The Grower Champagne Club
Deadline to join is Thursday.
We are excited to announce our first two selections of Champagne for:
Shipping to members TODAY!
There is still time to join!!! This week, we’re shipping out packages to our members with our selection of 2 Grower Champagnes covered in socks. This is an opportunity to challenge your palate and any preconceived notions you might have around Champagne. The socks covering the bottles will have a small colored tag. Each has an associated envelope identifying the tag with more information inside about the Champagne. One is 100% chardonnay, the other is 100% pinot noir. One is biodynamic (read here about biodynamic farming), the other isn’t even organic, but the domaine practices sustainable agriculture. Will you be able to taste the difference?
At the club price of $75 for 2-bottles,
this is a screaming opportunity to try these
relatively unknown and hard to access wines
for much less than we retail them!!
SAVE THE DATE
WHAT: A Zoom BLIND tasting for members. You are welcome to invite anyone you like to join (we’ll even send anyone in your household their own Zoom Invite, so long as they have access to taste the wines with you). Let’s make this fun!
WHERE: Via ZOOM! RSVP required and Zoom invite will follow. Remember, you’ll be opening two bottles at once, so invite friends and family... or not. 😁
WHEN: March 23rd, at 2PM PST/ 5PM EST (apx 30 mins, with wiggle room for questions)
WHY: If you can keep your curiosity at bay and opt to join the Zoom, we will taste the wines together and hear what everyone thinks about these two very different styles of wine from a region far from Reims (Am I giving anything away?). Then, we will open the envelopes to discover what these Champagnes are and go over the information together.
Obviously, member attendance nor the blind tasting are compulsory. If you’re unable to join us on the Zoom call, you’re welcome to conduct your own blind tasting! Or, simply drink the Champagne and enjoy the information we’ve compiled to further your knowledge about the world of Grower Champagne!
For those of you who will be attending, we very much look forward to meeting you!
A SMALL WINDOW INTO THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION: In 1974, Anselme Selosse took over his father’s Champagne production and his label, Jacques Selosse. “I just asked myself when I started, what should I do? What is champagne? The answer for me was being able to transmit the full identity of the place. I try to understand and copy nature, I am not the boss of my vines, I am the butler.”
Widely considered to be a pioneer in what can be called a revolution in the champagne world, Selosse has led the way for a generation of grower producers who understand the champagne region like any other region in France, as a “terroir”.
To make sense out of all of this, we must go back in time, and more specifically, let’s go back to the 60s. “The Kings’ Wine,” aka champagne, is entering its golden age after two wars and heavy bombardments during WWII. Demand has never been higher, so the big houses dramatically increase their volumes and bring champagne production to a whole other scale.
Increasing production brought industrialization to the industry. And with industrialization, came an overuse of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals in the vineyards and the Champagne region’s soils markedly impoverished. The notion of terroir disappeared. Champagne was now hors-sol, a French expression meaning out of soil, but also out of touch.
Lending itself to the notion of being out of touch is the fact that historically, Champagne has been all about blends: a mix of different juices, of different places, different grapes and different years, a
phenomenon quite unique to this region.
As time passed, and houses and wines were passed from one generation to the next, as is the tradition in Champagne, younger generations found themselves grappling with the decisions made by their forefathers. When Anselme Selosse took over the family label, it was his feeling “we massacred our region”, and his instinct took him back to nature.
What Selosse, Égly-Ouriet, Savart or Agrapart have in common, is that they made Champagnes as wines, more than as blends. Frédéric Savart, another star of the champagne grower producer world, describes it this way: “my vision is to transcribe a soil, a subsoil, a village, and a grape variety”. Indigenous yeasts, no limit to the time and care brought to the plant, natural and spontaneous fermentation, minimal dosage, some even brought back horses to the vines. Most of them are organic or biodynamic, but it’s not about the ideology. Anselme Selosse, who has now transmitted the label to his son, Guillaume, used to say: “Man is not the Creator”.
Much like a flourishing plant, the renewal of champagne brought the wine closer to their terroir: to their villages, their geology, their climate and their makers.
Of course, this new philosophy has also meant shifting away from the festive marketing of the big labels, to bring champagne wines closer to gastronomy. Over the last decade, Champagne has seduced the chefs, and now the homes, pairing nicely with cheese, fish and white meats, conquering all sommeliers with Asian cuisine, surprising all by its variety and its freshness. Grower producer champagnes are more than a round bubble, as Anselme Selosse famously said, “our bubble is square”.
The swing back to artisanal, terroir driven Champagne, grown in organic or even biodynamic methods can be found across the board with growers of all sizes and there seem to be as many new growers as the stars! A unique, talented winemaker is around every corner, eager to share the story of the earth and vines of their region with every sip of their Champagne..
Please join us as we begin to introduce you to The Growers!
