Suenen Champagne Blanc de Blancs Extra-Brut Grand Cru 'Oiry'
Regular price $166.00
Unit price per
- TASTING NOTE: The combination of terroir and Suenen’s low-yield/ripe fruit philosophy produces a scintillatingly tense, coiled and stony wine. Even with the base wine from a sunny vintage like 2018, this is a study in minerality—the wine is rocky, vibrant, saline and vibrantly fresh. Creamy depths (from the aging on lees) enfold the wine’s structural and mineral qualities and keep you coming back for more.
- ABOUT THE WINE: 2018 base with 50% reserve wines from the previous three vintages. This is drawn from just 1.5 hectares split between five separate parcels. The vines are all planted in Oiry’s compact, white Campanian chalk soils with the average age of the vines at 45 years. The base wine was naturally fermented and aged for nine months in the same vessels—enamelled tank (65%) and six-year-old Burgundian oak barrels (35%). No fining, no filtration, no cold stabilisation. The wine was disgorged in September 2021 after at least 26 months on lees, with three grams per litre dosage.
- ABOUT THE PRODUCER: One of the most exciting new growers to have arisen in Champagne in the last 15 years, Aurélien Suenen, is a perfect example of how quickly a terroir-obsessed grower with quality vineyards can make their mark. Suenen made his first wines as recently as 2009, the year he unexpectantly found himself in sole charge of the Cramant-based family Domaine. Suenen had grown up in Champagne on his family estate, so he was no stranger to work in the vineyard and cellar, but he soon began to make radical changes. His father’s practice had been conventional; the son chose a very different path. Aurélien had realized that all the Champagnes that moved him came from organic practice. This helped him make the connection between quality and practice. He also associated the illness of his father (and the widespread cancers in many of his father’s generation) to the chemicals used so heavily in the vines. These two factors drove him. Good friends in the region—in particular, Pascal Agrapart, but any number of other top growers—were on hand to help with advice and contacts. So it was that from the very beginning, Suenen began to lay the foundations for the quality we see today. He shrank the estate to be able to raise the standard of work in the vines, eliminated chemical usage, began cultivating his vineyards and moved towards organic viticulture. The wines got better and better until today—when they have achieved a standard only associated with the very finest growers.
- COUNTRY: France
- REGION: Champagne
- SUB-REGION: Cotes des Blancs
- VARIETAL: Chardonnay
- WINE STYLE: Sparkling Wine
- WINEMAKER: Aurélien Suenen
- CLASSIFICATION: Minimal Intervention, Grower Champagne, Unfined & Unfiltered, Minimal Sulphites, Organic, Vegan
- CLOSURE: Cork
- ABV%: 13%
- SIZE: 750ml
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