Cédric Bouchard and Roses de Jeanne: Pushing the edge of the Grower-Champagne envelope

And so I have come to the end of my examination of the Champagne producers identified as "Great Growers" by Robert Walters in his book Bursting Bubbles. And it is ironic that we are ending with one of the best among this elite group who is producing grapes and wines in the least-heralded of the Champagne sub-regions: Cédric Bouchard (Roses de Jeanne) of the Côte des Bar.

Source: cellartracker.com

The accolades for this producer flow endlessly:

• "... some of the most spectacular wines being made anywhere in the world ..." -- Antonio Galloni
• "The most coveted, and, arguably, the finest grower Champagnes are made by two producers -- Selosse and Bouchard" -- Renaissance Vintners
• "Enthusiastic and talented young grower ... enigmatic and almost Byronic ..." -- BBR
• "Bouchard is the most extreme of the great growers ... in that he pushes many of the agreed philosophies of quality and terroir as far as they will go -- and then a little further" -- Walters.

Like the majority of his fellow Great Growers, Cédric did not serve time with the family estate on a continuous basis. Rather, he went to Paris and got a job in a wine shop. While there he was exposed to wines from other regions and became especially enamored of the wines and practices of Burgundy. And it is this Burgundian wine ethic that colors his approach to winemaking.

Cédric eventually came back to Côte des Bar but his new views on winemaking did not sit well with his Champagne-traditional father and they butted heads constantly. In 2000 his father gave him access to the low-yielding Les Urseles parcel so that he could go off and experiment on his own. According to Cédric, his father thought that he was giving him the worst plot of the holdings but its low-yielding nature fit neatly into his burgeoning philosophy: sustainable farming, minimal yields, ripe fruit, and minimal intervention in the cellar.

Cédric named his new venture Roses de Jeanne in honor of his Polish grandmother Janika. His first vintage from Les Ursules was released in 2002. Subsequent to that release he has acquired a number of other plots as well as a label -- Inflorescence -- and its associated plot. Cédric gained full ownership of Inflorescence with the 2012 vintage and has since incorporated it under the Roses de Jeanne label.

Bouchard does no blending. Rather, he seeks to distill the essence of terroir through single-variety, single parcel, single-vintage wines. He follows biodynamic practices but is certified organic. Yields in his vineyards are vanishingly small -- 26 hl/ha -- making it easier for the vines to produce ripe, high-quality wine grapes. He does careful selection in the vineyard, selling off grapes and wine that do not live up to his exacting standards. With the low yields, Bouchard's wines easily attain 11% - 12% alcohol, unfamiliar territory (without chaptalization) for most other Champagne producers.

Bouchard's grapegrowing and winemaking practices can be encapsulated in the words "just say no":

• No chemicals
• No blending
• No chaptalization
• No selected yeasts (wild-yeast fermentation)
• No fining
• No filtering
• No cold stabilization
• No wood
• No dosage.

Unlike Jacques Selosse, for example, Cédric does not use any oak in the aging of his wines. In his view, wood adds substances to the wine and, in so doing, detracts from the terroir effects. In addition, the use of oak promotes oxidation of the wine and he views oxidative notes in Champagne as a flaw. All of the Bouchard wines are fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks.

Bouchard adds 20 gm of sugar for the liqueur de tirage, well below the norm of 24 gm. This reduced level of sugar yields gas pressure of 4.5 atmospheres (versus an average of 6) after fermentation in the bottle and a "gentle, disappearing mousse."

As shown in the table below, Roses de Jeanne produces seven single-vineyard Champagnes. Due to plot sizes and low yields, production is very small (approximately 15,000 bottles across the entire line).

Table: Roses de Jeanne Wines

Label	Variety/Style	Vineyard Age	V’yd Size	Exposition	Soil	Aging
Côte de Val Vilaine*	Pinot Noir/Blanc de Noir	Planted 1974	1.41 ha	South	Clay and limestone	24 – 28 months on lees
Côte de Béchalin**	Pinot Noir/Blanc de Noir	1981 - 1982	1.5 ha lieu-dit/0.73 ha owned	Southwest	do.	7 years on lees
Les Ursules	Pinot Noir/Blanc de Noir	1974	0.97 ha		do.	3 years on lees
La Haute Lemblé	Chardonnay (5 different rootstocks)/Blanc de Blanc	2002	0.11 ha	South	do.	3 years on lees
Presle	Pinot Noir (10 different rootstocks)/Blanc de Noir	2007	15 rows			3 years on lees
La Bolorée	Pinot Blanc/Blanc de Blanc	1960	0.217 ha	South	Chalky marl and sand	3 years on lees
Le Creux d’Enfer	Pinot Noir/Rosé		0.7 ha lieu-dit/0.032 ha owned	West		3 years on lees

*Inflorescence Blanc de Noir until 2011; **Inflorescence La Parcelle until 2006; many sources to include Walters (Bursting Bubbles) and Liem (Champagne).

Walters describes the above wines thusly:

• Côte de Val Vilaine -- fleshy texture, wonderful purity. and an intense smoky minerality
• Côte de Bachelin -- flesh and texture; plenty of complexity from the time on lees
• Les Urseles -- super concentrated; deep; ripe, dark fruit; smoky complexity
• Le Haute Lemblé -- rich, creamy, nutty wine with great texture
• La Bolorée -- yellow fruits with a saline freshness and hint of lanolin and beeswax

The Rosé (Le Creux d'Enfer) is made by the saignée method. In this case the grapes are foot-stomped and then macerated on the skins and stems for up to 4 days in order to produce the classic color. The wine is then bled off the solids. Walters describes the wine as "fabulously pure" and "silky and yet energetic with crystalline red fruits and subtle nettle and herbal notes."

