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Does a celebration call for bubbles, or can bubbles create the celebration?!

French Winophiles Look for Unexpected Pleasures in Champagne
This month, our French Winophiles are looking in the dusty corners of Champagne for surprises and unexpected pleasures. Join us as we explore.  Do you have an unexpected pleasure of Champagne? Join our chat on Saturday June 20 on Twitter. Just look for us 10-11am CDT at the #winophiles tag! Take a look farther down in this post for links to all my fellow Winophiles discoveries

A nice Champagne, to be sure. With 4 million bottles produced, you can count on house style and nothing unexpected.

House Style in Champagne
The vast majority of Champagne comes from the twenty-four Grande Marque Houses. Veuve Clicquot, Roederer, Krug are well known examples. These are large wineries producing enormous volumes of Champagne both from grapes they grow themselves and grapes they purchase from local growers in the Champagne region.

Most of the Grand Marque houses have a “house style”, a repeatable set of aromas, flavors, sweetness, delicacy of the mousse (bubbles) their customers can count on. All their Champagnes will reflect that house style to some degree, from their basic non-vintage Brut to their top luxury vintage cuvée.

Grower Champagnes – an Unexpected Pleasure
In the last 20 years or so, some Champagne grapegrowers who once supplied all their grapes to the Grande Marque Houses started to keep their grapes and make their own Champagne, even though it required investment in all the required equipment (and there is a lot). Grower Champagne has an official designation, and in order to qualify, at least 95% of the grapes they use must come from their estate. As these are small land holders, they have neither the capability nor the interest to show a “house style”. Instead, their goal is to show a sense of their land, their grapes and the season.

Note how far away the Aube region (lower right corner) is from the other Champagne regions
Champagne region map courtesy of Comité Champagne (https://www.champagne.fr/en/homepage)

Champagne Coessens
The Coessens family owns a single 5.5 acre plot in the Aube region of Champagne, the far southern tip of the region. This region has historically been the underdog, and was viewed as most useful for simply providing good Pinot Noir grapes to the Grande Marque houses. As Grower Champagnes started to show some success, winegrowers in this region embraced the new freedom and have become some of the most exciting and experimental small producers in Champagne.

Jérôme Coessens took over the reins for the family business in 2003, in 2006 he decided to stop being just a grape growing family and to become a grower producer. Even though their plot is small, they found multiple soil types and also found the grapes produced wines of different character. Rather than blend them, Jérôme decided to keep them separate, to show their differences. Their Millésime bottling comes from their Matière plot within their 5.5 acre L’Argillier vineyard.

3000 bottles from a single sub-plot of the 5.5 acre L’Argillier vineyard, there is sure to be a surprise here.

Champagne Coessens Extra Brut Millésime 2014 ($75 from Caveau Selections or online here)
Eye: Clear medium gold with a fine, persistent mousse
Nose: Clean, medium+ intensity aromas of ripe red apple, pear, white peach, apricot. Yeasty notes are prominent with hay, bread dough and butter. Finally, subdued dried apricot and hazelnut.
Mouth: Off-dry (5 g/l dosage) with medium+ flavor intensity, high acidity, medium alcohol, medium+ body and long finish of fruit and nuts. Flavors follow the nose with ripe red apple, pear, white peach and apricot. The yeasty notes are still prominent.
Conclusions: A very good quality wine today, it may reach outstanding if held for longer to allow further development. It has nice fruit, secondary and tertiary aromas, excellent structure and plenty of intensity. While enjoyable now, this wine is suitable for further bottle aging.

Grower Champagnes bring back the element of surprise to Champagne

An unexpected pleasure: Champagne on a Wednesday evening with enchiladas!

Bubbles with just a hint of sweetness are a nice counterpoint to savory.spicy enchiladas

One More Unexpected Pleasure
One final unexpected pleasure with Grower Champagne (not just this nice example): open a bottle on a Wednesday evening with whatever you’re having for dinner.  Champagne isn’t just for celebration, Champagne can make the celebration! We enjoyed Champage Coessens with smoked pork shoulder enchiladas.  Maybe not your typical Champagne pairing but it was a delicious combination and a celebration of a summer weekday evening!

Other Posts from Our French Winophiles
Take a look at a few unexpected pleasures of Champagne from my fellow Winophiles:

• Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla: Pour un Pique-Nique Sur le Patio: Roasted Citrus Tart + Jacquart Brut Mosaique
• Cindy of Grape Experiences: A Stroke of Serendipity – Discovering Champagne Louis Brochet Brut 1er Cru in London
• Jeff of Food Wine Click!: The Polar Opposite of House Style at Champagne Coessens
• Katrina of Corkscrew Concierge: Seven is a Charm with Laherte Freres Les 7 Champagne
• Martin of ENOFYLZ Wine Blog: Champagne Drappier’s Blanc de Quatre Blancs; A Taste of Champagne’s White Heirloom Grape Varieties
• Nicole of Somm’s Table: A Super Fancy Pants Grilled Cheese Pairing: SalmonCaviar Croque-Monsieur with Charles Dufour Bulles de Comptoir 6 La Benjamine2.0 Champagne
• Robin of Crushed Grape Chronicles: Champagne & BBQ, Chartogne-Taillet meets Rollin’Smoke
• Sue and Gwendolyn of Wine Predator: 10 of Champagne’s Unexpected Pleasures: 24 hours In and Around Reims, France
• Susannah of Avvinare: Falling In Love with Champagne: My First Visit to a Wine Region
• Terri of Our Good Life: Champagne and Sticky Asian Chicken Thighs: Whoa!