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CHAMPAGNE SUENEN Cramant Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Les Robarts

CHAMPAGNE SUENEN Oiry Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru La Cocluette

This cuvée was bottled in 2012, after the 2011 vintage had spent close to one year in cask, and was blended with 50% reserve wines from 2010. All of the vinification and ageing for both vintages was in barrique as always. Dosage was at 4g/L.

PENFOLDS X Thienot Lot 1 175 Blanc de Noirs , Champagne

Château d’Avize is one of only a few châteaux in Champagne, and the only one with a Grand Cru status. Using their biodynamic principles, the pope of Bio Dynamic and Organic Viticulture, Hervé Jestin and the Leclerc Briant team have created an extraordinary, age-worthy Champagne which demands cellaring to reach its potential. This Blanc de Blancs combines Leclerc Briant’s characterful, stimulating style; the tension of the 2013 vintage; and the power of the Avize terroir – the grandest of all the villages in the Côte des Blancs. Avize, already home to some of Champagne’s most iconic and collectable producers, has a new shining star of the champagne world. The Champagne develops a fruity, coated and juicy substance, supported by a lemony acidity. The salinity and dryness enhance a rich and suave finish.

The origin of the House dates back to 1812, created by André Michel Pierlot, it will take the name of Veuve Laurent-Perrier when Mathilde Emilie Perrier, widow of Eugène Laurent decides to combine the two family names while she ensures the development. Eugénie Hortense Laurent, his daughter, inherited the House in 1925 and sold it to Marie-Louise de Nonancourt, née Lanson, in 1939. Laurent Perrier La Cuvée comes from the purest grape juice and it alone allows Laurent-Perrier to craft La Cuvée, a champagne of great finesse and a beautiful freshness obtained after a long ageing process in our cellars. Laurent-Perrier’s style and personality are defined by its very high proportion of Chardonnay. Purity, freshness and elegance – essential characteristics, expressed in this champagne – are a good introduction to the spirit of the House.

Disgorged July 2024. (Formerly known as Expérience). The price here reflects the demand for a cuvée that is utterly unique in the Champagne world and the rarity (there is next to none to go around). Finally, we should not forget that this is a wine style that is extremely difficult to make. First, some background for those new to this wine. In 2002, Agrapart sought and (remarkably) received permission from the local authorities to begin experimenting with a small quantity of wine that he wanted to produce without adding any sugar: no chaptalisation and no additions for the secondary fermentation’s liqueur de tirage (the tricky part), nor the final dosage (liqueur d’expédition). Not using sugar and yeast for the liqueur de tirage (to prompt the second fermentation in the bottle) is actually against the AOC laws, which is why Agrapart needed permission. So how does Agrapart achieve the bottle fermentation? Instead of sugar, he uses must (grape juice) from the same vineyards that produce the wine, thus enabling him to produce a Champagne that is 100% the product of estate-grown grapes. It is also a lower-alcohol wine because the absence of sugar additions means the alcohol does not jump 1.5 degrees, as typically occurs with standard secondary fermentation. So, this wine rests at around 11.8% alcohol compared with 12.5% for the rest of the range. It’s also a wine that can age well; we recently tasted the first vintage, 2007, from magnum at the estate. It was in wonderful shape! The current release is an equal-parts blend from vineyards that contributed to the Avizoise and Minéral cuvées (Les Robarts in Avize and Les Bionnes in Cramant), ‘dosed’ with around 20% of the juice of 2020 from these same vineyards. It is this juice that drives the secondary fermentation in the bottle. Again, no sugar or yeast additions are used for all fermentation, and the wine is never fined or filtered. Regardless of the methodology, this is simply a magnificent, one-of-a-kind Blanc de Blancs: complex, floral and crystalline—without the traditional autolytic notes of a standard tirage, but instead, a purity and delicacy that is second to none. The finish is seriously long as well, streaked with chalk, sap and candied lemon notes.