Our Growers:

Jacquesson is one of the smaller Champagne houses, concentrating its efforts on a limited production of 350,000 bottles. The house was founded in 1798 by Memmie Jacquesson; Napoleon made Jacquesson his companion Champagne, taking it on his campaigns and serving it at his wedding to Marie-Louise of Austria. The house left family hands at the end of the 1800's. After various twists and turns, it was purchased in 1974 by the Chiquet family. The firm is now run by two grandsons, Jean-Hervé and Laurent Chiquet. Their vineyard base is an impressive 31 hectares, complemented by some 10 hectares (104 acres in all for the approximately 30,000 cases it produces annually) from closely linked long-term suppliers located in the same villages as the house vineyards.

Over the last several years Jacquesson has been making more and more efforts in their own vineyards, and in their work with the small growers who supply them with grapes, to get the highest quality fruit for the small group of cuvées it produces year after year. They have "planted grass between rows, pruned short and used the Cordon de Royat system for training and pruning the black grapes to reduce vigor. Today, they are close to organic and improve ventiliation in the leaf canopy by shoot positioning and leaf removal. Only the first pressing of the grapes goes into the vats. The Chiquets began fermenting in large, neutral oak vats by 2004 and today only use wood." (Bruce Sanderson, Wine Spectator blog, July 25, 2008.

Jacquesson is a House with the soul of a vigneron. We must increasingly think of Jacquesson Champagne as we would a great Domaine in the Côte d'Or: real wine, wine to have with food, and wine with the interest, the density of flavor, the complexity and length, of grand vin. Married with the right sauce or a delicately textured food, champagne is a dynamic wine that deserves a spot on the wine enthusiast's year-round dining table.

In September, 2003, Jacquesson introduced a non-vintage cuvée which will have its own clear identity each year and which will reflect the main vintage in the assemblage more than the typicity of all the cuvées that preceded it. The first such cuvée, Cuvée no. 728, was based on the 2000 vintage. The current cuvée is Cuvée no. 732, based on the 2004 vintage harvest (79%) and reserve wines (9% from the 2003 harvest, 2% from the 2002 harvest, 8% from the 2001 harvest and 2% from the 2000 harvest.) The assemblage is 39% Chardonnay, 36% Pinot Meunier and 25% Pinot Noir and was vinified on its lees in casks with regular batonnage and bottled without filtration. It comes exclusively from Grands and Premiers Crus in the Grande Valléee de la Marne and the Cote des Blancs from their main vineyards in Avize, Ay and Dizy. This is "a rich, elegant Champagne whose depth spans citrus, ginger, malt and whole grain toast notes." Bruce Sanderson in Wine Spectator blog, July 25, 2008. Burghound.com (October 2007) gives the Cuvée no. 731 currently on the market in the US 93 points: "A highly complex and airy nose features floral, pear, citrus and green apple notes with background hints of yeast that can also be found on the very fresh and vibrant flavors that are wonderfully crisp and intense with real flavor authority and finishing punch. This is still very much of a baby and should benefit substantially from additional cellaring. In a word, terrific."

There's great current interest in the terroir-specific cuvées from the finest of Champagne's small growers. These cuvées have a definite personality that reflects their origin in the unique terroir of a single village or of two contiguous villages sharing roughly similar terroirs: they come from somewhere, somewhere interesting, and they show it. The interest in finely-made, serious Champagne from particular terroirs of high quality is very understandable; it amounts to the discovery that one can approach Champagne like any other great wine. Jacquesson already has one true terroir-specific cuvée: the Vintage Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs is a 100% Grand Cru single-varietal wine made not only from a single year and a single village, Avize, but from small single-site vineyards- lieux-dits- in that village (La Fosse, Némery and Champ Cain). And the vines are all Jacquesson's own vines. It is impossible to be more terroir-specific than this. The 1997 Avize Grand Cru was vinified in 40 and 75 hectoliter oak casks; it was bottled in June of 1998. The International Wine Cellar (November/December 2007) gives this wine 90 points: "Light yellow with a strong mousse. Poached pear and citrus zest aromas are complicated by anise and white flowers. Firm orchard fruit flavors are pleasingly bitter on entry, then flesh out on the back, picking up a riper nectarine quality. Finishes with a good grip and slow-building sweetness. Drinking very nicely now but has the room to develop." The Wine Enthusiast gives this wine 95 points: "A pure Chardonnay, this blanc de blancs certainly shows its dryness, but with the wonderful maturity that is just beginning to develop, it also has plenty of richness. Almonds are emerging to balance the white, almost tropical, fruits, calming the extreme crispness of the acidity. A great wine which will develop for 10-15 years." The Avize Grand Cru 2000 was bottled on May 30, 2001 and produced 32,107 bottles, 1500 magnums and 60 jeroboams.

Only in an exceptional year does Jacquesson create an assemblage of some of its best casks from Grand Cru vines, to which they sometimes add the best parcels of Dizy, all classified as Premier Cru. The resulting wine aims to give full expression to the unique, outstanding character of the vintage. The Jacquesson 1996 was made from just such an assemblage: 26% Pinot Noir from Ay and Dizy, a selection of Pinot Noirs from Grands Crus on the Montagne de Reims (51%) and Chardonnay from the Cote des Blancs (45%). The result is a full-bodied, well-rounded wine of great richness, supported by a significant acidity in the finish that makes for a wonderful aging potential. The wine was bottled on July 4th, 1997 without any prior filtration.

The 1997 Rosé was bottled on July 6, 1997. It is an assemblage of Pinot Noir from Ay (25%) and Verzenay (15%) as well as Chardonnay from Avize (40%) and Chouilly (10%); the result is a full-bodied and elegant champagne. Burghound.com (October 2007) gives this wine 90 points: "This is an extremely light rosé tint and a casual glance would make it difficult to tell visually that this was a rosé but the wonderfully expressive and subtly elegant nose betrays the presence of pinot with its background notes of crushed red berries and yeast aromas that lead to rich, full and masculine flavors that are now fully mature and culminate ina long, sweet and mouth-coating finish."

The Dizy Corne Bautray 2000 is the first bottling of the whole production of Jacquesson's superb vineyard located uphill in Dizy. It covers one hectare of Chardonnay planted in 1960 on a terroir which is very different from Avize chalky soils with its low chalk content and a silt-like clay texture with significant amounts of burrstone pebbles. The wine was vinified in an old oak cask and bottled without any filtration. On the nose, ripe fruit and the nutty aroma of fruit stones dominate, on the palate it emerges as full-bodied yet well-rounded with spicy notes. The finish is of both exceptional length and freshness.

Website: www.champagnejacquesson.com