Friday Night Bubbles

2000 Gatinois Brut, about $45, Polaner Imports. The millennium vintage in Champagne was not a great one, in the end. It was a ripe vintage, strange as that may sound for Champagne, and apparently many of the wines lack precision and focus. Most producers made a vintage wine anyway - if you were a wine maker would you skip the chance to make a wine from the year 2000? really, how bad would your fruit have to be to voluntarily miss out? All your colleagues are making a 2000, shouldn't you?

I've had the chance to drink several 2000's in the past few weeks, and I must say that I have not been impressed. Even with a rock solid producer like Jacques Lassaigne in Montgueux, whose non vintage wines are cut and precise, the 2000 was sort of fuzzy and all over the place. I know there are great wines from the 2000 vintage, but I haven't had them. Well, I did taste the 2000 Cuvée Fiacre from Chartogne Taillet and that was wonderful. They're out there, but they're not the norm.

This one, the 2000 Gatinois Brut, is one of the good ones. Gatinois is located in Aÿ in the Vallée de Marne, right near Bollinger, to whom Pierre Cheval-Gatinois sells about half of his harvest each year. Aÿ is Grand Cru Pinot Noir territory, and as you would therefore expect, Gatinois wines are almost entirely Pinot. In the case of the vintage wines, they are 100% Pinot Noir. Gatinois bottles under 3,000 cases of wine each year, and this is inclusive of all five wines (Tradition Brut, Réserve Brut, Rosé, Millésime, and Demi-sec), so it's not an easy bottle to find. But if you are a fan of red grape Champagne, and of a full bodied style in general, try a bottle if you see one.
The color is somewhat striking, golden, almost amber in color. The nose is first and foremost clean and fresh, almost airy, and this balances the ripeness and richness of the aromas so that the wine in the end transcends the problems of the vintage. Sweet and rich aromas of berry fruit, orange peel and marzipan are infused with a chalky essence. The nose is broad and round, but mostly under control. The wine is texturally lovely with a very fine mousse and the palate is surprisingly mineral driven. The fruit is front and center, and it's juicy and ripe, but the fineness of texture and the definite mineral floor grounds the wine. With air time it puts on weight, but maintains somewhat strong focus in part because of the tangy acidity, and also because of the strong and narrow finish that resonates with orange zest. This is a very big wine with great depth of fragrance and flavor, and it maintains an elegant, if exuberant posture.