2015 Jerome Prevost, La Closerie Les Beguines 1x750ml

Robert Parker 95

The NV Extra Brut Les Beguines LC15 is also showing very well, unwinding to reveal notes of mirabelle plums, yellow orchard fruit and white flowers. On the palate, it’s full-bodied, deep and structured, with an abundance of chalky dry extract and impressive tension for the vintage. I suspect that this may prove fascinating with extended bottle age. Jerome Prevost farms just over two hectares of old-vine Pinot Meunier in the village of Gueux, where the soils are a millefeuille of calcareous sands and clays. Working with a variety that’s often sneered at, in a village few had heard of and with terroirs that are far removed from the clay-chalk stereotype that dominates discussion of Champagne, Prevost’s tiny estate named La Closerie nonetheless produces some of the most sought-after wines in Champagne. Prevost started making his wine in Anselme Selosse’s cellar with the 1998 vintage, moving into his own facility in 2003. He harvests late something that’s essential if Pinot Meunier is to have character and ferments his wine in barrel. Like Selosse, he doesn’t top up his barrels while the vins clairs mature, so they often develop a light "voile" or veil of yeasts that lends subtle biologically aged characteristics of sotolon to his wines though those qualities are much less pronounced than they are in Selosse’s wines, it’s worth noting. "I wouldn’t do that if I were making still wines," he explains, "but I think of the second fermentation in bottle as being like a ‘furnace’ that enables one to remodel a wine. The base wine may be tired after a year in barrel without topping up, but the fermentation in bottle gives it new life." Dosage is minimal, and Prevost says that in principle he likes working in a non-dose because "it makes me uncomfortable it doesn’t forgive any faults, there’s nowhere to hide." Powerful but fine-boned and immensely characterful, these are some of my favorite wines in the region, and I intend to make Prevost the subject of a more extensive essay in the near future. While they’ve become incredibly hard to find, I encourage readers to try them. [William Kelley, 08/30/2019]

Anticipated maturity: 2020-2035