Precise and beautiful, these Grand Cru champanges are an exercise in quality
They are exceptionally precise and beautifully balanced champagnes, each sourced from a single Grand Cru village in the famed Côte des Blancs. They really deliver.
Tasting wine professionally is a curious business. Often it’s like speed-dating, making quick assessments on first impressions. But every couple of years I look at a group of great wines multiple times, in multiple places, at different times. It brings fresh insights.
Since 1998, Negociants Australia – the wine importers that sit within the Hill-Smith family’s Yalumba empire – have delivered a wine trade education program that’s unlike anything else in the world. Since 2012 they have entrusted me to run it. Every two years, members of the wine trade – sommeliers and fine wine retailers – are invited to gain entrance into the Working with Wine Fellowship. Of the 700 or so who apply, less than half are admitted. Those who make the cut attend two full-day seminars, where winemakers from the great European estates imported by Negociants Australia conduct masterclasses that take deep dives into some of the best wines in the world.
It’s done across five cities in eight days – and that regular return to the same wines day after day, with the intense focus the program requires, delivers both repeated truths and daily contradictions. There are some consistent differences that go beyond the variation that can exist between bottles of the same wine.
I’ve built a sufficient sample size to support a theory about how wines appear in different cities. They always look good in Melbourne, but sometimes struggle in Brisbane. Sydney can be hit and miss, but they shine in Perth. They are remarkably consistent in Adelaide among friends. Then there are wines that consistently look great everywhere. Over the past couple of weeks the three wines featured here have shone. They are exceptionally precise and beautifully balanced champagnes, each sourced from a single Grand Cru village in the famed Côte des Blancs. They really deliver.
PIERRE GIMONNET & FILS ‘CHOUILLY’ GRAND CRU 2015, $225
The finest framed, most demure of this trio, from the village of Chouilly. Zest of lemon, a scattering of white flowers. Traces of soft salad leaves pointing to the characteristics of the vintage – a tricky year where sugar ripeness threatened to get away from flavour development. Real elegance and grace.
12.5% alcohol, 93 points
PIERRE GIMONNET & FILS ‘CRAMANT’ GRAND CRU 2015, $225
Sourced from old vines from sites around Cramant with the chalkiest soils. A powerful yet graceful wine, long and precise. Plenty of preserved lemon, a touch of tarragon and a sprinkling of lemon sherbert. It’s a wine defined by a bright, fine and energetic acidity.
12.5% alcohol, 94 points
PIERRE GIMONNET & FILS ‘OGER’ GRAND CRU 2015, $225
Oger sits towards the southern end of the Côte des Blancs, not far from the Gimonnet heartland in the north. Packed with grapefruit pith and lemon thyme, a hint of struck flint too. Intensity and energy; a fine, softly saline finish.
12.5% alcohol, 95 points