Champagne La Closerie

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Jerome Prevost is a true magician of Pinot Meunier. Often flabby and bold under the wrong hands but with Prevost, this grape varietal has escalated to a new height. Broad and complex, wild and seductive on the nose. Full of personality and underlying tension that loaded with intense purity of fruits interplay with salivating salinity that only old vines with deep root can offer, all wrapped in a sleek velvet sleeves. As elusive as a Pinot Meunier could get. Emotional, Sensational.

My role is to support my vines to draw out the expression of the year. I do not know which years are good ears because for me every year is different. I do not understand the philosophy of making Champagne taste the same every year. It is not my role to determine the style of the wine. The wines is the wines and it has its own way. In the winery, I do not want my stamp to show. I have to work every softly. To make a white wine I do nothing in the cellar. I work hard in the vineyard, press and put it in barrels.

The important thing for me is to harvest ripe grapes as I dont chaptalize my wines. Less about sugar richness than physiological maturity "

William Kelley - RobertParker.com

As I've written before, Jerome Prevost farms just over two hectares of old-vine Pinot Meunier in the village of Gueux, where the soils are a millefeuille of calcareous sands and clays... Prevost's tiny estate named La Closerie nonetheless produces some of the most sought-after wines in Champagneand some of my personal favorites.

Prevost started making his wine in Anselme Selosse's cellar with the 1998 vintage, moving into his own facility in 2003. He harvests latesomething that's essential if Pinot Meunier is to have characterand ferments his wine in barrel. Like Selosse, he doesn't top up his barrels while the vins clairs mature, so they often develop a light "voile" or veil of yeasts that lends subtle biologically aged characteristics to his wines.

"I wouldn't do that if I were making still wines," he explains, "but I think of the second fermentation in bottle as being like a 'crucible' that enables one to remodel a wine. The base wine may be tired after a year in barrel without topping up, but the fermentation in bottle gives it new life."

Dosage is minimal, and Prevost says that in principle he likes working in a non-dose style because "it makes me uncomfortableit doesn't forgive any faults; there's nowhere to hide." As ever, it was a pleasure tasting chez Prevost.

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