Champagne La Closerie Grand Cru NV Jérôme & Agnès Prévost LC 19, Disg. Oct 2021

The Grand Cru cuvée was Jérôme and Agnès Prévost's first wine made from fruit outside their own vineyard, and unlike the rest of the range it contains no Meunier at all.

La Closerie is the tiny estate Jérôme Prévost built at Gueux, on the western side of the Montagne de Reims, where he made his first wine in 1998 after a decade of selling his fruit to négociants, working at first out of Anselme Selosse's cellar at Avize. This bottling made its debut with the 2019 harvest and is an equal blend of Chardonnay from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, in the Côte des Blancs, and Pinot Noir from Puisieulx, at the northern end of the Montagne de Reims, with about twenty per cent reserve wine from 2018. The Mesnil vines are massal selections and the Puisieulx planting dates from the 1960s. It is farmed and made in the same way as Les Béguines: indigenous yeasts, fermentation and ageing in barrel, no filtration or stabilisation, and next to no dosage. The label code LC 19 identifies the base harvest, and this bottle was disgorged in October 2021.

Best drunk over the next few years while its texture is at its most expressive. Serve at about 8°C with roast chicken, mushroom dishes or charcuterie.