November 15, 2017bonnaire champagne
My pal Tara, the Wine Passionista, has requested me to contribute a brief article to a guide she is writing. This set the create juices flowing. I knew what she meant about wanting a “memorable wine second” and I can consider fairly just a few. However what leapt out at me most was a completely impromptu vertical tasting within the cellars of one in every of our producers situated simply exterior Cramant. Such a enjoyable reminiscence, that I believed it value sharing.
JL Bonnaire makes LeComber champagne for Park Lane. He’s a terrific producer situated in Cramant, a 100% Grand Cru chardonnay village. The champagne itself is clear, crisp, enjoyable however with severe undertones. Form of grown up, in an adolescent kind of approach, which makes it a terrific aperitif, nice for a severe second and in addition a terrific refresher when again from a tough session on the fitness center! When requested which individual would describe the wine and why, I settled on two: Ruperty Penry-Jones meets Holly Willoughby as a result of they’re enjoyable, charming and attraction to extensive viewers!
We began working with Bonnaire in round 1997. The implausible second got here when Monsieur JL took us all the way down to the cellars to exhibit bottle age; it was about 10.30 within the morning and the center was nonetheless recovering from the double shot of espresso simply administered! We went all the way down to the second stage of cellaring and he took out a bottle opener and opened a bottle within the quaint approach (ie by cracking off the crown cap, letting the pure bubbles eject the sediment after which stoppering the bottle along with his thumb). Bottle 1 open; bottle 1 tasters poured. This bottle had had 18 months age and was vigorous as a cricket however svelte on the identical time. Bottle 2 was adopted by bottle 3 after which by bottle 4. LeComber tasting was completed with the final bottle at about 40 months bottle age and I believe ignored from earlier disgorgings!
However by some means, Monsieur was on a roll. I’ll by no means know if it was as a result of we caught him on an excellent day or it was as a result of we had been usually fascinated by the tasting however we headed all the way down to stage 3. These had been the pure Chardonnay (blanc de blanc) cuvees, and classic at that. We ended up tasting champagne from the early Eighties and I used to be blown away by the implausible creaminess with woosh of vanilla, however all of the whereas the freshness and application defied 15+ years of growing old.
Curiously, this taught me two classes: the UK client is conditioned to what’s fed to him most frequently; Bonnaire champagnes are glorious however they’re additionally extra refined – which suggests considerably out of the odd – and they’re tougher to promote compared facet by facet with a traditional mix. I additionally learnt in regards to the distinction between pre and submit disgorgement bottle age and the way newly disgorged older wines can supply one thing so refined and but so out of the odd; kind of outdated however new. Curiously evidently the key homes have additionally caught on with this method with Bollinger and Dom Perignon regularly providing lately disgorged parcels of older vintages.
Generally individuals suppose personalised champagne means inferior champagne. Not so in each case, and positively not so in our case.
Because the nights attract and the temperatures plunge, take into consideration making an attempt your champagne barely much less chilled for optimum enjoyment.
Pip pip!