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Champagne's Côte des Bar sub-region

The Côte des Bar, the southernmost of the Champagne sub-regions, is located 100 km south of Epernay and, as such, is closer to Burgundy's Chablis than it is to the heart of the Champagne region. The sub-region's 7,900 ha of vines, and 64 villages, is distributed between two growing areas: Bar sur Aubois and Barséquanais.

Côte des Bar (Source: champagne.fr)

Today the Côte des Bar is prized for its Pinot Noir and the character that its wine adds to Champagne blends; but the region was not always welcomed with open arms by the sub-regions to the north.

Regulatory History
The regulatory history of Champagne is bound up in brand-protection strategy and questions as to the physical boundaries of the brand and who/what would be excluded from the brand's inner circle.  The case of Champagne was further complicated by an internecine war between the French Departments of Marne and Aube as to whether Aube should be considered a part of Champagne or a part of Burgundy.

In the 1890s and early 1900s, the grape growers in Marne and Aube felt that the Champagne Houses were bringing grapes in from other French regions, blending it with local grapes, and calling the resulting product Champagne.  This was a problem on two levels: (i) It had quality implications in that bad product would reflect directly on the "Champagne" growers and (ii) more importantly, it provided competition for local grapes in an environment where prices were already deathly low. Growers organized themselves into the Fédérations des Syndicats Viticoles de la Champagne and lobbied the government to pass laws that would make it a fraudulent act to sell a wine as Champagne if it was made, wholly or in part, with grapes from "foreign" sources. The Law of August 1, 1905, went a long way to meeting the organization's goal in that it allowed the government to regulate the composition and origin of wine "of general and specific areas" (maisons-champagne.com) and to pursue offenders.

In order to "flesh out" the 1905 Law, a December 1908 Law defined the areas that would be considered as Champagne for wine-production purposes.  The areas designated as such were Marne and selected communes in Aisne to a total of 33,500 hectares.  A subsequent Law passed on the 17 June, 1911 designated Aube as a Champagne-Deuxième Zone, a classification which would prevent Aube-resident growers from selling their grapes into the main Champagne region.  The Aube growers were unhappy with this solution and they took the issue up again after the end of WWI and got relief with the Law of May 6, 1919 which defined the Champagne wine-growing region in terms of size as well as grape varieties.  Marne inhabitants disputed the Law and it was placed in the hands of an arbitrator for final resolution.  His findings, which made their way into the Law of 1927, defined the AOC system for all of France, did away with the Champagne-Deuxième Zone, and included Aube in the Champagne AOC (maisons-champagne.com).

Champagne region post the 1927 Law (Map source: terroir-france.com/wine/champagne_map.htm)

Climate
The climate in the Côte des Bar is reflective of two influences: (i) an Atlantic, rain-bearing influence from the west and (ii) the extreme temperatures associated with continental impacts. It is felt that this combination of moisture and heat aids in the full ripening of region's grapes.

Côte des Bar Soils

At varying periods of the earth's history, portions of present-day Europe were covered by shallow seas. Such was the condition during the Jurassic period in the time span we now call the Kimmeridgian Age, identified by ammonite and oyster fossils found in associated strata.

Strata from periods post the Jurassic continued to be deposited into the shallow seas and many of these layers were forced to the surface when the area that is known today as the Paris Basin began a slow sag during the late Tertiary and Quaternary periods. This slow tilting of the Basin allowed the Seine, Aube, Yonne, and Loire rivers to "downcut through the rising ridges, thus cutting the Kimmeridgian-Portlandian outcrop band into an archipelago of wine areas" (Wilson).

Source: timkeen.com

The figures above show that upper Jurassic deposits (which would include Portlandian and Kimmeridigian deposits) came to the surface in a band that falls below the Champagne and Loire bands and above the Burgundy band. Wilson refers to the Kimmeridgian outcrops as the Kimmeridgian Chain in that they are distinct and separate from their associated wine regions. The primary Kimmeridgean vineyard sites in France are: (i) the Aube sub-region of Champagne; (ii) the Chablis, Tonnerre, and Auxerrois areas of Burgundy; and (iii) the Pouilly, Sancerre, and Menetou-Salon areas of the Loire Valley.

Wilson sees the key to Kimmeridgian soil as the way it works with its Portlandian partner. The marly soil of the Kimmeridgian develop good structure and water-retention characteristics and is easy to cultivate. The hard limestone of the Portlandian contains many fossils and fragments and is also cracked by frost. This enables aeration of the slopes as well as aiding in drainage.

To be specific, the subsoils of the Côte des Bar is mainly composed of marls, limestones, and clays from Kimmeridgian deposits. On the slopes, the stony limestone elements help the soils to drain fully.

Vines
While its fellow Kimmeridgian traveler (Chablis) focuses on Chardonnay, the variety of choice in Côte des Bar is Pinot Noir (84.44 of the plantings). The vines are planted on hillsides with steep slopes  where the stony limestone elements help the soils to drain freely.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme