No. All EB with I believe 3 grams.
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Thatās reasonable. Might have to dip my toe into the water.
I feel like, for most Champagnes, this is the sweet spot for me ā 2-4g/l. Also intrigued.
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I dunno if Bouchard still makes his Ursules cuvee but Gerbais has fruit that he gets off that same slope that faces the river Ource. Iām hopeful that the wines are to my liking as I used to buy a # of them, then lost track of them. Gerbais is also just due east of Marie Courtin, who is a few kms away in Polisot.
@B.Kelly Thank you, I am glad the notes help. As I work through these, I will post them in the Champagne thread.
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Agreed, love all the Gerbais wines. Seems to be doing things the right way. They are delicious and for the moment affordable. Big fan of these and the Pinot Blanc is a standout.
I opened the Grains de Celles Rose tonight. Delicious. Looking forward to finishing tomorrow. Lots of refreshing acid wrapping around red fruit and peach.
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Well said as always Rodrigo.
But itās exptremely important to remember that distributors tend to play it extremely safely. They buy what is established or what is hot at the moment (no offense intended to Kris Patten).
But if you want to build awareness of your wines as a new producer, you had better have something that captures peopleās attention. Most distributors have thousands of wines in the portfolio, and bigger wineries are not looking to share the focus or spotlight with little wineries. If your wines get shown more than twice a year, youāre lucky(and well represented).
For most new producers, site is the most interesting story you have. And good producers work hard to have fruit from the best sites, as itās the most defining and singular aspect of your production. I can see moving from multiple cuvees to a single bottling if the site based wines work better together, but the smart producer will do it after establishing them individually.
Iām obviously biased, and have little intention of reducing the number of cuvees we do. Like Jim Anderson, I view the small lots we do as record keeping of the sort done for centuries in Burgundy.
But I can honestly say that there is no middle ground here. Micro-lots are comfortably profitable and single cuvees sell to grocery stores after every mega-wineryās stacks are in place and whatever new fad (chocolate wine) has their facings. Then you call Wine Access, Gary V, WTSO, Underground Cellar, etc. to find homes for the rest.
My read on this thread isnāt to make less cuvees, itās to focus individual cuvees on 1-3 markets so that thereās enough supply to offer customers more than 1-2 bottles apiece. And not to listen when a retailer wants the one they canāt haveā¦
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Sometimes i feel so young on this board 
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Who are we to decide if some sites are worth making single vineyard wines from or not? Or what amount of dosage and sulfites they use. If you disagree with the winemakers choices, dont buy it. Some of us are really into these no dosage low sulfites Champagnes.
If they use it as a marketing trick and it works? Good on them, smart young business people. I rather want this direction than a Lenny Kravitz og Lady Gaga version.
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I would say transparency is the key. When we ask producers to explain, why is this deemed worthy of being a single cru? Especially when it was not a single cru in the past.
The answers are not really satisfactory and it the producer cannot explain this, how does one explain this to a customer. Just because one is clay and the other sand is not enough.
I sometimes taste privately in a group where someone high up in the Dom Perignon chain also participates. He knows the CĆ“te de Blancs especially well, one thing he said. For them they have better sites than Chetillons, and they deem them not worthy of a parcellaire champagne. He will not tell us where these sites are.
This is circular reasoning. Yes, as purchasers of the wines we have a say in deciding whether certain bottlings are worthy or not. Maybe we just donāt like trying to support independent producers only to have them throw lots of bottlings at us that may not be worthy of differentiation when they could probably make a cuvee and increase availability while maintaining quality.
The thing about the Dom P celebrity branding is that they are not trying to tell us its a better wine because of some special selection the winemaker practiced their alchemy over. Itās just a fancy collectible. Itās a lot more honest in some ways than many houses charging premiums for any particular selections without first confirming itās quality matches its advanced pricing.
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How will they increase availability? They have the grapes they have. If it goes into one or ten cuvees does not increase the quantity of grapes.
I know a lot of people pays more for single vineyard wines. And maybe the winemakers think they are better and price it accordingly. But i also think some are just trying to show different expressions. If we can taste the difference or not, and what the market does based on that is not really on the winemaker. If they think there is a big difference between one plot and another, i will let them decide on that.
We will only see more of this. Not only in Champagne.
Yes, we will not be able to taste or get our hands on all of them. But it creates more available expressions to pick from. If people think they are worth it or not is up to them. If there is no market for it then prices will decrease. But for me it feels a bit strange to put such a definite judgement on grower Champagne. Feels just like people disregarding natural wines because they donāt know what to look for and had a bad experience.
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Availability increases because they have less highly allocated bottles. Kind of simple. The fruit is a constant. If you make 10 bottlings from it, then they are less of each bottling. If you make one bottling, then there are larger quantities of that wine than there would be per each individual bottling.
Of course this leads to more cynical discussions about hype and scarcity driving pricing. While I would never suggest all producers are playing the manufactured scarcity game, Iād bet good many at least a few are.
I do agree on a lot of that Cris. And of cause some are playing the game.
