CUVÉE DES GRANDS VINTAGES
Extra Brut Grand Cru Ambonnay Champagne Rodez NV
Grapes | Pinot Noir |
Colour | White |
Origin | France, Champagne |
Other | Certified Organic |
Village | Ambonnay |
Classification | Grand Cru |
ABV | 12.5% |
Certified organic (Ecocert), biodynamic (Demeter). Tirage 2018. Disgorged January 2024.
It smells like a summer thunderstorm and tastes, incongruously, like an African summer. If you ever ate drippingly juicy ripe pineapple at the top of a hot granite kopje with the smell of resurrection bush and red dust in the still, shimmering air, you would know what I mean. There is nothing about this expansive, tropically ripe, monumental wine that is not meant to spell drama. It is deliberately awesome, in the real meaning of the word. But it is also generous, enveloping and inclusive. It owns the room but gives space for everything else. You could just as easily pair this with macaroni cheese and you could with lobster Thermidor; with your best person on a night at home in trackie pants watching eighties reruns as with heels and tuxes in a high-ceilinged room full of glittering small talk. I know where I'd drink it. Drinking range: 2024 - 2035 Rating: 17.5 Tamlyn Currin - www.JancisRobinson.com (May 2024)
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*Case price discount: Mix any 12 bottles of wine (or 9 litre equivalent) or 6 bottles of Champagne, Spirits, Sweet Wine or Fortified (4.5 litres) to get the discounted 'case price' for each bottle.
30% chardonnay, 70% pinot noir; 23% 2016 base vintage; solera of 58 reserve wines from 19% 2015, 24% 2014 and 34% 2013, 2012, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2002; 95% vinified in barrels, 5% in tanks; 10% malolactic fermentation; 1.5g/L dosage.
With 58 wines of 6 vintages in the solera, I have 58 instruments of music for the future wine composition. Every year in my concert, every perception and interpretation is a new moment of life. I want continuity of style but also new interpretation and new emotion. For Cuvée des Grands Vintages I want a mille-feuille of each vintage.' - Eric Rodez
An assemblage of the fruits of the first pressings of the best parcels across many years, this is a cuvée built on a mind-blowing roll-call of vintages, not only in that its youngest season is already now seven years of age on release, but that it plunders many of the great harvests of two decades, in proportions that must be unparalleled in Champagne, except perhaps in Krug itself, at three times the price.
The 2016 base presents a wonderful juxtaposition of contrasts – the depth of complexity of deep reserves transposed on the fruit purity of Ambonnay and the strong, fine chalk mineral fingerprint of this fabled terroir. Stone fruits and citrus of all kinds, layers of mixed spice, orange rind and fig are all here in bountiful measure. The acid line rises to another level, wonderfully energised by super fine, saline chalk minerality. Fantastic presence yet tense and lively at every moment, it's fabulous now and will age confidently, too.
Tasted in 2023 Rating: 95 Tyson Stelzer - The Champagne Guide (Jul 2024)
Very rich and intense. It really is wine, not champagne. Very winey indeed. You could drink this with a steak, it’s so long and dense. Drinking range: 2018 - 2026 Rating: 17.5 Jancis Robinson OBE MW - www.JancisRobinson.com (Jun 2019)
Champagne Rodez
Eric Rodez and his wife Martine are in the process of handing over to their son and daughter-in-law Mickaël and Aurélie, who are the ninth generation of the family since the domaine was established in 1757. The family own nine hectares of vines in the Grand Cru classified village of Ambonnay, on the south-eastern corner of the Montagne de Reims. While the majority (80%) is Pinot Noir, they have 18% Chardonnay, all grown on deep chalk and limestone with very little topsoil.
The domaine was the first French farm to receive the ‘HVE’ (High Environmental Value) certificate in 2012. They also received their organic certification in 2012, and Demeter (biodynamic) certification three years later. They use aromatherapy and essential oils to combat attacks of mildew and powdery mildew.
In the cellar Eric learned much from working as an oenologist at Krug. Winemaking takes place in in small oak barrels, no cold stabilising and no filtering. They do not actively seek malolactic fermentation, but the temperature in the barrels is allowed to rise and some (around 20% on average) will go through it. This gives Eric (and Mickaël, who made has made the wines since 2020) another component to add complexity in the blends.
The range can be seen as split into three - Vins d'Auteur, Parcellaires and wines that express the terroir Ambonnay in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Empreinte Blanche and Empreinte Noire. The Vins d'Auteur follow the logic of blending that has always been such a part of the tradition of Champagne, creating anew from each vintage, but with the experience and the reserve wines from the vintages that have preceded. These reserve wine can make up to 70% of these cuvées. The Parcellaires are more or less the opposite, being the unblended product of single vineyards in a single vintage, while the Empreintes are blended from five to seven plots, from a single variety in a single year.
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