Tastes of the Langhe Hills chez Vajra

The Langhe Hills

Aldo and his daughter

I thought I knew all about acidity in young wines, as someone hardened in the school of Champagne vins clairs tasted each February in glacial Marnais cellars. But I wasn't quite prepared for the dense impenetrable acids and tannins of 2008 Grand Barolos and Barbarescos  at this month's Nebbiolo Prima in Alba. It was, nevertheless,  a fascinating new learning curve;  five days and 300 wines + later, an impression formed in my mind of the different tastes of the Albese, village by village,  parcel by parcel, every 500 metres. I began to feel at home- this was the same wine ethos as the Cote d'Or.

There is though a problem of perception for these potentially great wines: sadly, fewer and fewer wine consumers have the patience or the inclination to wait 10 to 12 years for an uncompromising classic Barolo to shed  its sinewy character and reach its prime. Fortunately, Piedmont in general and the Albese in particular has one of  the most varied wine cultures in Italy. So I made my way to a benchmark domaine, where as elegant and distinguished a Barolo as anyone's is made by the gentlemanly Aldo Vajra - in manner and gentle courtesy, he reminds me of Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanee Conti. Like Aubert, Aldo is a thinking man with the same broadness of vision to know that his homeland has so much more to offer than one great wine from one great grape in a priviledged Grand Cru site." here we don't makes wines for competitions but to be drunk with the greatest pleasure at the right moment in their lives," says Aldo.

This year will be Aldo's fortieth harvest since he returned from university to the family vineyards, centered on the hamlet of Vergne, on higher slopes above the commune of Barolo in the lee of the Alps. The great strengths of these privileged sites are the deep roots of soils, formed a million years ago as a mosaic of white calcareous marls called Sant'Agata . "They bind our family to this land." comments Aldo, with quiet conviction. The decision of which vines to plant where absorbs him as keenly now as when he started in 1972. Barolo, Barbera, Dolcetto,and the ancient cepage Langa Freisa - all have their natural nursery and home in ideally chosen  plots.

After the robust tannins of the morning's prima tastings in Alba, it was an invigorating delight to taste Vajra's Rhine Riesling ("so much better than its Italico cousin") from a small vineyard that is a tribute and commitment to the great German grape: all peaches and apricots  shaped by the Albese soils, which also give the wine an added touch of minerality. I was also taken by the very classy Barbera d'Alba Superiore from Aldo's top vineyard,  Bricco della Viole  ( 'the hill of violets') in 2008. with its exceptional soft gentleness and a texture like cashmere. If you want a taste of junior Barolo that is friendly on the purse and palate try Vajra's Langhe Nebbiolo from young vines in the communes of Sino and Barolo itself; and for the real thing at a realistic price, Barolo Albese from a blend of La Volta, Fossati and Coste de Vergne vineyards gives exemplary balance and early drinking pleasure for a plate of homemade taglionini with mushrooms. These last two wines are also 2008s, but such is the light touch in the winemaking that they are absolutely ready. Vajra's top vineyard wine, the 2007 Barolo Bricco delle Viole needed that extra time to show its  paces but will develop further complexities over the next decade, in a filigreed finely textured style that is inimitably "Aldo Vajra." Bravo!

Pinot Noir for Brunch at the Finborough Wine Cafe

When I lived in the Finborough Road hinterland in the early seventies, I never thought this rat run between Chelsea and Kangaroo Valley could ever be the right spot for a peaceful wine tasting:  It's taken me forty years to realise how deliciously wrong I've been, for early this month I fell upon the Finborough Wine Cafe, jutting like a proud ship's bow above the racing traffic. Amazingly peaceful inside, it has a lovely ambience and the sight of good grilled bread and hams set me up for a long session. We were here to appreciate the breadth of the Awin Barratt Siegel (ABS)'s Portfolio of Pinot Noirs, with special emphasis on Germany.The blurb quoted Raymond Blanc who lauded the young staff for really knowing their stuff..... "I have discovered so many new wines through them," trilled the jolly professional Frenchman and culinary maestro of BBC 2. Great Raymond wasn't wrong. This was a riveting tasting, a journey across the world with fine things on at least three continents.

