The Questing Knight of New Age Champagne

There’s nothing like grand cru Champagne from the Cote des Blancs. It’s an otherworldly essence of Chardonnay, a kind of fruit-inflected crystal in liquid form, with bubbles. It seems impossible that you could pour something like that out of a bottle and drink it. Surely, there’s some kind of magic involved.

There is at least a mystical element in the magnificent Champagnes from the tiny house of Jacques Selosse in the grand cru village of Avize. They appear to owe more to philosophy and alchemy than to science.

What a contrast between the businesslike atmosphere at most Champagne houses and the earthy, rather Burgundian feeling at Jacques Selosse. The house was founded after World War II with virtually no vineyards. Jacques Selosse and his family built the business with purchased grapes while gradually assembling a little more than 16 acres (in 35 separate parcels) of perfectly sited vines between the 1950s and the ‘80s.

Anselme Selosse, the longhaired young proprietor, belongs to a recognizable type of modern international winemaker. Nobody would blink to see him in company with characters like California’s Randall (Bonny Doon), the Loire’s Didier Dagueneau, or Australia’s Charlie Melton--charismatic cowboy-raconteur winemakers whose strong personalities express strong passions about the meaning of wine and the proper way to produce it.

Yet Selosse is not just another maverick on a mission. He approaches his work with the passionate dedication of a knight on a quest. And after spending a few hours with him during a harvest-time visit, it’s easy to see that the Selosse cuvee wines are tangible reflections of his vision.

We had barely shaken hands when he began earnestly trying to convince me that grape vines are living things that need respect and consideration just as people do. “They need to breathe!” he insisted. “The soil is alive, and it transmits the energy to the vine and its fruit!” He was fervent; there was a gleam in his eye.

“It’s OK,” I reassured him. “I’m from California.” He relaxed, and we had a wonderful conversation among some of his robustly mature vines in Avize.

The ground between the rows was soft and verdant with ground cover, which set off his parcels from adjacent plots. He scooped up a double handful of light, fragrant soil and sniffed it like a flower. “The roots can spread easily through this, and penetrate deep into the chalk underneath,” he said, then explained how nutrient-transforming microbes thrive in minute cavities with abundant air and water.

His methods fall somewhere between organic and biodynamic. He encourages ground cover, makes his own organic compost, ferments in wooden vessels with indigenous yeast for two to nine months and lets his wines rest on their lees for as long as it takes (sometimes a year, he said) to get the personality he wants.

Selosse’s viticulture and winemaking are controversial in Champagne. He has enough critics to keep his name current in the Champagne gossip mill--and more than enough fans to easily account for his production of approximately 55,000 bottles a year (for contrast, Moet & Chandon produces around 25 million bottles).

In contrast to the huge major brands, most of the smaller Champagne houses are family operations currently controlled by the generation we call boomers. Their combination of progressive thinking, traditional values and intimacy with long-held vineyards makes for some highly individual expressions of Champagne character.

Because growers generally have most or all of their vineyards in one cru, their wines are generally expressions of single terroirs and, often, single vineyards. For the most part, they are also excellent values. A tete de cuvee from a large house may be $100 more expensive than its next most expensive wine, but a grower’s top bottling will typically cost $10 or $15 more.

In terms of distinctive voices, grower-producers have several advantages over the big houses. They know their vineyards intimately and are able to time the harvest perfectly. They’re dealing with less fruit, so it’s easier to keep it separate by parcel. All that allows more precise winemaking and blending. Finally, because all the vines are cultivated according to one philosophy, they can transmit a more defined style from vineyard to wine.

The style often reflects the grower’s personality. Thus, the wines of Anselme Selosse are larger than life--and, predictably, somewhat controversial.

What has everyone buzzing is not just that his wines are fermented and aged in oak (mostly small barrels), but the fact that he uses a high proportion of new wood. The critics cry foul. They maintain that tradition, the very integrity of Champagne, is being violated by the taste of new oak. But the fans can’t get enough of Selosse’s profoundly intense, magnificently scaled--and, yes, vibrantly alive--cuvees.

In many ways, Selosse is the emblematic wine grower: someone deeply concerned with the health and welfare of his vines, which express their experience in small amounts of wine. Despite the prominent signature of new oak in some of his cuvees, Selosse professes to view himself as little more than a liaison between his vines and the eventual consumer. “My job is to reveal the wines,” he says. “I don’t intervene.”

The Extra Brut is my favorite Selosse cuvee. Remarkably, it doesn’t show overt oak character--a good thing in Champagne. But its time in barrels must have had something to do with its weight and roundness, which are incredible in something so ethereal and fleeting. It has the nature of a concentrated yet airy essence of soil and chalk, hard and yielding at once, unfolding in the mouth like a rose carved out of transparent crystal.

Another remarkable Selosse cuvee is the ’89. It’s still fresh and young and bold, although beginning to develop deeper, richer flavors and creamy texture. The finish lasts for minutes. And it is one of those rare wines that inspires an actual image.

Sipping with my eyes closed I could see a torchlit medieval castle on a hill in the deep blue dusk of Champagne. This, I thought, is the once and future Chardonnay.

*

Smith is writer-at-large for Wine & Spirits Magazine.