A Rare Vertical Tasting with Two (or Three?) Generations of Agrapart
A Champagne lunch with Pascal Agrapart and his son Amboise is an exceptionally rare treat. So no surprise the guest list was a who's who of top New York City sommeliers and journalists. Why was I there? Somebody must have cancelled.
But what a revelation it was, sitting high above Manhattan, tasting some recent releases and then getting a guided tour through a vertical of their exquisite cuvée, Minéral, stretching back to 1976, a cuvee made not by Pascal, but by his father. It was a father-son presentation, but there was very much a third generation, a third voice, at the table, expressing itself through that 1976 -- a wine from a different culture, a different climate, a different time.
The Warm Up: Terroirs and Exp 19
You know it's going to be a special tasting when the "Welcome Wines" are better than the top wines you'd taste at many events. We started with Agrapart's "entry level" blanc de blanc blend, Terroirs. But oh, what an entry level! Top sites in Avize, Oger, Cramant and Oiry -- there is no filler here. Agrapart is, of course, a Chardonnay specialist; but even so, this is an almost shockingly perfect expression of what blanc de blanc can be. Does it help that it's out of Magnum? More and more people are saying. It's a blend of 2019 with some 2018 (the internet says 40%, my notes say 20%).
The second warm up wine was the exceptionally rare "Exp" bottling, a tiny and in their words "risky" cuvee they only make when two successive vintages create the ideal conditions. The goal: to produce a Champagne from only grapes (no yeast, sugar, dosage). The method: add unfermented pressed juice (here, 2020 vintage) to the base wine (in this case, 2019) to start a secondary fermentation without any of the technical inputs that go into managing most Champagne production. Risky indeed! Could the wine end up flat? Maybe. Could the bottles explode? I hope not! Could the fermentation go sideways and ruin the wine? Well, that's not what happened with the 2019. It was a baby, but already bright and beautiful, with a perfect, elegant mousse (sometimes the bubbles are just... better). The fruit was exquisite and the minerality a touch more subtle, for now.
Heart of Chalk: a 2018 Horizontal
The Agrapart family's deep connection to Avize's chalky soils showed brilliantly in the horizontal of their top 2018s: Mineral, Avisoise and Venus. Avize's great terroirs, according to Pascal are dominated by a subsoil of chalky limestone. But that subsoil (‘mother rock’ as they like to say) is covered with varying amounts of clay: more at the top near the forest, less at the bottom, and a mix in between. Each of these three wines expresses one of those terroirs:
* Minéral is from two pure-chalk parcels located at the bottom of the hillside (Les Champboutons in Avize with some fruit from Les Bionnes in Cramant). This is reputed to be Agrapart's most mineral-driven, laser-like wine and the 2018 lived up to its reputation. Even the nose was incredibly mineral, and the palate was long and finished with a deeply chalky vibe. Pascal says this wine is very “vertical” -- the sort of descriptor that some French winemakers use that sounds obscure but can feel pithy and true when you hear it while you taste.
* L’Avizoise comes from two of their oldest Grand Cru parcels, Les Robards and La Voie D’Epernay, with 50+ year old vines in the clay topsoils at the top of the hillside. Considered their most powerful wine (thanks to the clay) the 2018 was the least open for business, especially on the nose. But don't get me wrong: it was already stunning with broad fruit and sparkling minerality! And no doubt with time those deep and striking notes will pick up definition.
* Vénus is the goldilocks wine, from a single, 0.3 hectare vineyard, La Fosse, that was planted in 1959. Pascal’s favorite site, it marries the pure chalk and heavier clay terroirs in what Pascal considers the best expression of his style: both breadth and cut. And the wine was, indeed, delicious. Complete. Captivating. Pascal said he likes to give it a couple of hours of air before drinking.
Time Travel in a Glass: a Vertical of Minéral
The vertical of Minéral was a true revelation. It's one thing to taste mature bottles of Dom Perignon or Krug. Those wines are made in decent quantity and have been collected, aged, and traded for generations. Grower Champagnes, not so much: tiny productions, relatively newer names, and devoted fans who would never dream of selling off bottles they've aged for their own pleasure, mean we rarely get the pleasure. This was the first time I (and many at the table) had had a chance to see how an Agrapart wine evolves with time -- and to learn how the wines (farming, winemaking) have changed over time. Getting to enjoy these wines over a delicious meal at Manhatta was, well, "Priceless," as the kids used to say.
The 2016, crafted by Amboise and Pascal together, was vibrant, open and felt like one of those clear windows into the terroir. But then tasting it with the tuna tartare brought home that it isn't just some intellectual exercise, a weirdly non-datacentric geology. No, this was wine, made for food. The flavors were umami and saline, fresh and also stony, and the wine with the dish was the kind of 1+1=3 we talk about a lot but don't actually see too often.
As we moved back in time through Pascal's era (2006, 1996, 1986) to his father's 1976, we witnessed how these wines evolve. The 1996 is such a great vintage and the wine was as piercingly delicious as you'd expect. I was worried I would drink it so quickly that I wouldn't get the chance to watch it evolve in the glass. But towards the end of that course (I had a delicious trout dish, but probably should have gone for the chicken with morels in light of all the umami in the maturing wines) to my surprise it was the 1986 that was almost drained. It was a challenging vintage, Pascal told us, with a late harvest and low maturity. But they got what they needed and the wine was so vital, so delicious and complex -- yet unflamboyantly so. Pascal told us that, contrary to common wisdom, he credits minerality and salinity – not acidity – for a Champagne's aging potential. Whatever the total acidities may have been here, the '86 had what it took to age beautifully.
The 1976 was one of the last bottles they have left and was a particularly sentimental journey through time for Pascal. It's a wine his father made, in an older style. The dosage would have been much higher than it is today; the farming was not done with a view to drinking the wine nearly 50 years later. And yet, there it was, still bright fruit with the developed truffle characteristics. The bubbles were gentle, but they carried decades of complexity.
Looking Forward
These wines tell a story of evolution, both in the bottle and in Champagne itself. Pascal noted how harvest dates have shifted dramatically – from late harvests in '86 and '96 to early September picks with perfect maturity in '06 and '16. Change will continue. But these are issues more for Amboise, who after training with Pascal for years (and stages at other top domaines) is clearly ready to take charge of his family's legacy. He has ideas of his own (we got a preview of an utterly delicious coteaux champenois) but is clearly committed to maintaining and advancing Agrapart's generations-long project of expressing Avise's terroir as directly and honestly as possible.