Champagne La Closerie Grand Cru (Jérôme & Agnès Prévost) (Base 22, Disg. Sep 2024)

This new (incredibly rare) bottling from Prévost debuted with the 2019 vintage. Since the 2021 vintage, this bottling has included fruit from Agnès and Jérôme’s two tiny plots of Grand Cru Le Mesnil, totalling 0.28 hectares. Purchased in spring 2021, the mass-selection vines in these vineyards were planted in the 1960s on hard Lutetian limestone (the stone used for the cathedrals of Reims and Paris). The rest of the blend is, again, Chardonnay from Le Mesnil (Côte des Blancs) and Pinot Noir from Puisieulx at the northern end of the Montagne de Reims just north of Rilly-la-Montagne and Verzenay. Both latter sites are farmed by a couple whom Jérôme refers to as “lovely, young and talented growers”, with a viticulture charter that emphasises cultivated soils, low yields and full ripeness (with the harvest date determined in consultation with Prévost). The result is a mind-blowing Champagne. Rich and opulent with layer upon layer of creamy, stone fruited, nutty goodness and long a minerally close. As hedonistic and seductive as Champagne gets.