ground hog engrossed

    The centrepiece for me was the Burgstadt Franconian estate of Paul Furst and his son Sebastian, the golden boy of Spaetburgunder who presented the wines in London, also in Badneuenahr -Ahrweillwer the week before. Sebastian studied in Beaune and the Cote d'Or is clearly his lodestar;  even if the flavours of Burgstadt are sensibly different from Burgundy, the Franconian emanating from sandstone and weathered loam soils, rather than the argylo-calcaire of the Cote. Sebastian's two finest wines, Grosses Gewaechs  Pinots Noir Centgrafenberg and Hunsruck in the sensuous 2009 vintage are fine grands crus by any standard - the Centgrafenberg of poised, layered fruit and spice, the Hunsruck -over red sandstone - stronger, of great depth and gravitas. The prices though are stiff, neither giving much change from £80 a bottle RRP. Named German Red Wine Collection in 2011, this accolade has magnified the fame of the estate, the downside of which is the pricing policy.

Sebastian Furst

Don't despair,  also shown was the Pinot Noir Tradition 2010 of Jean Stodden of  Rech in the Ahr, a respected leader in the valley but a new entrant to the ABS portfolio. Fully worth £21, of clear shimmering ruby, a class act of freshness, energy and burgeoning vinosity, this intellectual wine showed that you can make very fine Pinot over slate. And, finally,the bargain of the Tasting was the Chamonix 2010 Pinot Noir Reserve (£16.99) - redolent of delicate woodland red fruits touched by the mineral deposits from the great  peaks above Franschhoek in South Africa's Cape. Surely one of the most beautiful places on earth? Enjoy.

Spaetburgunder and sauerkraut soup - Ist German Symposium of International Pinot Noirs

Sauerkraut soup at Carpe Diem Cafe -recommended

Ludwig Van B & friend in Bonn's central Platz

Badneuenahr's Lutheran Church

The Ahr on a bright Feb.day

                                           

Badneuenahr -Ahrweiler 24/26 Feburary

A couple of weeks ago, so vivid it could have been yesterday, I spent a delightful long weekend north west of Bonn (birthplace of Beethoven) in the Ahr valley for the first-ever German symposium of International Pinot Noir. Badneuenahr is a charming spa town, solidly bourgeois, of Lutheran rectitude, and so seems a natural home to some of Germany's most cerebral Pinots. Definitely wines for those who prefer pure, tense sensations to powerful fruit bombs. Yet these racy crus of the Ahr belong in the same cradle as fine Volnay and Chambolle with the haunting draw of great Pinot, wines you feel rather than analyse or classify, to borrow Victoria Moore's unbeatable analogy. Nonetheless, in this northern clime, Pinot grown over slate does have as strong appeal to the intellect as to the soul.

Arriving late on friday night, I slept in late at the Dorint Park Hotel, as the symposium did not start till a civilized 11am. As we gathered for coffee in the conference hall, I was glad to see two  familiar faces - my dear friend Charlotte Van Zummeren proprietor of the fine Dutch website www.winebusiness.nl and Anne Krebiehl, a daughter of Baden who enlivens London's wine journalism with her sharp mind, bubbling humour and fine turn of phrase.

The saturday all-day session  brought all-embracing tasting presentations from producers from every Pinot Noir region in Germany, as well as the US and New Zealand in all their diversity. My first impressions, later confirmed, were that of the northern territories, the Ahr Pinots definitely stole a march over their counteparts from the Mosel and more surprisingly the south-facing slopes of the Rheingau (pace the great August Kesseler whose Pinots weren't present). Yet in the warmer south of the Palatinate, Franconia and especially Baden, the ripe richness and intensity of  expression was beautifully balanced by finesse and elegance - so much better than the quaffable (no more) PNs of Alsace, westwards across the Rhine, where the enormous yields jeopardize any chance of making fine wine from the minx that is Pinot.

