On our jaunt into the provinces we stayed at Cheltenham’s Hotel du Vin. They had this wine (and [link2post id=”792″]Inflorescence[/link2post]) on their wine list for a very reasonable price. It was amazingly brilliant.
Champagne les Ursules Blanc de Noirs ‘Roses de Jeanne’, Cedric Bouchard
The nose has an incredibly livid expression of fruit, lovely pear fruit we feel. It is powerful, stony and dense, but compelling, thrilling and vivacious. Smells fantastic, a very vinous and complex Champagne that has a depth of character rarely associated with fizz. It is extremely elegant for a wine so packed with stuffing. The mousse is totally fine, not as fizzy as Champagne usually is. The mouthfeel is polished and classy, with incredible complexity to back up its charming side. There is so much to this, it is a truly, amazingly, penetratingly good bottle of Champagne. Daniel tells me it is one of the best bottles of fizz, and certainly best value, he has ever had.
M. Bouchard says he does not really like making sparkling wine, bit of a drag inheriting Champagne vineyards then. He wants to start making more and more Coteaux Champenois still wines. Bonkers, I tell you, totally bonkers. When someone makes as good fizz as this he should not be messing around with weirdy still wines.
Some of that, as well as Inflorescence and rare bottlings like his “Bolorée” 2005 (pure Pinot Blanc, old vines, very good, but in need of time), and Les Ursules 2005 in mag, are available at Lavinia in Paris. Feel free to have some shipped to your cellar in Morey!
Could Cédric Bouchard be a modern day Deiss? Making some of the most brilliant and exciting wines ever and then turning his talents to wines that we will all hate?
Oh no, not another Deiss. I hope you are not some great soothsayer of doom, Jeremy. Perhaps even by mentioning this idea you have conditioned it to happen.
I was thinking about Deiss as I came out the psychiatrist’s establishment this morning. The association was strangely not nut-cases, but rather the doctor asked me for some wine recommendations and I told him to get some Sorg Riesling. I thought of Riesling then started musing on the best ones I had tried. The 1990 Altenberg, 1988 Altenberg VT and 1993 Schoenenbourg from Deiss feature highly in that list. Mind-buggeringly amazing. Stupendously good. And if we taste what he makes now… Ah… Deary me.