Roses de Jeanne La Bolorée – The Short End of the Stick

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | MARCH 19, 2020

"What would you like to taste?” Cédric Bouchard asks as we descend into his cellar, where the cool temperature provides a much-needed break from a brutal heat wave. “Really, whatever you want,” Bouchard says, sensing my apprehension as I gaze at a stunning collection of bottles, but not wanting to ask for too much….

I have been a huge fan of Cédric Bouchard’s Champagnes since I first tasted them in the 2004 vintage. I especially remember the Haute-Lemblée that year, which I gave a stellar write up to, along with a correspondingly high score. That review caused a minor uproar. I am sure readers will find this hard to believe, but back then high scores in Champagne were reserved for the likes of Krug, Dom Pérignon and Roederer. “How can a grower Champagne get such a high score?” I heard from readers. Well, these are quite simply some of the most singular wines made anywhere in the world, that’s how. Even since that moment, I have bought as much of these Champagnes as I can find and afford every year.

Cédric Bouchard selects wines for this retrospective.

Traditionally, Champagne was built on three pillars designed to ensure consistency from year to year. These are: 1) the use of several varieties (most commonly Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay), 2) a blending of vintages and 3) a combination of vineyard sites. Champagnes like Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses and Krug’s Clos du Mesnil began to gradually free Champagne from these tenets, ultimately culminating with the explosion of the grower Champagne movement starting in the 1980s, give or take, when family-owned domaines took back vineyards that had previously been contracted out to large maisons and began making wines under their own labels, much as happened in other regions around the world, such as Burgundy and Piedmont. While large houses have access to multiple sites all over Champagne, itself a very large, sprawling region, growers work only with estate vineyards, and these tend to be centralized around much smaller geographic areas, which then naturally gives birth to Champagnes that are more localized and connected to the land.

Cédric Bouchard’s Champagnes are the antithesis of what drives big brand Champagne – they are rigorously single-variety, single-vintage and single-parcel wines. Champagne deconstructed, if you will. But that’s just the conceptual starting point. Whereas the goal in most of Champagne is to maximize yields through the use of high production clones and conventional farming, Bouchard farms for low yields, following organic principles and using no herbicides or pesticides. To be fair, this is the same approach used by many quality-minded growers today. In fact, some of the more forward-thinking larger houses have started to shift their thinking towards more sustainable practices in the field, but that is a subject for another day.