The quality of the speeches was inevitably variable. The palm should go to John Belsham, of Foxes Island Wine, Blenheim NZ for his admirably clear and compelling narrative of the different conditions that shape Pinot growing across New Zealand from Gladstone and Waipara through Marlborough onto Canterbury and Otago. Other speakers did not respect their alloted span.One German journalist went, uncontrolled, way over time to give an surfeit of numbing technical detail, which reminded me of his great nation's one little fault - Wagnerian long-windedness. As the acerbic English novelist Evelyn Waugh sat under the Stuka dive bombers in the Luftwaffe's assault on Crete in 1941, he remarked,  "too loud and too long!" In fairness to grand German musical culture, Waugh for all his genius had a tin ear and could not possibly appreciate the glories of Mozart, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Mahler.

We digress. Saturday's highlight was a gala dinner, where most people dressed  nicely but not too formally. Unlike many of these wine dinners (I remember grisly food once at the Clos Vougeot) the cuisine of master chef Hans Stefan Steinheuser was exquisite, the outstanding dish roe deer cooked in spaetburgunder, with rouennaise sauce that had more than a passing acquaintance with duck's liver. The next morning we had plenty of time to taste at numerous tables. My standouts from the Ahr were Meyer-Nakel in Dernau and Weingut Nelles in Heimersheim; from Franconia the lovely subtle Pinots Of Rudolf Furst; and thanks to the marking of my card by Gert Crum, the Champagne & Burgundy authority, Franz Keller in Kaiserstuhl and Knipser in Johannishof ( Palatinate). Rosy-cheeked, I then ambled across the river for a sustaining and deliciious sauerkraut soup at the Carpe Diem cafe in town. The best comfort after a red wine tasting.

More details in the next post.

the girls at Meyer -Nackel

Sebastian Furst

Tasting vins clairs with Raphael Bereche in mid winter

tasting- reception room  Bereche et fils

Ludes, January 2012

Winter at last returned to Champagne on the 30th Jan as surely as it had done at the weekend in London, when I bought a wool-lined shooter's gilet to stave off the cold. Comic, really, as I'm not a chasseur but never have I made a better move, as the temperature was later to fall to minus 15 C in the Aube by February 3rd. First off, on  Monday (30/1) after a trencherman lunch at Le Theatre with Thibaut Le Mailloux, I set off to Ludes to visit the one grower I most regret not including in my last Champagne book - Raphael Bereche. I had tasted his wines in London several times, was captivated and saw him again with Christophe Constant and Amanda Regan during the 2011 harvest. Surely one of the most bizarre and topsy turvy weather sequences I can remember. For Raphael's honest admissions of the challenges of 2011, see my Sept. post in archive.

Now on my return to Ludes, I was anxious to know if the little magician had cast his spell on some very variable fruit. My first impressions were reassuring - the family is obviously investing heavily for the future: a big extension to the downstairs storage cellar, pride of place given to a new parked tool, the now famous PAI (presse automatique incline) the Rolls Royce of modern champagne presses; also I spied some fine larger barrels. I will let my tasting notes of the vins clairs and the currently evolving  Bereche champagnes do the talking. I think scoring very young wines with points is a mug's game - on my blog at least, I am going to rely  on star ratings, which are broader and more useful. Just as well, as I never could add up.

