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On JancisRobinson.com we have long championed the wines known variously as growers’ champagnes, single-estate champagnes and, more prosaically, farmers' fizz. Just click on the growers’ champagne tag at the top to find 16 more articles about them dating from 2005.
(Funnily enough, here in the Languedoc I happen to have a copy of Tom Stevenson’s late-lamented Wine Report on my desk, the one dated 2005. In this useful annual compendium of all the latest events and recommendations in the world of wine, Mr Fizz himself contributed the section on champagne of course. I was struck by the fact that 10 years ago, among Tom’s 36 recommended producers, so many were houses rather than growers. Gimmonet, Vilmart and Serge Mathieu of the Aube look to me to be the exceptions. I suggested in the original version of this article published this morning that nowadays there would be many more. See * below for Tom's response.)
I was put in a champagne mood this week by a query from Jeff Parris, a long-standing member of Purple Pages. A massive fan of top-quality champagne, and unwilling to spend the sums needed to invest in top red bordeaux, he was enquiring about the extent to which top-quality champagne could be a sound investment. I counseled caution on the grounds that champagne is even more sensitive to storage conditions than still wine, and I would be worried that reasonably well-travelled champagne has a shorter lifespan than top-quality bordeaux. I put him in touch with Tom, who was also a little cautious but sent a revealing price comparison showing just how much cheaper top-quality champagne is than top bordeaux.
With that in mind, I draw to your attention today a magnificent 2005 from Ambonnay, just next door to Krug’s stratospherically priced Clos d’Ambonnay, approx £2,000 a bottle. The cellars of the small family business Paul Déthune are right next door and some of their vines surround it. According to Pierre Déthune, the famous Clos was a playground he frequented when a child.
I was told this by their estimable UK importer Thorman Hunt, who report that after years of importing the wines of Veuve Fourny of Vertus on the Côte des Blancs, they finally found a champagne of the same quality on the Montagne de Reims. Apparently when they mentioned this to Emmanuel Fourny, he said, ‘Oh Pierre, he’s great. I went to school with him. I should have introduced you years ago!’
Quiet Pierre is admired for his diligence as a vigneron while his wife Sophie looks after all the administration, exports and visits. They have long treated their most concentrated wines to oak – as well they might with seven hectares of grand-cru vineyard – mainly Pinot Noir – to which they have recently added a few more vines, as well as the house next door, from a late uncle. This will presumably give them a bit more room for winemaking.
They make nine different grand-cru wines but it was this rich 2005 that caught my attention at a big showing of vintage champagnes in London earlier this year. I loved the complexity of the nose of this wine that had been aged in bottle until June 2014. The blend was 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir, initially aged as base wines in 32-hl oak vats with malolactic conversion fully completed. The Chardonnay element in this relatively low-acid vintage seems to have kept the wine taut and lively but it has great layers of flavour and demands attention.
This is not an aperitif wine but one to be savoured with food. The persistence is hugely impressive and, just for the record, I thought it would probably drink well until 2025 – although I would not recommend buying it for investment purposes. Only a handful of world-famous names reliably sell on the secondary market. All the more for those of us who actually enjoy drinking top-quality champagne then. This is obviously a luxury purchase, but not an overpriced one considering its age and quality.
The Déthunes are particularly conscious of sustainability and were the first vignerons in Champagne to install solar panels that now provide about 20% of their electricity needs. They also collect rainwater, which provides about 20% of their needs.
Wine-searcher lists stockists in Italy, Belgium, Germany, US, Hong Kong and the UK, to which Thorman Hunt would add Fortnum & Mason, Highbury Vintners and Fine + Rare. (Paul Déthune's NV is the house champagne at Bentley's and Corrigan's in central London.) Sophie Déthune, who says only 3,000 bottles of this 2005 were made so there is no more left in Ambonnay, provided this list of their importers around the world:
USA: Belle Epoque Wine Imports LLC, Doral, Florida bhperez@bertinhenriselections.com, www.bertinhenriselections.com
Valley View Wines, Robert Dennis, Gen Ellen, California, Dennis.roberts@valleyviewwinessales.com, www.Valleyviewwinesales.com
Tenzings, Chicago, Illinois, info@tenzingws.com, www.tenzingws.com
Envoyer Fine Wines, Laguna Hills, California, greg@envoyerfinewines.com
Vin de Garde Wines, Portland, Oregon, Michael Bathurst, mbathurst@vdgwines.com, www.vdgwines.com
UK: Thorman Hunt, London, www.thormanhunt.co.uk, info@thormanhunt.co.uk
Germany: Dieckmann’s Wein, Ludger Dieckmann, Köln, info@dieckmannswein.de, www.dieckmannswein.de
Holland: Benier Global Wines, Vught, The Netherlands, www.benierglobalwines.com, benier@benierglobalwines.com
Belgium: Bossuyt Kuurne, www.bossuytenco.be, wine@bossuytenco.be
Denmark: Catching Wines, Faaborg, mail@catchingwines.dk
Sweden: Franska Vinlistan, Jan Netterberg, www.franskavinlistan.com, info@franskavinlistan.com
Italy: Caprari CD , Cade Reggio, Emilia, cademedici@cademedici.it
Switzerland: Champagner House, www.champagnerhouse.ch
Czech Republic: Domaine RW SRO, Praha, www.domaine.cz, domaine@domaine.cz
Japan: Enoteca shops, import@enoteca.co.jp
Hong Kong: Enoteca shops
Taiwan: Wang and Co, Taipei, www.wangfu-wine.com
Shanghai: Enoteca Shops
Singapore: Water and Wine, Robin.soh@waterandwine.net, www.waterandwine.net
Australia: Virtuoso Wines Pty, Wheeler Heights NSW, Scott@virtuosowines.com, www.virtuosowines.com
* Tom Stevenson comments There is a misconception about my position on growers, that I am some sort of ambassador of the houses to the growers’ detriment, yet in Champagne (Sotheby’s Publications, 1986), I was the first English-language writer to shine a light on grower Champagnes. You will not find anything of significance on the subject prior to 1986. In fact it is hard to find anything at all. Yet my book that year contained a directory of more than 500 growers. At that time I had limited experience and could only write about the 50-odd I had actually visited, but the directory was there for others to pick up and run with, and US importers started to do that long before the UK wine trade. In the Champagne supplements of WINE and Wine & Spirit I constantly encouraged the growers to use their specificity of terroir to carve out export markets, but barely a handful had any interest in achieving this until the mid-1990s. By 1998 I could adequately profile 90 growers. So why are there so few recommended growers (even by my own corrected number) in 2005 edition of Wine Report? Because four annual editions of Champagne & Sparkling Wine Guide gave me the unique opportunity not only to taste so many Champagnes (more in that period alone than Richard Juhlin claims to be a world record now) and, more importantly, it allowed me to check the development of second bottles over a four-year period, and so many did not age well. And it is an even greater number now, as a new generation of Champagne grower have looked to Burgundy for inspiration and, completely ignoring sparkling wine unique needs, dropped their SO2 levels, which in itself would not be a bad thing if introduced at an early part of a rationally structured regime, but it was those who use no or very little SO2 after the oxidative shock of disgorgement that have seen their wines rapidly age, even if some of them can shine brightly and beautiful when first released. This has spread to some formerly top-quality small houses and I am equally critical of those too. I added Gimonnet to the list above and Didier Gimonnet is one of the nicest, most cooperative guys I know in Champagne, but I would not include his name now because his wines suffer from this. You have recommended Gimonnet in the past. If you have any in your cellar, dig out your notes from a few years ago and ask yourself if they have developed as you expected ...
