chardonnay from the Cote des Blanc), and contrasting that with an atypical varietal (chardonnay from Montange de Reims), it became very clear how much the terroir can influence the finished product.

We also covered vinification. By contrasting dosage levels, malolactic fermentation vs blocked malo, and tank vs barrel fermentation, I gained a much deeper understanding of the impact of these factors. While I was not unfamiliar with these techniques, having such specifically curated samples really enabled me to hone in on things like mouthfeel and relate that back to the choices the winemaker’s made.

Day 2 was a deep dive on maturation, covering the impact of reserve wines, recent disgorgement vs old disgorgment, and age. While conceptually none of these topics were new to me, I found that I gained a much deeper understanding as a result of the tasting samples and discussion.

Finally, each day ended with a long lunch, where we could relax (a bit), and enjoy champagne with food. There were no spittoons at lunch, which was always an incredible selection of vintage champagnes – it was truly hard to pick a favourite and an incredible treat to be able to compare some absolutely epic bottles, like Dom Perignon P2 2002 in magnum to Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2002 in magnum.

Summary

All in all, this was a wonderful experience which I thoroughly enjoyed with so many champagne-minded others. I learned a lot and had a fantastic time. As a champagne lover, this experience was very different to any other courses I have taken, and well-worth the trip!

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