Vins Clairs Bereche et fils -2011
vinified and lodged in 350 litre oak foudres, first used in the 2007 harvest

Pinot Meunier - from the Marne valley, left bank west after Tarlant & Oeuilly .Vines planted in 1969, aspect north west. 9.6 % alcohol by volume (abv). Yellow/gold sheen, delicate, flowery fruit - a very light strengthening by the oak. Winemaking of feeling and flair in difficult circumstances. **(*)

Pinot Noir - from Ormes, Northern Petite Montagne - grip and substance but also upright, aromatic and elegantly ripe (10.2% abv) reflecting the sandstone soils. Perfect for the rose non-vintage - lovely crushed yellow stone-fruits (peach?) f and crunchy texture. Excellent. Bravo! ****

Chardonnay - from Mareuil le Port, classic Mid Marne valley. A rich wine of substance but the balance needs to work itself out - because of the clay a little difficult, the wood evident and cloaking the brooding fruit at the moment. Re-taste in April **  for now

Chardonnay - Le Clos de Beauregard Ludes, Montagne de Reims Ier Cru. True calcareous limestone. Much more pointu, energie (Raphael). Fine acidity and considerable richness in balance. Excellent maturity. 11.2% abv. A real success. ****

current champagne blends in the making


Assemblage 2010 - made and blended in 258 litre demi-muid casks. 30 % reserve wines from 09, 08, 07. The aerating effects of the cask is nicely realised with a gentle note of wood - but the blend is not upstaged; it's fresh, clean and pure, the reserve wines making up for the frailties of the 2010 harvest. A skilled effort in very trying conditions. ** (*)

Bereche Brut NV - the current blend. Base wine 2009 - majority Chardonnay/Meunier + 30% Pinot Noir. Dosage 8g/l. beautifully ripe but with athletic dash and vigour. The excellence of the base wine comes through. Good length. Highly recommended. ***(*)

Bereche Les Beauregards 2008 Brut - made from two thirds Ludes and one third Mareuil le Port grapes, cultivated by Selection Massal. Fine, classic, quite complex (already) aromatics; splendid creamy mousse thanks to being aged for the first time sous liege (under a clamped cork); lovely long multi- toned flavours; perfect texture,  at once caressing yet firm (excellent acidity). Potentially a great champagne from tthe best vintage since 2002. The first exceptional 08 I've tasted - will be terrific value when available from June 2012 - but if you've room, worth keeping in a cool dark place for another year or two. ****(*)

Sparkling debut in the Garden of England

Nick Hall

Since the marriage of Prince William & Kate and the pouring of English sparkling wine at the couple's wedding last April, the home-grown product has become very fashionable. So much so that the wine press has made big claims for England's finest, claiming that it can match and even surpass the real thing across the channel in Champagne. There are of course factors  in common between the Montagne de Reims and say the North Downs, chalky soils especially and the same noble grapes. But the Weald is colder and crucially wetter than the Mountain. Combine that with the youth of English vines and there can be an austerity, sometimes even a coarseness, to our British styles that gives the best of Champagne by comparison a superior dimension of creaminess and supple balance.

Or so I used to think until I tasted  a remarkable Kentish sparkling wine the other day that had all the dash and verve of Champagne, but with a floral bewitching flavour that was a scented apple orchard in the glass - completely original, sui generis,as deliciously English as Elgar and, mixing my metaphors, cucumber sandwiches. Herbert Hall in Marden is the creation of Nick Hall who names his vineyard of 15 acres after his grandfather, Herbert, a farm tenant. I naturally warmed to Nick when last summer I sat next to him at a seminar at Hush Heath, a neighbouring fine Marden estate.We had come to hear the celebrated Austrian glassmaker Georg Riedal wax lyrical about his fine stemware. A very smooth bit of marketing, but the gilt came off the gingerbread when Georg in his high collared Franz Josef  jacket said how much he disliked a particular glass because it did not highlight the fizz. No, it didn't: instead it allowed the excellent wine behind the bubbles to speak eloquently to the taster. I sighed, as did my neighbour, so I knew we would  get on and share the belief that fine winemaking is as much about 'feeling' as oenological numbers.

