Les Pierrières (2013)
NV
Region
France › Champagne › Champagne AOC › Côte de Sézanne
Type
white · sparkling · extra-brut
Grapes
Chardonnay
Alcohol
12.5%
Volume
750 mL
Sugar
1.7 g/L
Tasting Notes
This is the first wine of the year. Nice beginning of the day, I must say. Complex and multilayered wine with a slightly restrained bouquet. But it's a pleasure to witness how it unpacks. It starts with Roquefort cheese, mould and butter. Then it reveals baked pear, mushrooms, and Jerez. Almost perfectly balanced with a long mineral aftertaste and flavours of lemon tart with meringue, Jerez and mushrooms. Delicate and sophisticated.
Tasted as a part of Ulysse Collin dinner in 101 Bar.
Subjectively, but I fell in love with this wine. It was interesting to witness winemaker evolution by comparing it with 2007-based magnum (not fair comparison, but still). So this one is based on 2013, spent 48 months on lees. Initially (even after some 'decanting') it is closed and restrained, but shows complexity with chalk and salty notes. With time it opens up and becomes expressive and sophisticated. Chalk, apple seeds, salty Roquefort, lemon and cream. And then this beauty fully opens up when you taste it. Perfectly balanced, multilayered with long evolving taste. Definitely my style. Great value.
About
40-year-old Chardonnay have southern exposure and are planted on chalky soils that also feature chunks and pockets of a rare black flint or silex noir unique to Coteaux du Petit Morin. Pierrières was Olivier Collin's first bottling, and only bottling, in the 2004 vintage. The fruit is hand-harvested, the clusters destemmed and the grapes gently pressed; the juice is fermented spontaneously and slowly (up to six months) with natural yeasts in mainly-used Burgundy barrels. Reserve wines are held in foudres and tonneaux. The wine is bottled without fining or filtering and aged for 36 months (depends on the year and format, e.g. magnum based on 2007 was aged for 132 months).
