April '23 Champagne Club

Gonet-Médeville & Marie Copinet

Spring done sprung since our last installment of Champagne Club, and other than the weather, most of the  traditional indicia have arrived rite (sorry) on schedule. Spring training is over,  the full not-a-drill season is mid-swing, and that got me free associating: Of the 5-10 video cassettes in my childhood VCR rotation, one was the movie Field of Dreams, and there’s this part where James Earl Jones, backed by strings and the ghosts of old outfielders, intones: “The one constant throughout the years, Ray, has been baseball” - but I kinda think it might be Champagne?  After all, Champagne is older than baseball, more ubiquitous (celebration libation of the entire sportsball world) and doesn’t require periodic rule changes like pitch and batting clocks, starting the 10th with runner on 2nd etc, to speed up the spritz. 

Quite the opposite in fact: methode traditionelle is still what sells, and the demand for rarified bubbly remains high despite ever-rising prices. Indeed, from what we hear,  distributors are having difficulty finding new vignerons in the region with affordable bottlings not already on US shelves. The two producers we are featuring this month are thus old favorites both, but in slightly different guises. Each cuvee is new to our store and club and represents incredible quality for the cost. Pop either at your next Printemps get-together and people will most definitely come, Ray.  

Gonet-Médeville is a grower champagne house located in Bisseuil, within the Marne Valley region, which is famous for their exceptionally pure chalky soil. Founded in 2000, and comprising just 12 hectares, it is the happy product of the professional and personal marriage of Julie and Xavier Gonet-Médeville, scions of two famous French winemaking families. Julie’s is famous for its incomparable Chateau Gilette, an iconic Sauternes estate in Bordeaux dating back to 1870;  Xavier comes from a long line of Champagne growers in Le Mesnil.  Gonet-Médeville is  part of the group Les Artisans du Champagne, which prides itself on uniting work in the vineyard with work in the cellar. As Julie and Xavier themselves say, “being Champagne Artisans expresses our total involvement in all stages the production of our Champagnes. From growing practices to the choice of plant material, from harvest to disgorging, we come in and create living Champagnes reflecting our knowledge and culture.” The resulting wines are elegant, delicate, festive, and easy to drink.

 Champagne Marie Copinet is likewise the progeny of a married couple, both with deep roots in Champagne. In 1956, Alexandre Kowal’s grandparents inherited some vines and created their own brand in the village of Cuchery, on the right bank of the Marne valley. Marie-Laurie Copinet’s father Jacques started out working for Taittinger and selling his own fruit, from his vineyards in the tiny village of Montgenost (pop. 140)  to Moet,  before founding the family estate winery in 1975. Today, Alexandre is the cellar-master at Copinet, and together he and Marie have utilized their combined experience in the area to blaze a singular trail. They make their own non-flavored dosage for all their bottlings, and designed and built a custom stainless steel egg-shaped fermenter, the first in Champagne, the shape of which allows the lees to circulate without stirring and, unlike the more common concrete eggs, doesn’t sacrifice acidity to do so. The 2013 Monsieur Leonard, is the Tête du Cuvée (“top batch”)  from the best Chardonnay lots of 2013. It is spends about 8 years on lees, was disgorged in 2022, and is a very small production (around 250 cases). We are thrilled to feature it this month, alongside the Gonet-Médeville. 

Cheers,

PlumpJack Wine Team