TASTING


The Champagnes were tasted over a 12-hour period in October 2022, mostly in the cellars, including with dinner, but also in the Avize vineyard and on Eurostar. I have disgorgement dates for the range but haven’t necessarily given them because they disgorge in batches, and it wasn’t always clear that I had the date for the batch of the one I tasted. The important point is that all cuvées are aged in the cellars for a minimum of six years.


Champagne Frèrejean Frères Premier Cru Extra Brut


A new cuvée: the previous Extra Brut was Vintage. This is 50% Chardonnay, 50% Pinot Noir from the Côte des Blancs, the Pinot Noir from Grauves and Vertus. (In forthcoming cuvées, it will also come from Ambonnay and then from Aÿ, too, from their recently bought organic vineyard.) Base wine: 2015, to which “a healthy chunk of 2014 and perhaps a little 2013” was added, according to Tom Harrow who works with the house. Disgorged 2021. Dosage 3g/l. Pale straw. Floral, orchard, and warm pâtisserie


aromas, followed by crystallized lemon and peach. The palate opens with appetite-whetting freshness and salinity then fans out into richer, bready, evolved notes and fine, pure fruit—sweet lemon, mirabelle plum, and white peach. Long, slender, and airy, but displaying the flesh of the 2015 vintage base at the same time. The dosage is perfectly pitched; you know it’s there, but you don’t notice it at all, making for harmony without a scintilla of austerity. | 92


Champagne Frèrejean Frères Premier Cru Brut


Like the Extra Brut, this is 50/50 Chardonnay/ Pinot Noir and 30% reserve wines, but Didier Pierson sees this as more Chardonnay in style and the Extra Brut as more Pinot Noir in style. “We always try to get some old reserve wines into the blend because that’s what gives elegance,” he says. The dosage is below 6g/l. Slightly deeper color than the Extra Brut, with


honeyed tarte tatin, peach, and crème pâtissière drifting over a soft umami hum. Creamy textured and rounded on the palate, with an elegant, soft mousse and touches of brioche, stem ginger, and toasted walnut carrying it through to a clean, tapering fresh finish. | 91


Champagne Frèrejean Frères Premier Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut


Chardonnay from Cramant, Avize, and Premier Cru Grauves. 50% base wine (2012) and 50% reserve wines from 2008 and 2009. (The current release is based on 2013, with 50% reserve wines from 2010, 2011, and 2012.) Dosage below 8g/l. The reserve- wine component is operatic, giving opulence, creamy depth, and pashmina texture to the fruit. The fruit, meanwhile, heads toward the tropical but is neatly reined in by crisp candied-citrus and by oyster-shell minerality and sleek acidity that together give structure. Very attractive. | 93


Champagne Frèrejean Frères Rosé NV


60% Chardonnay with 40% Pinot Noir, 14% vinified as red. Didier says that what he likes about blended rosé is being able to “work the color quite precisely.” And it’s clear from the deep pink hue that he likes color in his rosé. The nose is every bit as dramatic, with bright, juicy strawberry aromas of almost piercing intensity complemented by a wave of just-baked brioche. The palate mirrors the nose, adding a silky texture, a sliver of toast, and a little steeliness. It’s a wine of presence and compressed power, but also precision and length—and although dry, this is not as dry as the rest of the range. Cellared for three or four years, it will develop some more complex notes and could be served with duck, perhaps with a light blackberry and Port sauce, but describing it as “best served with a chocolate dessert” seems odd, and it was sabotaged for me at dinner by the stracciatella mint mousse with chocolate with which it was served. | 91


Champagne Frèrejean Frères VV 26 Grand Cru


All Chardonnay, 90% Cramant from a plot planted in 1926 and another aged 60 years, both very low- yielding, 10% from Avize and Oger. It’s the second cuvée of VV26 and is based on 2008 and 2009; tête de cuvée only; seven months in used Argonne oak casks before bottling. Disgorged in early 2019; sealed with an agrafe and aged in the cellars for a further two years. Oak and agrafe are a Pierson family blanc de blancs tradition. Only 8,000 bottles. Deep straw color, and gentle, fine bubbles.


A powerful nose: oxidative, honeyed, toasted bread and a hint of pain d’épices around a core of


perfumed mirabelle and Seville orange marmalade, the latter giving both zing and an attractive nip of bitterness on the palate. Vinous, savory, rich, intense, concentrated, complex, long. Even so, it wasn’t quite up to duck stuffed with foie gras. | 94


Champagne Frèrejean Frères 2012 Cuvée des Hussards


Hussards is made only in top vintages. The first three (2005, 2007, and 2008) were blanc de blancs from Cramant, Avize, Grauves, and Chouilly; the 2012 includes 15% Pinot Noir—from Vertus. Tête de cuvée only. It’s also markedly lower in dosage. Didier does the dosage tasting blind and was surprised to find that he had chosen 3.5g/l. Previously, it has been 8g/l. Much paler than the VV26, with lively, fine bubbles and an equally expressive but very different nose, notably spicy, with Jersey cream, too, but overlaid with pretty floral, peach, and lemon notes, followed by raspberry and blueberry. The palate is succulent, deep, almost compressed, yet silky and refined. Hard to convey, other than to say deeply textural and at the same time elegant. Given time in the glass, spices reemerge, including cinnamon, together with apple confit and umami seaweed. Wonderful interplay between development and complexity on the one hand, and freshness and energy on the other. | 96–97


Champagne Frèrejean Frères 2008 Deep Water Aged Cuvée des Hussards


The idea of aging a limited number of bottles under water was to arrest the maturation, to keep the aromas that they loved in this 2008 blanc de blancs after it had been eight years on its lees (disgorged in 2017). Having done a successful trial in 2016, sinking 24 bottles 200ft (60m) down off the coast of Normandy for a year in water temperatures of 50–57°F (10–14°C) and 7 bar of pressure, they sank a larger batch in summer 2020, retrieving the bottles 12 months later and releasing them in November 2022. There were only two bottles available for a large number of tasters, so it was a tiny taste, but enough for me to be struck by the freshness and intensity, the saline minerality, seaweed, and roast-almond notes, the white grapefruit and confit-lemon fruit, the sustained satin texture, and the crystalline acidity. | 95


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 81


All photography courtesy of Frèrejean Frères


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