I’m on cloud nine today. I’ve wanted to offer Hébrart’s “Noces de Craie” ever since coming aboard five years ago because that’s when I first had the immense pleasure of drinking the inaugural 2012 release, a Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs that remains in my all-time “Top 5.” It was a Champagne that caused my jaw to plummet instead of drop, a powerful wine that carried itself with some of the most sumptuous textures, intoxicating aromas, and intensely mineral flavors I’d ever experienced.
That said, I wasn’t tasting 200+ Champagnes per year back then, so I started looking for some validation, and found some of the strongest imaginable from sparkling mastermind Terry Theise. Here are his words: “The 2012 was the best Blanc de Noir I’d ever had. The ‘nuptials of chalk’ struck me as chalk in the eyes of God, profound, ancient and dignified.” Although the ’12 isn’t on offer today (good luck finding it), this limited 2016 took me back to that defining Blanc de Noirs moment all those years ago. Sourced from five chalk-rich parcels in Grand Cru Aÿ and aged ~50 months before release, “Noces de Craie” is once again jockeying on the podium with Champagne’s BdN legends. No more than four bottles per person.
When it comes to the top labels of Champagne’s finest grower-producers, the competition is ruthlessly fierce. The region has never seen quality, pedigree, and prices of this magnitude, nor has there been a time in history where the region has been as exhaustively studied and analyzed as it is now. Accordingly, Champagne luminaries have their ears to glued the ground in hopes of discovering “the next big thing.” In the last decade, Marc Hébrart has been owning that “thing” with epic cuvées like “Clos Le Léon,” “Rive Gauche-Rive Droite,” and today’s “Noces de Craie.” All of these bottlings have earned prominent spots in my all-time favorites list. There’s a reason Champagne luminary Peter Liem called Marc Hébrart “one of the finest estates in the Grande Vallée”—high praise that puts them on the same plane as megastars Billecart-Salmon, Philipponnat, Gosset, Laval, Bollinger…names that grace every Michelin-star wine list.
Jean-Paul Hébrart had a monumental task in front of him when he made the decision to create his first Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs a decade ago. After much research, he boiled it down to five chalk-heavy parcels (“Noces de Craie” translates to “Wedding of Chalk”) in the Grand Cru village of Aÿ. For this 2016 release, his team hand-harvested later than usual to ensure each Pinot Noir grape was bursting at the seams with ripeness and concentration. In the cellar, the grapes were gently pressed and alcoholic and malolactic fermentations occurred in stainless steel. The resulting wine was then transferred into bottle, where it aged sur latte until March of 2021. It was disgorged and topped off with a five-gram dosage.
If you want the full effect of Hébrart’s luxurious Champagne, rummage around your stemware collection and pull out either a flared tulip, all-purpose glass, or Burgundy stem. I personally opt for the latter because as much of a bubble fiend I am, there’s something incredibly exquisite and revealing about a high-quality Champagne that has shed some carbonation, especially at a warmer temperature (50-55 degrees). To me, they drink finer and more sublime—Burgundian in a sense—and one can get a candid qualitative view since there are fewer bubbles “masking” the nuanced flavors.
Perhaps it's sacrilege, I’m not sure anymore, but I had no problem aggressively swirling and even going as far as decanting Hébrart’s 2016 “Noces de Craie” from glass to glass several times. I couldn’t have been happier with the results. This boasts knee-weakening aromas of red apple skin, Bosc pear, baked yellow apple, marzipan, citrus cream, toasted brioche, honey-glazed almonds, and heaps of finely crushed chalk and fossil—but it’s the palate that truly shines. It’s creamy and mouth-filling, packed to the brim with minerals and toasty, deeply textural flavors that linger for a full minute after each sip. It’s superb right now, but give it 2-4 more years in bottle and I have a strong feeling it’ll replicate the unforgettable experience I had with the 2012 release all those years ago. Cheers!
