Champagne Jérôme Prévost La Closerie Fac-Simile Rosé LC18 NV Disg. Oct 2020

Fac-Simile is Jérôme Prévost's rosé, made by blending a small share of still red Meunier into the same Les Béguines base wine that becomes his white Champagne.

Prévost inherited a little over two hectares at Gueux, some ten kilometres west of Reims, from his grandmother and sold the grapes for years before working at Jacques Selosse in the mid-1990s. In 1998, with Anselme Selosse's help, he made his first tiny quantity of his own wine in the Selosse cellars at Avize, moving production to Gueux in 2001. Les Béguines is a single plot planted in the late 1950s from massal selection, almost entirely Meunier with a scattering of Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay, on Thanetian sands, clays and fossil-bearing limestone. Yields are held to about half the legal limit, everything is picked by hand, and fermentation is with indigenous yeasts in used barriques and 600-litre demi-muids. Fac-Simile takes that base and adds still red Meunier from the same vineyard. Dosage is minimal, sulphur very low, and the LC code stands in for a declared vintage.

Drinking well now and worth keeping for several years; serve at about 8°C with charcuterie, roast quail or a soft washed-rind cheese.