http://www.herberthall.com

I wasn't then surprised to learn that Nick had read English at King's College, London and in a meandering career became a journalist, after trying other trades. Shades of my own rake's progress! He's married to a v successful solicitor with two kids, and in the early 'noughties he took the plunge and converted his farmland into a vineyard. Though a delightful lunch companion, Nick is no dilettante about wine. He took a thorough winemaking course at Plumpton and he seems to have done everything right  in his debut vintage, 2009, a lovely ripe year. His recipe is the classic mix of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Meunier; 90 per cent of the organically grown grapes are squeezed gently in a modern Wilmes  press, the remaining 10 per cent vinified in oak in order to aerate and strengthen the wine. Its originality lies in a subtle pinkish blush  that heralds a lovely fruitiness and silken texture - truly a friendly vin gris that will please punters and connoisseurs alike. It's already listed at the Gavroche and is the pouring sparkling wine at Wilton's in St James. I will certainly pop a bottle with friends in Yorkshire, who happen to be called Middleton, over the holiday.

Happy Christmas.

Champagne is too hot for Meunier? - a sceptical reply

My good friend Jean-Herve Chiquet of Jacquesson last month caused hearts to flutter at the CIVC, when in an interview on YouTube, he honestly expressed disappointment with the performance of Meunier compared with Pinot Noir in his vineyards in Dizy. His measured words, which were intended to apply strictly to his own locale, were blown up into a news-tease that generally asserted that Champagne is now too hot for Meunier - period. Worse, the cepage was dismissed as 'notorious' for its inability to age. Oh dear, categorical assertions about wine are usually misleading. So, as a antidote, I modestly suggest you read my piece 'A Fine Breed - the potential of Pinot Meunier' - published yesterday in The Drinks Business ( Issue 111) now transcripted in my blog post (October 19).

I don't doubt that Jean-Herve is right that Meunier doesn't work that well for him in Dizy - in such premier cru sites of this village, the best plots are reserved for Pinot Noir and some Chardonnay in the sunlit uplands, whereas Meunier is planted most often at the shady bottom of the slopes, where it acts as an assurance of decent yields because it is more resistant to spring frosts. And no one is denying that Meunier succumbed to terrible rot in the washout that crippled its vineyards in mid-august 2010. In 2011, too, there were problems for the variety, arising from a topsy turvy late summer of alternating heat and humidity, made worse by winds and storms. It is emphatically not just a question of heat.

Meunier actually thrives in hot, dry weather, particularly in the clay-rich soils of the reaches of the Marne Valley westwards from Damery towards Chateau Thierry. In the heatwave harvest of 2003, Meunier was the most successful of the three Champagne grape varieties; and it was highly successful in the super warm conditions of 2009, when there was not a drop of rain during the harvest.

After my piece went to press, I received a great email from Raphael Bereche, an outstanding young grower  and a very assured handler of Meunier. His honest account of the challenges in 2011, bears close reading. " "we have two vineyards of Meunier in very dfferent places. Ormes is in the most northern part of Champagne Here the soils are sandstone and hard limestone. In 2011, the Meunier was terrific, achieving good maturity in excess of 10 degrees. But in Mareuil le Port and Festigny, cool quite heavy soils and considerable humidity combined to make rot a constant danger, so it wasn't possible to achieve more than 9.5 degrees. Meunier needs a long slow maturing cycle - and that wasn't realistic in 2011, one of the earliest harvests on record."

It's all a matter of site and local conditions. I also heard that in the Meunier vineyards closest to Paris around Charly sur Marne, some beautiful wines were made this year in what are some of the least rated vineyards in Champagne. There's life in the old 'workhorse' grape yet !

Raphael Bereche

A FINE BREED - Pinot Meunier's potential

Here's the transcript of my article published today in the Champagne Focus section of The Drinks Business (Issue 111 - October 2011). I wrote it in answer to some critics' recent loose claims that ' Champagne is too hot for Meunier!

