What's Pressoir Drinking- Champagne Jacquesson 1989

March 31, 2023

Raj Vaidya

I had the pleasure of dining with some friends this week for a little BYO at Gramercy Tavern and wanted to share my experience of a truly surprising and unusual bottle with you today. Jacquesson is a small house in Champagne which has always impressed me with their quality, especially in recent years where the push towards using organic sourcing and buying the bulk of the vineyards they were sourcing from really raised their bar. The house notably sold last year to Artemis Group, the wine estate arm of Francois Pinault’s empire (including other great wineries such as Eisele Estate in Napa, Bouchard, Clos de Tart and Domaine d’Eugenie in Burgundy and, of course, Château Latour in Bordeaux.) While the previous owners, the Chiquet family, are now departed from the company, I believe the commitments towards quality and great farming are secure in the hands of the current ownership. But I have had very little experience tasting these wines prior to the mid 90’s, so I had almost no perspective on how things had changed during the Chiquets’ time. The most wines I had tasted were when we were able to host a retrospective of their “Cuvée 700 Series” during La Fête du Champagne last year. I had the chance to taste each release back to the early bottlings which started around 2004, and so I was very curious when one of the diners at the BYO offered to bring a 1989.

This bottle was really interesting. A late release from the winery, disgorged in 2006, so this wine spent 15 years on the lees in the bottle. It had no dosage added at disgorgement, but I wondered if there may have been some residual sugar at bottling as there was a little sweetness to the wine, although it was far from cloying. Very deep brioche yeastiness dominated the palate, with undertones of clove like spice and a delightfully creamy texture. Very long on the palate although that slight sweetness dominated the taste on the finish. All around a very cool bottle. But it seemed to me that the older era at Jacquesson was not nearly as individual or characterful as the wines they are producing today. A treat to taste nonetheless!