Pressoir.wine Team Picks from La Fête du Champagne Packs
La Fête du Champagne will begin on October 17!
This year the festival will be fully virtual with various opportunities to enjoy the depth of this region in your home or at a friend’s home. With the help of the participating producers, our team has curated over 35 different themed packs of Champagne available for purchase with retail partner Zachys.
Our team shares their picks -
Jaime’s pick: Les Blanches Voies.
I love the Champagnes that Laurent Champs produces at Vilmart & Cie but I have never tried the Les Blanches Voies cuvée. From the beginning this 2-pack has caught my eye. I love the idea of a side-by-side tasting of two wines - discovering a vineyard by a producer I know and love, Vilmart, and another that I am excited to discover, Huré Frères. For me La Fête du Champagne has always been about discovering producers in Champagne that I did not know before. Try out something new that you have never had the opportunity to taste before!
Max’s pick: Dry is the Future
A warming Champagne region means that producers can now more often pick riper and riper fruit with less need to balance out acidity with a healthy dosage. While in some cases Brut Nature and Extra Brut winemaking can be a mouth-puckering exercise in trendiness, these Champagnes from Laval, Leclerc-Briant, and Pierre Paillard are exquisitely balanced, with their low or non-existent dosage allowing the terroir to come screaming through.
Justine’s pick: Rosé Discoveries
Some people will associate Rosé Champagne with richness, higher dosage and mostly Pinot Noir. This is the perfect opportunity to prove they have the wrong idea. In the Rosé Discoveries pack, you have 3 perfect examples of elegant, low dosage and complex Champagnes. Each of them come from fantastic terroirs and have been carefully crafted. However each winemaker has his own identity and style: AR Lenoble Rosé Terroirs is from 88% of Chardonnay from Côte des Blancs and 28% of vin de réserve. Huré Frères Insouciance is mostly made with Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims. They are known from their rich texture and racy acidity. Laherte Frères Les Beaudiers is a single-vineyard saignée rosé of pure Pinot Meunier which gives concentrated and meaty Champagnes.
Edouard’s pick: The Savart Producer Pack
I feel particularly animated about this selection because Fred Savart is the perfect example of the winemaker who crafts wines that resemble his personality. In Fred’s case, what comes to mind is generosity, vigor and happiness. While one cannot replace a one on one experience with Fred, great wines have this ability to make the taster travel, whether it is through time, or space and I am convinced that this pack will offer a genuine experience.
L'Ouverture is Fred Savart's entry level Champagne but it is far from one-dimensional. It is 100% Pinot Noir all from the village of Ecueil, half of which was fermented in mostly neutral barrel, while the other half is fermented in stainless steel. The wine only sees partial malolactic fermentation. Fred doesn't guide the malolactic fermentation, instead it is the inclusion of reserve wine that goes through malolactic fermentation because it has gone more temperature swings. The wine is in equal parts a blend of three successive vintages and aged under cork, not crown cap. Dosage is 7g/L.
L'Accomplie is 80% Pinot Noir and 20% Chardonnay from both Ecueil and Villers-aux-Noeuds. The base vintage makes up 70% of the total blend with the other 30% coming from reserve wine of the two previous vintages. The wine is aged in a combination of neutral oak and stainless steel. The dosage is 5g/L.
Raj’s pick: Chartogne-Taillet Producer Pack
I count myself lucky to have many friends in Champagne, and have had the privilege of speaking with so many of then while helping to prepare the digital tasting experience we are debuting in just a few short weeks. But as I think back on the interviews I conducted throughout the process, the one that leaves me smiling from ear to ear with the memory of it is certainly the time I spent with Alexandre Chartogne of Champagne Chartogne-Taillet this past week. Not only is Alex a tremendous winemaker and vigneron, he is an absolutely lovely person, and extremely soulful. In speaking about the wines in this offer, he mentioned to me that the Couarres bottling is one of the best wines he has ever produced, yet did so in the least boastful and most humble manner. Truly a delightful conversation, an amazing guy and brilliant wines, which we are really excited to share with you during La Fête!