Francois Hure - maker of long-lived Meunier

For many years, Pinot Meunier was projected as the Cinderella of Champagne, its soft, youthful charms acting as a walk-on part supporting the grander stars of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in a non-vintage blend. The reality is more complicated, sometimes contradictory, certainly more interesting.  Meunier has always been an integral part of the culture of Champagne, a dominating presence of the landscape as you take the best introduction to the region by riding the train from Paris Gare de l’Est along the picturesque reaches of the Marne. From Chateau Thierry to Epernay, the vineyards on all sides are largely planted to Meunier, the white flour-like dustings on its leaves a reminder of its name-  Meunier means miller in French.  The figures are convincing proof of the economic importance of the cépage : Meunier accounts for 61.29% of all productive vines in the Marne Valley,  33.21% of those on the Montagne de Reims, and nearly a third of total plantings across Champagne Viticole. Some walk-on part!

The many faces of Meunier………………….

Pinot Meunier is said to be a mutation of Pinot Noir. Yet in Champagne some of its best expressions can be surprisingly close to Chardonnay in terms of its optimal taste profile with a surprising fragrance and delicacy in tune with a durable richness and substance. These complete qualities obviously rely on such factors as favourable site and a good dry vintage; old, low-yielding vines are also a most precious asset.  The grape itself is better understood if we continue to call it plain Meunier, without the Pinot prefix.  For as Jérôme Dehours, a fine grower at Cerseuil on the left bank of the Marne explains “the morphology of Meunier grapes is different from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The grapes are smaller and the pulps more compressed. It is maybe this that makes them more sensitive in a humid climate that encourages botrytis.” More positively, Dehours stresses that Meunier is an endemic variety in the valley because it’s the result of an adaptation to the harsh climate, notably by a later bud-break that makes it more resistant to spring frost; the white covering of the leaves also forms a protective duvet for the plants. Dehours’ left –bank vineyards at Cerseuil yield a certain style of Meunier on cool clay-rich soils. “ Here we look for maturity but also, above all, freshness. It’s therefore in some less sunny sites that we naturally find our path.” His wines are a very distinctive take on his precise terroirs.

For the greatest houses in Champagne, their search for the best Meunier works on a broader canvas. They are looking for a variety of styles, choosing some crus that bring a note of soft easy drinking to the blend, while also selecting more solid ones that would be ideal as reserve wines in future blends. Francois Domi, the focused chef de caves at Billecart-Salmon, is a great fan of the grape for its finesse that matches his exquisite house style. “The Meunier is the expressive cépage par excellence, above all from the Marne Valley- very aromatic, elegant - and blossoms two or three years after the prise de mousse.” Yet Domi is acutely conscious of the differences between sites. “Damery, facing due south is more structured, with dominant red fruits, whereas Leuvrigny is south, south east and more elegant, thanks to its lighter soil.”  On a personal note, I can vouch for Damery’s ability to age, having luckily tasted a superb 1985 Meunier at De Telmont last spring with Louisa Hargrave, the Long Island vigneronne and writer.

Jean- Baptiste Lecaillon (left)

Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon is the wine supremo of Louis Roederer and the family’s other gems like Chateau Pichon Lalande (Comtesse) in Pauillac. He approaches the search for the best Meunier very objectively, for though the house owns 214 ha. of finest mainly grand cru Pinot and Chardonnay in the best sites, it owns no Meunier vines in Champagne. Jean-Baptiste in his grape contracts favours the sunnier right bank Meunier west of Damery into its heartlands ,around Chatillons sur Marne, which are more famous in the region than the outside world for the pure Meuniers of octogenarian grower, the late René Collard, whose barrel-fermented champagnes still tasted good at 30 years +: His 1975 in 2007 was a marvel of fresh, honeyed richness. Lécaillon is looking for that flowering fruit which will marry elegantly and flatter his great but sterner crus of the Montagne and the Cote for his flagship Brut Premier. No Meunier is used in Roederer vintages – basically this seems a decision as much about house style as it is about quality.

