Champagne La Closerie

Gueux, Montagne De Reims

Located in Montagne de Reims in the village of Gueux is Jérôme’s 2ha plot, Les Béguines, consisting mostly of Pinot Meunier that he purchased from his grandmother in 1987. Initially, he sold the grapes to négociants and in 1998, he started making wine under Anselme Selosse where he made a small portion of his wine from Les Béguines on the side. In 2001, he moved to Gueux to work full-time there making Pinot Meunier-based champagne exclusively from Les Béguines.

Being a part of the ‘Champagne Renegade’ movement and receiving training under Selosse, Jérôme follows the principles of creating terroir-driven, vinous style champagnes that accentuate the terroir rather than mask it. He prefers to avoid dogmatic terminology; however, he doesn’t use any chemical additives in the vineyard, uses natural, adaptive techniques for disease prevention such as mycorrhization, and keeps yields so low they work out to being half the legal limit allowed in the region. Everything is hand-harvested, vinification occurs with indigenous yeasts in a wide array of barrel sizes ranging from new to 13 yr old. The wines are never racked, filtered or stabilized. He adds 23g/L of sugar to start secondary fermentation and the wine rests sur lattes for about 16 months before being disgorged. Minimal use of sulphur and dosage is kept low at around 2g/L.

Below are descriptions of the wines we received. Due to the limited nature of these wines, allocations are by offer and only to restaurants at this time. Jérôme tracks all his wines to ensure that they do not end up reselling on the secondary market.