Every avid subscriber in the past two years intimately knows Henriet-Bazin from their startlingly delicious, multi-sellout Grand Cru Rosé, but I can guarantee they’ve never laid eyes on today’s 2012 Grand Cru “Eusèbe.” The reason? It’s the first time
anyone has seen it—you can’t find it online, you can’t even find it on Bazin’s website! We were tasted on a sample that arrived ahead of time and based on the sheer mineral depth, savory complexity, and Grand Cru profundity we discovered in the glass, I can assure the world is going to fiercely scrap for every last bottle, and then demand more.
But with only 220 cases produced for the entire globe, I can assure you that request is a pipe dream. This is all there is. Obviously, when Henriet-Bazin’s importer informed us a small 25-case batch was landing in the following weeks, we practically met the boat on the water. Our job, first and foremost, is to find the best wines on earth, and we’d be shirking our responsibilities if this slipped through our fingers. “Eusèbe” is the type of vintage bottling that renews my energy and passion for Champagne: The breadth of Pinot Noir and the chiseled power of Chardonnay from the prized Grand Crus of Verzy and Verzenay come together in this habit-forming 2012, a vintage that has earned heavy comparisons to those of 1996, 1990, even 1947. All this, mind you, for $68. I can’t even process the logic behind it...
Founded in 1890 by Gaston Henriet and a few grape-growing neighbors, they became one of the select few farming operations at the time who had the courage and diligence to bottle their own product. As Gaston Henriet and friends continued crafting their wine, they also kept selling part of their crop to the Grand Marques in order to temper some of their expensive production costs. Forty diligent, hard-earned years passed and, by 1930, his son Robert was carrying the torch at full speed: He began marketing their brand at Parisian fairs and incrementally held back more of their harvest each year—nearly 50% at this time.
After the marriage of Daniel Henriet (Robert’s son) and Micheline Bazin in 1968, the business merged to incorporate both surnames and subsequently, Micheline’s prime vineyard real estate in the Premier Cru village of Villers-Marmery. Since 1991, Daniel’s daughter Marie-Noelle Henriet has represented the fifth generation. She was integral in pushing her father to vinify 100% of their crop, has helped expand their acreage to experiment further with new grapes and terroirs, and implemented even more sustainability measures in the vineyard.
Henriet-Bazin’s “Eusèbe” is 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay from the neighboring Grand Cru villages of
Verzy and
Verzenay. Ensuring that her small collection of parcels are best utilized, Marie-Noelle practices sustainable farming and plows the rows between her vines, the oldest of which were planted in 1963. After hand harvesting in the stellar 2012 vintage, the grapes were sent into stainless steel tanks where both alcoholic and malolactic fermentation took place. It was bottled in early 2013 where it then aged on lees until disgorgement in December of 2018—that’s nearly six years on lees! It was finished with a seven-gram
dosage.
Wow, this wine is smoking. I call it wine because it’s much more than a Champagne. Yes, it has the ultra-fine mousse and that swirling, upbeat energy that only the finest Champagnes bring, but the perfect marriage of Grand Cru Pinot Noir AND Grand Cru Chardonnay sends pleasant shivers down my spine. A deep straw-yellow in the glass with vivid copper hues, Henriet-Bazin’s 2012 “Eusèbe” provides an explosion of ripe redcurrant, pomegranate oil, bing cherries, wild raspberry, Red Delicious apple skin, wild herbs, underbrush, crushed nuts, and buttered toast, along with an awe-inducing mineral core filled with wet stones, pulverized chalk, and oyster shell. Each full-bodied sip rattles your taste buds with an elegant yet untamed vigor and delivers a long-lasting, mineral-flecked finish. It’s in absolutely perfect form right now, and I’d love to see it matched against the elite labels of the Champagne world. I really mean it—pull out some tête de cuvées and just watch what this bottle can do. When enjoying, do so in all-purpose or Burgundy stems around 50 degrees and enjoy over the next 10 years. This never-before-seen bottle is going to blow minds!
