Champagne Christian Gosset ‘La Cheminée’ Grand Cru Extra Brut Blanc de Noirs 2017
Location: France, Champagne, Aÿ
Winemaker: Christian Gosset
Grapes: Pinot Noir
Soil: Chalk
Disgorgement: January 2022
Dosage: 1g/l
From the Importer De Maison Selections: ‘La Cheminée’ is made from two very small complimentary parcels of pinot noir planted on the same hillside in the Grand Cru village of Aÿ. The first parcel is called Brisepot, which was planted in 1993 on a very steep, west-facing 45% gradient. Christian works this vineyard wearing mountain shoes with crampons because it is so steep. In this vineyard, he plants various grasses as cover crops to retain soil against erosion. Pisse-Loup sits lower down the same slope and directly across from his Loiselu parcel.
Brisepot and Pisse-Loup are usually blended to make La Cheminée because 3000kg is the minimum required to use the Coquard press. Produced only in exceptional vintages in tiny quantities, La Cheminée represents a powerful and transparent expression of the intensity of the Aÿ mountainside.
La Cheminée offers ripe red fruits, toasted brioche, a very pure, linear texture without austerity, and a very long finish in the mouth. This is Grand Cru Aÿ pinot noir at its finest, destined to develop further in bottle.
Christian Gosset is focused on exalting the great terroirs for pinot noir from Aÿ, which has been home to the Gosset family for over 500 years. Pierre Gosset was the first recorded winemaker of the family tree in 1584. Descendants Gabriel Gosset and his wife Andrée Brabant produced the first bottles of their eponymous Gosset-Brabant Champagne in the 1930’s. Their son Jean Gosset and his wife further developed the domain after WWII, which was in turn passed onto their children, brothers Michel and Christian, who made wine as a team until 2015.
The next chapter for Christian Gosset began in 2015 after 35 years of making wine at Champagne Gosset-Brabant with his brother. In 2015, they separated and, at the age of 50, Christian Gosset decided to change his life by creating a personal project based around the terroir of his village. From his five hectares of vineyards in the Grand Cru villages of Aÿ and Chouilly, as well as the Premiers Crus of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Dizy and Avenay-Val-d’Or, he crafts a range of terroir-expressive Champagnes focused on absolute quality, above all. His first harvest took place in 2016 and his wines were made in the cellar of his friend and colleague, the oenologist Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy. Christian, whose creative energy is infectious, considers himself a young vigneron with 35 years of experience, as he is just beginning to define the wines he always dreamed of.