But in regards to the availability, then that would be true for some producers maybe. But most of them make very small quantities and allocations issues would likely be same. As one who has been hunting the white wines from Jura for a few years now, i would say that if the production is small enough (it often is) then it does not make much difference if they have two or thirty cuvees.
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Reading through this thread it doesnāt really sound like the issue is whether or not individual cuvees are worthwhile, it sounds more like all the producers are going in that direction whether the wine they make is good or not. If a producer is relatively one note and has trouble pulling out different characteristics from different sites, it would be better for consumers if they made a blend or cuvees that they can distinguish (ie blend + individual PM/PN/Chard bottlings vs chard from 5 different sites that taste the same).
Chetillons is a pretty big vineyard and some parts are much better than others. Peters made it fashionable to put Chetillons on the label, but I often find many of the Chetillons wines to be very good rather than the great that I think many expect based on the vineyard name. Whether this expectation is mistaken/misguided is a whole different conversation.
DPās best spots in my opinion are in Cramant and, for my palate, I think there are more interesting and better expressions/wines coming out of Cramant than any other Cote des Blancs village.
The question on blending is a good one. To me, one of the great examples of this is Lilbertās vintage which hails from two vineyards in Cramant - Moyens and Buissons. Moyens is certainly nice enough, but not the best Cramant wine and not in a great location. Buissons is in a top location, is terrific on its own, and to me a top Cramant expression. But, when you blend a little of the Moyens into the Buissons, the total package is better than either on its own with the colder, slightly angry Moyens meshing beautifully with the fruiter, floral, bright, mineral Buissons.
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Sorry Chris, but that is circular logic.
As Lasse said, you get the tonnage you get and the yields you get. The multiple cuvees add up to the same total bottles that the blend would. So you may not have access to every Ulysses Collin bottling you want but you have the same access as if he made one wineā¦
Except that if Ulysses Collin only made one wine it would be a lot less interesting to delve into his wines and many of us would buy less. So more would be available.
Also-Dom Perignon isnāt my favorite champagne by a mile (YMMV). However, itās considerably more expensive than many grower wines that I prefer and quite a bit of that cost is the outlandish amount of money spent on marketing it as a fancy collectible. I donāt see that wine as a good example of why smaller growers should dump everything in one tank and then take out a loan to pay for branding materials for every Whole Foods in the world every November. If for no other reason than Dom and Veuve already have that niche completely filled.
No one is holding a gun to anyoneās head to buy every cuvee. And plenty of these sites may not be the next Les Mesnil. I personally still donāt see Meunier as amazing, so I pass on most of the new darling wines where thatās the focus. But I absolutely appreciate knowing that someone is a Meunier specialist, so I can make my buying decisions knowledgeably. If I donāt know a new site, I can post here and between FM3 and KJJ plus a few others I bet I will get a good enough response to make a reasonable decision. And if I get a $200 dud, Iām ok with saying so.
All of the OPs issues are valid inconveniences but, for my money, thereās no better wine region in the world right now than Champagne for great, delicious, interesting wines. And while low sulfur, short tiraged, inexperienced winemakers, unworthy sites, too expensive, unavailable wines are absolutely issues, itās miles better, in my opinion, than it would be without the grower revolution and the introduction of individual terroirs.
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2012 Clos St. Sophie from Lassaigne remains one of the greatest champagnes that I have had. So while some previously unrecognized sites might need to be questioned, thereās little doubt the old order has room to be shaken up and re-examined.
Especially given global warming, which has definititively altered the wines in Champagne since the last time crus were defined.
If weāre being transparent- Retailers would generally prefer things donāt change. Whatās established is easiest to sell, and wading through new or evolving regions (or new or evolving appreciation for a region) is inefficient (Iām not being a jerk, this is an honest assessment based on what is now 25+ years of selling wine). Retail is a hard place to be if things arenāt efficient.
I completely agree with you that more people should focus on experience, and it should be valued more. But that has to be balanced by the fact that as a production gets bigger the risk involved with it not selling goes up as well, and established producers who grow production often get fairly conservative with their choices. So itās really important to have small producers who can produce wines that are not conservative in their elevage. Thatās where experience really comes from, 30 years of paint by numbers winemaking isnāt going to make you an exceptional winemaker. I see that lesson all the time.
But champagne will settle itself out, whatās happening there is a pretty natural aspect of commerce, and there are going to be plenty of bumps along the road because at times social media and marketing allow story to trump the actual wines at both big houses and growers. Pricing makes negative experiences more painful than it used to be. But the perfect is the enemy of the good, and this thread seems like weāre complaining about what inconveniences us, having to wade through the jungle to find the gold instead of looking at how much more interesting Champagne is now and how good so many of the wines are.
I donāt worry much about losing Champagne to micro-vinification, I worry about losing it to global warming.
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So itās not circular logic because there would be bottles available to more people and theyād be easier to sell (to explain) so aggregate demand would not fall (or might even rise), while quality could increase by thoughtful blending. Win win.
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So if you blend what do you do with the lesser grapes that wonāt make it in the blend, sell off in bulk?
No. All grapes are perfect!
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