Agrapart was founded in the Côte des Blancs village of Avize in 1894 by Arthur Agrapart and extended by his grandson Pierre in the 1950s and 1960s. Pascal and his brother Fabrice, the estate's fourth generation, have been in charge of the estate since the mid-1980s.
Agrapart currently owns 12 ha of Grand Cru vineyards in Avize (primarily), Ogier, Cramant, and Oiry distributed over 50 plots (according to the estate website; White claims 60 parcels while Walters claims 70).
Because of the small plot sizes in Champagne, a producer generally presses grapes from multiple villages and stores the resulting wines separately until blended. In Agrapart's view, some of these components show as complete and then regress when blended with wines from another village. He noticed no such regression when wines from similar geological environments were blended. This led him to implement geological blends -- finished Champagnes that come from vineyards with similar geology (Walters). In Pascal's assessment, these similar-soil wines blend more "comfortably."
The range of Agrapart wines are shown in the picture directly below and detailed individually in the table following.
Source: bootle.fr |
7 Crus (NV) | Terroirs (NV) | Les Demoiselles Rosé (NV) | Complantée | Minéral | L’Avizoise | Cuvée Venus | |
Variet(ies)y | Chardonnay (90%), Pinot Noir* (10%) | 100% Chardomnnay | Chardonnay, Pinot Noir | Pinot Noir, Pinot meunier, Pinot Bianco, Petit Meslier, Chardonnay | 50 yr Chardonnay vines | Chardonnay vines planted in 1959 | |
Village(s) | Chardonnay from 7 villages, Pinot Noir from Agrapart plot in Avanay-val-d’Or in Montagne de Reims | Avize, Cramant, Oger, Oiry | Best Chardonnay from Grand Cru vineyards, Pinot Noir | Avize | Old vines from Avize and Cramant | From the best Avize hillsides on clay soils | Avize |
Vineyard | La Fosse (0.3 ha plot in the vineyard planted in 2002 and 2003) | Le Champ Bouton in Avize; Bionnes in Cramant | Les Robarts, La Voie d’Épernay | La Fosse; worked by worker and horse | |||
Composition | Two vintages | Two vintages | Terroirs blended with still Pinot Noir from Cumierès (Purchased from René Geoffroy) | Grapes co-harvested and co-fermented; two vintages | |||
Fermentation | Indigenous yeasts; 600 l oak barrels | Indigenous yeasts; 600 l oak barrels | Indigenous yeasts; 600 l oak barrels | Indigenous yeasts; 600 l oak barrels | Indigenous yeasts; 600 l oak barrels | Indigenous yeasts; 600 l oak barrels | |
Aging | Oak Barrels | Oak Barrels | Oak | Oak | Oak | Oak | |
Lees Aging | 3 years | 3 - 4 years | 4 years | 6 - 7 years |
5
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6 - 7 years | |
Dosage | 7 g/l | 5 g/l | 5 g/l | 4 g/l | 4 g/l | Zero | |
SO₂ | 50 mg/l | 50 mg/l | 50 mg/l | 50 mg/l | 50 mg/l | 50 mg/l | |
Wines | Broadly built baritone wine (Liem) | Finesse, complexity, and a saline expression of soil. Consistently one of the finest blanc de balance in Champagne (Liem). One of the region’s greatest (Parker) |
Experience is an Agrapart offering not mentioned in the table above because of its uniqueness and miniscule and infrequent production. The wine, which started out as an experiment, is 100% Chardonnay of which commercial vintages have been produced in 2007, 2012, 2014, and 2015. Production is around 600 bottles. No sugar is added to this wine. Instead, the base wine is aged for 1 year and then carefully blended with unfermented juice (the source of the sugar and yeast necessary for secondary fermentation in the bottle). This wine spends between 2 and 3 years on the lees.
The theme that runs through the Agrapart wines, according to Parker, are
... pillowy textures from ripe Chardonnay that has been aged on its lees and has gone through malolactic fermentation married to a racy, saline, mineral freshness that all wines share. Because of these two features, they are mouth-filling and relatively full-bodied wines, yet they are never heavy; rather, they are always refreshing, energetic and racy. They are without doubt some of the very finest wines being produced today in Champagne.
©Wine -- Mise en abyme
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