Over the past decade and a half, grower Champagne has gone from a burgeoning movement to a scene full of superstars. Small growers can now command prices for their top bottles that had historically been reserved only for the big houses’ tête du cuvées. No one told that to Ruelle-Pertois, though. Their 2017 Grand Cru Blanc des Blancs has it all–the ripe and powerful fruit you only get in Champagne’s Grand Cru villages, the stony cut you can only find in the Côte des Blancs, and the headspinning textures and aromatics only achievable in Champagne with bottle age. And at under $60, this costs less than what many growers’ entry level bottlings do. That’s to say nothing of those other growers cuvées that receive the same gilded treatment the Ruelle family lavish upon their Blanc des Blancs. This is a must-have bottle not just for Champagne lovers, but anyone on the prowl for the best values in the world of wine. Even for Champagne Friday, this is an unbelievable value. Don’t miss out!
The Ruelle family’s home base is Moussy, a village that’s technically located in the Vallée de la Marne. But the Ruelle-Pertois operation is centered around the Côte des Blancs. Outside of a few acres of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, the Ruelles’ core focus is the Grand Cru villages of Chouilly, Cramant, and Oiry. This little corner of Champagne is the source of the world’s greatest Chardonnay-based bubbles. Here, soils are dominated by maybe the most famous white wine terroir in the world, the band of Kimmeridgian limestone that runs from Sancerre, through Champagne, down into Chablis. Ripe-fruited power married to incisive, salty minerality is the defining characteristic of great Côtes de Blancs Chardonnay, and it’s on full display in Ruelle-Pertois’ wines.
Despite the family’s enviable holdings, theirs is still a decidedly small operation. Michel Ruelle and his wife Martine Pertois both came from grape-growing families. Historically, they’d always sold their crop off to the big houses, but when Michel and Martine married, they decided to set up their own small operation. Now it is their children Benoit and Virginie at the helm. In the glitzy world of Champagne the very human scale of Ruelle-Pertois is a breath of fresh air. You don’t see much of their wine stateside, and that’s for a very good reason: the overwhelming majority of it goes to longtime customers and local restaurants. The Ruelles are uninterested in the glitz and glam side of Champagne and we’re thankful for it; certainly that’s part of the reason their prices remain blissfully low.
The 2017 Ruelle-Pertois Blanc des Blancs comes from roughly equal proportions of the family’s prized Grand Cru Chardonnay holdings. After fermentation in stainless steel, it lay en tirage for six years before disgorgement. 2017 isn’t a “great” vintage, in that wines from it may not go for decades in a collector’s cellar. Rather, given the warm season and temperate harvest conditions, it’s a vintage for drinking in the short and medium term. But we love 2017. The best wines from the vintage, like Ruelle-Pertois’ Blanc de Blancs, are just loaded with drink-me-up pleasure. The nose here opens with fleshy, brisk orchard fruit, pear skin mingling with spiced apple flesh and a hint of white peach. White flowers, toasty brioche, hazelnuts, and lemon curd follow, all backed by seaspray and pulverized rock. On the palate it’s broad and almost rich, before a wash of rigorous stony chalk notes and an incisive cut of acid come through. The finish is loaded with the gloriously rich nutty tones you only get from time on lees, and seems to go on forever. With all the hubbub over just how grand Champagne can be, we sometimes lose sight of just how incredibly delicious the best wines are. Ruelle-Pertois is here to remind us all!
