Chartogne-Taillet "Sainte Anne" Champagne

I put this bottle of Cuvée Sainte Anne in my cellar back in September of 2015, so this is from the base year of 2012 and was disgorged in January of 2015. It is composed of its customary blend of fifty percent chardonnay and fifty percent pinot noir. It was finished with a dosage of 4.5 grams per liter. The wine is aging beautifully and offers up a bright and complex nose of white peach, apple, a beautiful base of soil tones, just a hint of sweet hazelnut, fresh-baked bread and a touch of upper register smokiness. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex and beautifully balanced, with refined mousse, a fine core, lovely mineral undertow and a long, focused and vibrant finish. If one were to quibble (and that is my job, after all!), this is not the most elegant example of Brut NV, but it is loaded with personality. This was before Alexandre Chartogne had expanded his roster of single vineyard bottlings, so there was a bit more fruit from top flight terroirs going into the Cuvée Sainte Anne than appears to be the case today. Fine juice.

You aren’t going to find many centuries-old-families that plow their ancestral fields by horse in Champagne; the Chartogne-Taillet family respects the ancient terroir of Merfy (7 km north of Reims) as religiously as the Benedictine monks did back in the 7th century when the old lieu dits were first sanctified into history. The Sainte Anne bottling captures all of the nuances and variety in the different vineyards that winemaker Alexandre Chartogne obsesses over. When you pour it into a glass, the bubbles burst forth in a flurry of metallic almond colored clouds. Notes of bruised orchard fruit and gentle macadamia nut leap out of the glass. The beautiful velvety mousse comes at you with bright raspberry and ripe strawberry and a clean and juicy finish. For balance and complexity, Alexandre mixes in some reserve wine to give this wine the round smooth taste that you can talk about for days and days. Who better to celebrate these days than a winemaker in Champagne that lives and breathes terroir.