Having now made a few successful forays into wine importing (with many more SommSelect buying trips planned for 2018), I can see why people choose it as a career. First and foremost, there’s the travel—the opportunity to go ‘full immersion’ into another country’s wine culture, to knock on cellar doors and (hopefully) discover something heretofore undiscovered…it’s a pretty romantic way to make a living, if you can swing it.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that our discovery of J. Charpentier occurred not while lost on the back roads of Champagne but at a wine fair in Germany, where dozens of small growers attend with their wines to taste. Setting notwithstanding, it still felt like an adventure—a friendly sit-down with the young owners of a family-run Champagne house, whose impeccably crafted range of sparklers has had little to no exposure in the US. Many months later, here they are, ready to ship to you and priced attractively to boot. Today’s wine is Charpentier’s Blanc de Blancs Brut, a gorgeous 100% Chardonnay Champagne with rich flavors of meyer lemon meringue, hazelnut, and brioche. It’s the first blanc de blancs we’ve featured in a while and, at under $40, an exceptional value to boot. This is a true-blue récoltant-manipulant (‘grower-producer’) house making a convincing case for a place in your house.
The first thing that struck me as I re-visited a bottle of this blanc de blancs was the prominent placement of the word ‘vigneron’ (vine-grower) on the label, right below the family name. This is the kind of thing you’re more likely to see in Burgundy than in Champagne, which we tend to think of as a more ‘brand-driven’ region. But of course, the rise of small grower-producers in Champagne has been one of the great wine stories of the last 20 years, with ‘new’ houses popping up seemingly out of nowhere with spectacular, handmade wines. Of course they’re not new to the region, or to wine—they’re just new to us, having elected to stop selling their fruit to large négociants and instead bottle their own proprietary wines.
The J. Charpentier estate, as currently constructed, represents the convergence of two Champagne wine families—Charpentier and Claisse, both with histories in the region going back generations—when Jacky Charpentier married Claudine Claisse in 1974 and two family farms became one. Based in the village of Villers-sous-Châtillon, about 12 kilometers west of Epernay in the Vallée de la Marne subzone, the Charpentier holdings now span 15 hectares—and more precisely, 38 plots across nine Marne villages. Jacky and Claudine’s son, Jean-Marc, has been at the winemaking controls since 2004, and the family employs organic methods in the vineyards unless an emergency arises—the classic ‘lutte raisonée’ (‘reasoned fight’) approach.
The NV Blanc de Blancs Brut is 100% Chardonnay sourced from vineyards in the Marne villages of Breuil, Châtillon sur Marne, and Verneuil, fermented in a mix of stainless steel tanks and oak barrels, and aged in bottle 24 months on its lees. The dosage (sugar addition) is listed as 9 grams per liter, which lends perfect balance to the palate.
In the glass, the wine is a pale straw gold with green and silver highlights at the rim, with a perfumed nose of lemon meringue, white cherry, yellow apple blossoms, citrus pith, white flowers, hazelnuts, white mushrooms, brioche dough, and crushed oyster shells. It is substantial in weight with a great aromatic flourish on the finish. This would make an ideal apéritif alongside some
gougères or other passed appetizers, and is priced to have around the house in quantity for impromptu celebrations. One quick piece of advice: Do not serve this wine too cold or it will not reveal all of its personality. Serve at about 50°F (a touch below cellar temp) in all-purpose white wine stems for best results. Keep an eye out for more from Charpentier in the coming months—could it be your new ‘house’ Champagne? It’s one of ours! Cheers!