The one house that champions  Meunier is of course Krug – the most prestigious name of all. Speaking just after the recent harvest, Olivier Krug reports that “2011 has been particularly atypical - a very early flowering, the context of potential dryness, then quite a surprising summer with waves of heat, rains and quite strong storms.” This scenario has allowed the Krug team to play their strongest card- la culture parcellaire pre-harvest samples of the grapes and individual follow-ups assumes greater importance, year on year.”The Krug family have always loved Meunier for the original aromas- the whiff of the baker’s shop - that it brings to the house style. But as with all Krug wines, the grape makes a perfect alliance with its terroir. “The terroir of Sainte Gemme is a cru that the house likes a lot”, Olivier confesses, “it is not the best known (deep in the Marne Valley) but it is a corner stone of the house in the sense that it has been with us for dozens of years and finds its way into the majority of our cuvées.”

Facing due south on rich clay, Sainte Gemme is particularly interesting in very warm years, which are a little dry. So much for the latest claim that Champagne is too hot for Meunier! “Its vins clairs (still wines) often spring a surprise,” Olivier explains, “as well as a lot of fruit and beautiful balance, they have real depth. It is this matière that allows them to be aged as reserve wine. This reserve stock is something that Eric Lebel, our chef de cave looks for most often. I imagine that it was this sort of wine that my father and previous generations sought in order to bring to certain legendary vintages a part of their exceptional ‘twist’.”  One might add that Krug 1981, one of the greatest Champagnes of the 20^th century had as much as 19% fine Meunier in the blend, and the supremely elegant 1962 almost as much.

And so to a very different terrain, Premier Cru Ludes on the western side of the Grande Montagne de Reims, where the predominant limestone yields an initially more reserved style of Meunier, but one that can age gracefully. Here François Huré is the winemaker at a medium-sized family domaine. He is fortunate to be able to take a wider world view, having worked with Pinots at de Montille in Pommard and Coldstream Hills in Victoria, Australia. “ For most growers, Pinot Meunier gives fruitiness and softness. But if the vineyard is well managed and the crop not too high, it can be a very complex variety,” says François. “It’s even more so in Ludes, where I have some Meunier from the ‘60s and ’70s (massale selection). I usually use them in the vintage blend because they have enough body to keep for five to 10 years. They need time to open up and show some nice flavours. It’s the limestone for sure that gives this type of Meunier. If you compares with Villedommange, where I have some vineyards, too; there there’s more sand which opens the wine and makes it easy to drink. Villedommange usually ripens before Ludes.”

Amanda Regan & Christophe Constant tasting Chez Hure

The moral of the tale is that Meunier is much more than a workhorse grape. Made with feeling and care, it is both an essential part of the best non-vintage blends and it can blossom in its own right as a genuinely fine wine. Its very vulnerabilities are a challenge that the most adaptable winemakers relish, even in the topsy turvy conditions of Climate Change. Fortune favours the brave.

A Meunier grower’s view

Jérôme Prévost makes probably the most exotic Meunier in  Champagne - on the sandstone soils of Gueux to the west of Reims. He has been quoted as saying that Meunier has interesting things to say, but you have to know how to make it speak. How so? “The particularity of Meunier is that it’s a ‘sprinter’. Its vegetative cycle is shorter than for Pinot and Chardonnay, so everything one can do to lengthen time on the vine is beneficial. It is through an absence of vigour that the vigneron can achieve full maturity. The right rootstock and clone are essential (on sand, 3309 is the most compatible). At heart, Meunier has interesting things to say. I appreciate the symphonies of Mozart ( a blend is like the full orchestra), but I also have precious moments with a simple sonata for claviercord. That is Meunier.

The best response to atypical years is old vines with deep roots - they seem less sensitive to climatic conditions; they are more in a relationship with the earth than the sky.”

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