Our final day took us back to the Montagne de Reims and the Grand Cru village of Louvois, where we visited the Guy de Chassey house. Our hosts Hélène and Théo gave us an introduction about the history of the house – the family started growing vines in Jura in the 15th Century, acquired nobility status (hence the ‘de’), and moved round Europe, leaving descendants making wines in places including Burgundy, Savoie and Switzerland.
We walked past a row of vines that represented the de Chassey’s family’s involvement in grape growing and tasted some Madeleine Royal from Savoie (very sweet!). A son of the Swiss part of the family came to Champagne, marrying a local girl, and seven generations later Ingrid de Chassey is now winemaker (and vineyard manager, and chief blender – with some help from mum Marie Odile).
They own 9.5ha of vines but only make wine from a third of their production – the rest of their grapes are sold to bigger houses. They have plots in Louvois, Bouzy and the Premier Cru village Tauxière Mutry and farm as sustainably as possible (sheep do the winter weed control!).
Ingrid and her team of 3 make about 35,000 bottles a year.In the winery we saw their two presses, one traditional basket press the other a modern pneumatic, both kept very busy at harvest, and the various tanks in which the do the first fermentation, plot by plot. They started a perpetual reserve 15 years ago, and age all their wines for at least 4 years (ie the second fermentation).
Their cellars were dug by Guy himself in the 1950s, and the current generation are still digging – adding capacity so they can handle additional production from particularly good years. Everything is riddled by hand and they bring in equipment to bottle wines in the spring and to disgorge the wines four times a year.
Our tasting was of four super wines, starting with their Non Vintage Brut, then two vintage wines and finally a blend of old vine Chardonnay from 2016 and Pinot Noir from 2015, which had spent some time in oak. With the wines we had some cheese, a Tomme de Savoie and a Munster and this really showed how the different wines went particularly well with different strengths of cheese.
Sorry to leave, but we had a lunch to eat! The Table de 18 sat 25 of us very comfortably and we of course enjoyed some champagne, and two excellent Coteaux Champenois, a white and red, with our scallops, salmon and fruit dessert.
Our final visit was to a house on the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. One of the smallest – Boizel, which though it is part of the Lanson group, is still run by the Boizel family, and combines a lovely sense of family history, including the Renault vans parked outside that used to deliver the wines, with fabulous style.
Sixth generation brothers Florent and Lionel Roques-Boizel are the current leaders of the enterprise, they only use Cuvée wine (ie from the first pressing) and have loads of tanks to keep their various plots separate. This was explained to our group by Georgie and Zoe, who took us through the Cellier in which they ferment the wines (in oak as well as stainless steel), the tank room, in which they keep the reserve wines, and down into their 1km of cellars (there are 110km of cellars in total under the Avenue de Champagne!).
The cellars contained all sorts of delights – wines going back as far as 1834 (just Perrier Jouet have older bottles I believe), in the family wine library), and many other intervening vintages.
We had split into two groups for our visits and tastings, which were of two wines, their Non Vintage Brut and their Grand Vintage 2018, and when we were all back together Tim treated us to their Rosé Absolu before we headed back to Reims.
The clouds had loomed over us all day, and by the time we were back in Reims the rain had set in. But our spirits were definitely light!
Our final night dinner was very special. At La Magdeleine bistro we enjoyed four courses, some champagne, white Burgundy, Rhône reds and three very special champagnes Tim had brought from visits we had made: La Force de Charactère made by Manon Boutillez, a magnum of the 2013 Stenopé joint venture between Devaux and Chapoutier, and finally the Sec Champagne from Guy de Chassey, a lovely gentle sweeter champagne to take us into pudding. As though we needed more champagne! Some lovely kind words were said and once again we must make our way home, and look forward to future wine adventures with Tim.
