CO OP, Les Pionniers, rosé Champagne is rather good, it’s very drinkable. Dry with plenty of fruit it’s not a bready Champagne but more cremant style. Raspberry and hints of strawberries and redcurrant it’s one to sip in the garden on a summer’s evening. We’ll done CO OP.
Another classy roundabout
Chablis map of the different grades of land
In July 2023 we headed off to Champagne and Chablis with friends for a bit of wine tasting. Weather was decent, accommodation booked Nd tastings arranged. Some of the champagne and Chablis houses needed to booked or an introduction made by a friendly Master of Wine, whom the wife had been judging wine earlier in the year.
What was apparent by the end of the trip was the quality of the Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines and price was pretty fair considering the quality.
Champagne Guilleminot.
Excellent start to the tasting and at about £15 a bottle for the entry Bruts, great price. Good length and fresher style these were a move away from the heavy toasty and yeasty notes of your traditional Champagnes. Well worth trying if you prefer cremant sparkling wines but want the next step up.
Champagne Jeangout.
This smaller producer is another excellent champagne house making about 30,000 bottles a year. Fresher style again with crispness, freshness and subtle citrus flavours that made their Premier Cru stand out. At £23 a bottle not cheap, even by french standards but superb and worth the money.
Champagne Cattier.
Cattier was not a name I had heard of before the wife brought a bottle home to go with our Christmas day meal, but then make about 600,000 bottles of their range and 1 million bottles of the iconic Ace of Spades range, at £300 a bottle the Ace of Spades if seriously expensive. At £30 to £50 a bottle their main range is more affordable and great quality. Fresher than your usual Champagnes but with clarity and superb length these Premier Cru’s are classy. Their 2014 Vintage has a bit more traditional characteristics but the fruit is certainly there.
One very geeky fact is that they are putting NFC labels on their bottles very shortly, hold your NFC enabled phone next to the front label and it will open a Utube video that Cattier has produced. Thd video is pretty good too. Here we has a tour of their cellars, mind blowing, 3 levels and stretch for what seemed like miles.
La Chablisiene.
This is a large producer with a large range of Petit Chablis to Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines. The Petit Chablis was a bit disappointing, short on length and flavours. Their Premier Cru wines were very good though and we end up with 9 different Premier Cru bottles.
Domaine Gautheron.
Great range and excellent at all levels. Fresh, crisp and loads of citrus. The Petit Chablis was a great day to day wine and the Premier Cru were wonderful ‘occasion’ wines the Grand Cru we purchased will be laid down for the next decade.
Domaine Vrignaud Fourchaume.
Classy cellar room for the tastings matched the wine. Oozing quality over their entire range we probably should have purchased more than we did. At about £20 a bottle for their Premier Cru wines this matched the other producers but their were none I didn’t think deserved a silver or gold medal.
Cattier, Premier Cru, Champagne, France
Not all Champagnes are created equal Nd this Cattier, Premier Cru shows Champagne at its best. It’s not a yeasty or bready Champagne but it’s more fruit driven with freshness and softness which reminds me of a cremant, not a bad thing at all.
At £30 a bottle it’s a good price for such a lovely wine.
Collard-Picard, Archives Millesime, 2012, Champagne, France
There are champagnes that are frankly overpriced and take more than just the biscuit as the English would say and this is where this Champagne from Collard Picard comes in. It’s a good Champagne as far as they go with good acidity and flavours of lime and citrus fruit but at about £240 a bottle it’s takes more than a bit of biscuit.
Moet & Chandon, Brut, Champagne, France
Its Champagne and with the Moet name behind it, its going to sell but is it any good?
Its Dry and acidic, made with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier it has a yeasty, toasty nose that follow through with hints of citrus on the flavour front. Ideally pair with shell fish or have watching a sunset. Its decant sparkling although I still favour Bouvet sparkling on a personal basis, esp with that costs a £10 when the Moet costs over £30 a bottle.
We had this sailing down the Orwell river on an old barge celebrating a 70 birthday and 50 wedding anniversary. This is from one of the largest champagne houses and typicaly has a house style that is replicated year on year.
There are aromas flavours of citrus and floral notes. The usual heavy bready, yeasty notes found in champagnes are missing, only a subtle hint of yeast in the background. For me this is why I like French crements, I don’t want a mouth full of toast, I want to taste the fruit, character of the grapes. So if you want a fruit driven champagne this is the one. Best of all with discount it came to £18 a bottle at Tesco.
Laurent Perrier NV Brut champagne
The Guilleminot family are a relatively small producer, the benefit of this to us is that they have a wonderfully unique style. This is made with Pinot Noir and although you get the yeasty bready aromas the flavour is more fruit driven. Sure this will still go with seafood but it also goes very well with homemade pizza.
Champagne Guilleminot NV Brut