The month of June got off to a great start!
It was all about Champagne, with no fewer than 133 samples of the 2023 vins clairs available for tasting. The overall quality of the vintage is very promising, with freshness, salinity, citrus notes for the Chardonnays and intense red fruit notes for the Pinot Noirs.
Blending Vintage 2023
Louise Brison champagnes are all vintage champagnes and are influenced by time in two ways:
1) They bear witness to the vintage and the events of the year.
2) The still wines are vinified and aged for 10 months in barrels, then the bottles are aged for 5 years or more on fine lees on laths.
Last week we were in Champagne to taste all the barrels of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the Champagne Louise Brison estate.
133 barrels to taste carefully before deciding on the blends for the estate’s 4 cuvées:
- A l’aube de la Côte des Bar: 50% Chardonnay and 50% Pinot Noir
- Chardonnay de la Côte des Bar: 100% Chardonnay
- Côte des Bar Pinot Noir: 100% Pinot Noir
- Rosé de la Côte des Bar: 100% Pinot Noir in semi-carbonic maceration
- Still wine Coteaux Champenois red
- Still wine Coteaux Champenois white
It was an exciting tasting, with the different samples showing a high degree of homogeneity and the 2023 vintage already showing excellent quality, with the wines now fully matured.
During the tasting, the winemaker, Delphine Brulez, wanted us to focus on :
- aromas
- the structure of the wines
- for certain barrels: the integration of the wood, so as to be able to decide which coopers and barrel toasting styles to continue working with.
The Chardonnays had very good structure, with lots of salinity and minerality. The Pinot Noirs had clean, intense and complex red fruit aromas with good acidity and minerality.
New Cuvées - Parcel Selections
The estate has just received a precise map of its vineyards to identify the types of soil, their nature, composition and thickness, as well as their biological activity.
Delphine called on the independent consultancy Adama terroir, which specialises in the study and mapping of wine-growing soils and subsoils, and includes geologist Françoise Vannier and geo-pedologist Emmanuel Chevigny, as well as the Celesta-lab analysis laboratory in Montpellier – a specialist recognised as one of the best soil analysis laboratories.
This information, combined with the experience of Delphine, who has been making wine on a parcel-by-parcel basis for 18 years on the estate, has led to the production of two parcel-by-parcel cuvées.
The 2023 vintage will therefore be enriched by two parcel selection cuvées: Blanc de Blanc & Blanc de Noir.
In keeping with the estate’s DNA, this vintage will be available after several years of bottle ageing.
A look back at Vintage 2023
The 2023 vintage was a long one!
The season got off to a rainy start, with a timid yet growing pressure of mildew at the beginning of the vegetative cycle.
Monitoring of the vines and protective treatments kept the disease under control. Then, in mid-May, a northerly wind blew in and dried everything out. The cold was beneficial, reducing fungal pressure.
Flowering was very good, with a quality rarely seen: many inflorescences developing well right up to the fruit set. The vines had a good load and the bunches were of good size.
After flowering, the rain returned with storms and the pressure of mildew – but moderately.
It was a summer of fine days, but a rainy summer.
The weather deteriorated from 23 August onwards, just as the grapes were starting to ripen. Unfortunately, the Côte des Bar was affected by a fairly significant development of botrytis. The first signs of rot left no choice but to harvest early and sort the grapes.
On the contrary, at Domaine Louise Brison, all the work carried out in the Spring to ensure the grapes were well aerated prevented this rot.
However, the ‘hot weather’ effect meant that the harvest had to be carried out quickly to avoid gaining too much alcohol and losing too much water.
In just 5 days, for example, the grapes had lost 30% of their weight.
Harvesting began on 4 September in the heatwave that had returned.
The estate was able to harvest the grapes in the short span of 12 days, under a blazing sun.
All the hard work put in by Delphine Brulez paid off! It’s a long and often exhausting job, but it’s based on close observation of the conditions and in-depth knowledge of agronomy and plant biology.
The 2023 harvest was of the highest quality, and was evenly distributed, as evidenced by the tasting of the vins clairs!
Vintages currently available
A l’aube de la Côte des Bar 2018
50% Chardonnay 50% Pinot noir
No malolactic fermentation, Vinified and aged in oak barrel, bottled in June 2019 after 9 months ageing
Dosage 0 g/L
Chardonnay de la Côte des Bar 2016
100% Chardonnay.
No malolactic fermentation, Vinified and aged in oak barrel, bottled in June 2017 after 9 months ageing
Dosage 0 g/L
Rosé de la Côte des Bar 2017
100% Pinot noir
Semi-carbonic vinification, pressing after 3 days of maceration. The whole must is vinified and aged in oak barrels, bottling in June 2018
Dosage 0 g/L
Magnum – A l’aube de la Côte des Bars 2012
50% Chardonnay 50% Pinot noir
No malolactic fermentation, Vinified and aged in oak barrel, bottled in June 2013 after 9 months ageing
Dosage 0 g/L
Half-bottle M20 -A l’aube de la Côte des bar
50% Chardonnay 50% Pinot noir – *organique certified*
No malolactic fermentation, Vinified and aged in oak barrel, bottled in July 2021 after 10 months ageing .
Dosage 2,7 g/L