Champagne Suenen Grand Cru Cramant Blanc de Blancs Les Robarts 2017 (Disg. Jun 23)

Champagne nerds might recognise this lieu-dit as one of the sources of Pascal Agrapart’s renowned Avizoise cuvée. Suenen’s vines lie just across the border in the Cramant section of this vineyard at the top of a small hill. Originally planted in 1952—with further plantings in 1978, 1984 and 2005—the average age of Suenen’s vines is now almost 40 years. The planting contains a large portion of mass-selection vines.

The 2017 was aged in a single Rousseau foudre for nine months before bottling. As with all the single-site wines, this spent a minimum of five years on lees before disgorgement (with 3 g/L in this case) in June 2023. Suenen describes this terroir—30 cm of silty clay over degraded upper Campanian chalk—as combining the tension and salinity of Oiry with the concentration of Chouilly. It is often the most textural of Suenen’s four lieu-dit releases and arguably the most complex. This is diamond-cut Cramant with feathery texture and essence of sweet white fruits, yellow citrus and flowers melding perfectly with the intense energy from the chalky soils.