Dosage tasting with Anselme and Guillaume Selosse
A Champagne Dosage Tasting with Anselme and Guillaume Selosse
Justine Puaud
January 30, 2024
Mid December I had the chance to spend a few hours at Domaine Jacques Selosse for the dosage tasting. Several wine lovers were part of the experience - Caroline Selosse, William Kelley, one Ukrainian sommelier, my husband and myself.
To be honest, one feels quite privileged to be part of this important tasting and one hopes to have the right answer to help Guillaume and Anselme decide which dosage will go for each Lieux-Dit champagne. Anselme and Guillaume made us feel very comfortable. There are no perfect answers. Each individual was to express their feeling, their own taste. Anselme has many years of experience behind him; now the decisions are made by Guillaume. Anselme kept saying “ tu choisis (you pick) Guillaume!”
The goal for Anselme and Guillaume is really to understand the personality and the philosophy of each wine. The liqueur de dosage is not here to act like makeup and make the wine perfect. The dosage is here to reveal the wine, bring it to the light. He compares the dosage as clothes. “You need to ask yourself which clothes help the wine feel comfortable. “
What’s the dosage?
Immediately after disgorgement, the bottle is topped off with a liqueur d’expedition, which is wine mixed with a little cane or beet sugar. This addition serves 2 functions:
It replenishes the small quantity of wine lost through disgorgement.
It introduces a precisely measured quantity of sweetness called the dosage.
Dosage has historically been used to balance champagne’s naturally high acidity and it’s a critical element in creating a harmonious and expressive wine.
As we know there are official categories of dosage in Champagne like Demi-Sec (32-50 grams of sugar per liter), Extra Dry (12-17 grams per liter), Extra Brut and Brut Nature. Jacques Selosse almost never makes non dosé champagnes or champagnes without dosage. In his Lieux-Dit wines, the dosage varied from 0.00 to 2.75 grams of sugar per liter.
We always need to remember that dosage is not about sweetness, it is about harmony. Anselme showed us that a correctly dosed champagne shows greater complexity, length, depth of flavor and also expression of terroir.
We got to taste 42 different champagnes in about 3 hours. The tasting was focused on the collection of “Lieux-Dits”, 6 different dosages, all from the 2017 base. We finished with the 2013 vintage.
The “Lieux-Dits” collection represents six single-plot cuvées coming from a different village. They offer a journey through the Champagne vineyards. Three Lieux-Dits are made 100% from Chardonnay in the villages of Cramant Mesnil-sur-Oger and Avize. The three others are made from Pinot Noir, 100% in the villages of Mareuil-sur- Aÿ and Aÿ - with the exception of Ambonnay, which is a vine planted with 80% Pinot Noir and 20% Chardonnay.
2017 was a complicated vintage with small crops and frost but it didn’t seem to concern Anselme. He truly believes that the wine can truly express itself whether it was an easy year or a difficult one.
Cramant - Chemin de Châlons - 0.15 grs
The first harvest for Chemin de Châlon is 2003.
Cramant is especially remarkable for lightness and delicacy. There is a beautiful linear evolution in this wine. The bitterness tends to bring out the richness and beauty of the wine. 0.15 grams offers the perfect balance with the saltiness, bitterness. It will also help the wine to age longer. Surprisingly, the 0 gram champagne was more opulent than the 0.2 grams champagne. The honey and nuts were strong on the 0 gram. You started to feel the real freshness of the wine in the 0.1 or 0.15 grs.
Avize - Les Chantereines - 0.15 grs
Les Chantereines is an historically important parcel for the estate as it was originally purchased by Jacques Selosse in 1945. It produces a learner and more aggressively saline wine than Chemin de Châlons. Les Chantereines represents the femininity, the delicacy, the elegance. Chante Reines means the singing queen. There is no need for intensity in this wine. What we are looking for here is the softness. 0.15 grs seems like evidence of that.
Le Mesnil sur Oger - Les Carelles - 0,05 grs
The first harvest is 2002.
Les Carelles is a very beautiful blanc de blancs, with an autolytic nose of bread crumbs and nuts. The palate offers us all the salinity, stretch and chiseled power of Mesnil-sur-Oger. Guillaume selected a smaller dosage here to leave the real character of the wine. Les Carelles is already big. the sugar will add roundness here which will hide its real potential.
Ambonnay - Au bout du Clos - 0,20 grs
Beautiful linear evolution of the wine. You really taste the two layers that the roots pass through. The first layer is the clay. It is creamy “like a beautiful expression of Pomerol”. And then, you taste the chalk. It really expresses the finesse and the dryness of the wine. The dosage is here to balance both expressions and bring some bitterness and a beautiful verticality of the wine.
Ay - Côte Faron - 0,20 grs
It’s a powerful and rich wine Anselme called “le bavard”, meaning the talker. On the nose, it’s dry, warm, with some notes of candied, toasted aromas but then on the palate it is completely different, really serious.
Anselme and Guillaume picked 0.2 grams here. For them, the more sugar there is, the longer the wine is and the sugar will help the wine to become tender.
Mareuil sur Ay - Sous le Mont - 0 gram
Sous le Mont is the wine that requires most of their time. Anselme is always perplexed with this wine “what are we going to do with you?”. You taste the chalk, the magnesium. It is a serious and elegant Pinot Noir but with the same intensity as a Chardonnay. It's interesting because every year they pick 0 gram of sugar.
Vintage 2013
I personally found this vintage difficult to understand, very oxidative.
According to Anselme, 2013 reminds him of 2003, with a nice concentration of organic matter. It is a severe vintage but also has the charm of imperfection. Only a few people from Champagne decided to make this vintage and we can understand why. They didn’t make a final decision on this dosage. They hesitated between 0.2 and 0.25 grams and said they will taste again later.
To finish the tasting, Anselme opened a bottle of Jacques Selosse 2006. Lunch was around the corner and our palates were awake. We all noticed the beautiful creaminess of the 2006. It reminded us of blanquette de veau!