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Chardonnay from Oiry, Oger, France, Cramant, Côte des Blancs, Champagne
$171
Disgorged June 2023. Limited. 100% Grand Cru, with the fruit sourced only from great sites across four revered villages in the Côte des Blancs: Avize, Cramant, Oger and Oiry. Together with the terroir, vine age is a key factor in quality. The average age of the plantings is more than 50 years.
This release is based on 2019 and 2018, with the reserve wine making up a remarkable 80% of the cuvée—another key to the quality. After natural fermentation, half the wine matured in large-format, neutral oak and then spent more than 36 months on lees.
Dosage is limited to 5 g/L, and disgorgement was carried out by hand in March 2023. These winemaking standards, combined with organic viticulture, set a benchmark far higher than any Grande Marque prestige cuvée we know of. This disgorgement is flat-out stunning. Perhaps this is down to the quality of the vintages involved, or perhaps it’s the dominance of reserve wines in the blend. Regardless, it’s evidence of a stellar grower in perpetual movement; dense and layered yet racier and more mineral than ever. It is wonderful now and will, as always, benefit from another year under cork. The review below refer to a previous disgorgement.
PREVIOUS DISGORGEMENT OF THE SAME WINE “Based on the 2019 vintage and disgorged in April 2022, Agrapart’s NV Brut 7 Crus wafts from the glass with scents of crisp green apple, freshly baked bread, white flowers and buttery pastry. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, it’s an ample, incisive wine, with racy acids and a saline finish. When the range begins like this, you know you’re in the presence of one of Champagne’s greatest producers.”
William Kelley, The Wine Advocate 93 points
In stock
Pascal Agrapart is a grower at the top of his game. In France, he is now routinely compared to his neighbour Anselme Selosse, even though the style of wine produced by these two men is markedly different. If you were looking for a Burgundian analogy, you could think of Selosse as Lafon to Agrapart’s Coche. Both in the same village, both exceptional quality, yet both growing wines that are very different. In short, Agrapart picks earlier, uses larger, older wood and bottles earlier, resulting in wines that are less influenced by oxygen. Stylistic differences aside, the quality is on a very similar level which is why La Revue du vin de France is now giving both growers the same three star rating (their highest classification, handed out to only seven Champagne producers in total). Avize has always been a special village, and today, thanks to Agrapart and Selosse, it is at the heart of the great grower movement in Champagne.
Vineyards are ploughed (some by horsepower), no chemical pesticides, fertilizers or herbicides are ever used and the fruit is, of course, harvested manually.
I don’t know who coined the term “Grower Champagne”, when you see it, make sure you take a second look before you move on. Champagne producers are split into three groups:
Agrapart sits comfortably in the Grower group. Doing all the little 1 percenters in the vineyard and winery that make the difference between a drink and a pleasure fest!
Visit the vineyards and you’ll see horse-drawn ploughs and during the pruning and harvesting seasons the same faces year after year. That kind of continuity just makes for deep knowledge and empathy for the vineyards that = great wine.
Production is tiny, with no more than 6000 cases produced in any given year, and vine age is among the oldest in the Côte des Blancs (between 35 and 60+ years old with around 70% of the vines at 40+ years. Yields are kept very low.
The average potential alcohol at harvest is very high for the region, normally around 11 degrees, and Agrapart almost never has to chaptalise.
The grapes are pressed with a traditional Coquard vertical press, fermentation is carried out with natural yeasts, which Agrapart feels is crucial to the expression of terroir. Malolactic fermentation is completed for all the wines, and aging is in old, 600-litre demi-muids and foudré, large format barrels reaching into the 1000’s of litres each.
Lees stirring, re-suspending yeast from fermentation that has settled to the bottom of the barrel to add extra creaminess and complexity.
Use of carefully crafted reserve wines in the blends. Reserve wines are older wines that are a blend of several different years, often stored in foudré. Their use imparts complexity and generosity that you wouldn’t see in the wine until it had been aged for much longer in bottle were it not for their use.
All of these things only have a positive impact when the fruit is of quality, has the depth to handle oxygen contact and be improved by it rather than fall apart.
Dosage, which is done with a traditional liqueur d’expédition of cane sugar, varies from wine to wine, although it is usually around 3/4 g/L. Cuvée Venus is non-dosé.
Combined the effort in the vineyard and winery result in layered, complex, yummy wine, with bags of personality.
Based in Avize, Agrapart works an astonishing 70 micro-plots in the Côte des Blancs, mostly in Avize yet with plots in Cramant, Oiry and Oger as well. These villages are home to many of the best Chardonnay growing sites in Champagne.
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PREVIOUS DISGORGEMENT OF THE SAME WINE “Based on the 2019 vintage and disgorged in April 2022, Agrapart's NV Brut 7 Crus wafts from the glass with scents of crisp green apple, freshly baked bread, white flowers and buttery pastry. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, it's an ample, incisive wine, with racy acids and a saline finish. When the range begins like this, you know you're in the presence of one of Champagne's greatest producers.”
Where in the world does the magic happen?
Champagne Agrapart et Fils, Avenue Jean Jaurès, Avize, France
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