Product information

Jérôme Prévost La Closerie Les Béguines LC16

Champagne from Champagne, France

$190

Closure: Cork
“Today there are a handful of wines from elite, artisanal grower-estates in Champagne that have attracted a nearly cult-like following. One of the most sought-after of these is the meunier of Jérôme Prévost.” Liem

Description

Extra Brut. As you probably know, Jérôme Prévost doesn’t make vintage labelled Champagnes, but his wines are always of a single vintage and he puts a code on the bottle to indicate the year of harvest. This “LC” number (Lot Consigné), printed on the base of the label indicates the vintage. This bottling is LC16, so 2016.

Prévost’s 2.2 hectare vineyard, Les Béguines, is in Gueux, 10km west of Reims in the north of the region. Inherited from Jérôme’s grandmother, the site was planted in the 1960s with an old, slow growing, rootstock that descends deeply. Les Béguines is close to 100% Pinot Meunier, although there is a small amount of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Blanc, that was planted about a decade ago. The soil of Les Béguines is a layer cake of calcareous sand (Thanetian sand), and clay. The vineyard management is of course organic, with the soils cultivated and yields kept at balanced levels. Nothing is forced. The fruit is picked ripe and the wine is vinified without any additions in large format, used barrels for ten months. Bottled unfiltered, Prévost disgorges the wine after roughly 17 months on lees and adds approximately 2g/L dosage, (so extra brut). These are wines that always show better after time in bottle, five + years is ideal, but even a year or two makes a great difference. Frustrating but true. That’s not to say these wines won’t give pleasure when young and the striking 2016 is a case in point!

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Check out all of the wines by Jérôme Prévost

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Listen to Levi Dalton’s Podcast with Jérôme

When a grower who chooses his words as carefully as Jérôme Prévost tells you he counts 2016 as one of his best vintages—it’s worth listening. Prévost’s 2016 Les Béguines is strikingly vinous, fleshy and spicy, and extremely long on the palate, all the while remaining beautifully energetic and poised. As for the painfully rare Fac-Simile Rosé, it’s a superb example packed with perfumed red fruits and florals. A wine of great finesse. Both cuvées were raised in old barrels for ten months before being bottled and then disgorged 17 months later in 2018, with just 2g/l dosage. Importantly, 2016 was a year that bestowed the Domaine with both quality and reasonable quantity (in the context of this tiny producer).

2017 was nothing if not a year of contrasts for Jérôme Prévost. Prévost’s new cuverie is now up and running, and not a moment too soon. Prévost had long outgrown his previous cellars—the small barn-cum-winery behind his former house where, quite literally, you couldn’t swing a cat—so the new bespoke digs are just what the doctor ordered. Sadly the excitement of the new cellars (and new house) were tempered by Prévost’s smallest harvest imaginable. To paraphrase Dickens, in 2017 the [weather] did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. Prévost’s Les Béguines lost 80% in the much-publicized April frosts, a figure that was then exacerbated by the freakish summer rains and subsequent humidity. For a large or medium-sized producer, the final losses of roughly 90%, would have been grim enough.

For a grower with only 2.2 hectares of vines and who only makes vintage wines, it could be devastating. For this reason Prévost decided to apply (successfully) for négociant status and was able to supplement his own harvest with fruit from some of his neighbour’s vines in Les Béguines. But that’s another (exciting and positive) story for another day, one that will be relevant for the 2017 release next year. For now let’s just say that Prévost’s brand new cuverie isn’t quite are bare as it might have been.

Jérôme Prévost’s tiny cellar outside of Reims is barely big enough to hold a few barrels, a bit of rudimentary equipment and a visitor or two. That’s about it. But the wines, well, they don’t really need anything else when there is so much attention to caring for the land.” Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com

“Today there are a handful of wines from elite, artisanal grower-estates in Champagne that have attracted a nearly cult-like following. One of the most sought-after of these is the meunier of Jérôme Prévost.” Peter Liem, www. ChampagneGuide.net

“… one of the most courageous and creative of Champagne’s many growers” Michael Edwards, The Finest Wines of Champagne

Where in the world does the magic happen?

Prévost Jérome, Rue Michel Duroy, Bernay, France

Champagne
France