1995 Pierre Moncuit Blanc De Blancs Brut Champagne

Champagne Pierre Moncuit is based in the superb Côtes des Blancs village of Mesnil-sur-Oger, and it is in this Grand Cru commune that the family owns fifteen of its twenty hectares of vines. The other five hectares of vines are located in the village of Sézanne. Pierre Moncuit began bottling wines on his own back in the early 1950s, and since 1977, the day to day operations of this fine estate have been under the direction of his daughter, Nicole Moncuit, who oversees the viticulture and vinification of the wines, and her brother, Yves Moncuit, who runs the commercial side of the family business. However, the Moncuit family can trace their origins as grape growers in Mesnil-sur-Oger much further back than the 1950s, as the family has resided in this village and been involved in the viticultural side of the Champagne business since the last decades of the nineteenth century. Champagne Pierre Moncuit is a Blanc de Blancs house par excellence based almost entirely on chardonnay, and the house now produces three distinct Blanc de Blancs cuvées: their Cuvée Hugues de Coulmet Blanc de Blancs Brut NV produced exclusively from their holdings in the village of Sézanne, their Cuvée Moncuit-Delos Réserve Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Brut non-vintage and their vintage-dated Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut. The latter two bottlings are produced solely from fruit grown in Mesnil-sur-Oger. All three Moncuit chardonnay-based cuvées are quintessential examples of Blanc de Blancs Champagne, with a combination of zesty structural elements, superb expression of their underlying chalky soil tones and a generosity to their youthful fruit expressions that makes them ideal wines to drink right out of the blocks, while still retaining all of the structural integrity necessary to age beautifully in the cellar. In addition, there is also a small amount of Brut Rosé produced at Pierre Moncuit, which is produces entirely of grand cru fruit: seventy-five percent chardonnay from Mesnil-sur-Oger and twenty-five percent purchased pinot noir fruit from the superb village of Ambonnay on the Montagne de Reims.

The Pierre Moncuit vineyards in the village of Mesnil-sur-Oger are some of the older vines to be found in this grand cru village, as the family has not replanted any of their parcels in more than thirty years now, and the vines are beginning to really produce very fruit that really translates the underlying nuances of their respective terroirs. Like many of the smaller houses and the Grower-Récoltant producers, the wines of Champagne Pierre Moncuit are produced each year from a single vintage, with no reserve wines blended into the non-vintage bottlings. As Nicole Moncuit likes to point out, this practice allows each wine to more precisely express its particular growing season and makes their evolutions in the cellar more fascinating to follow as the years unfold. All four Pierre Moncuit bottlings undergo a full malolactic fermentation in each vintage, with the wines fermented in stainless steel tanks and then aged three years prior to release. As the wines are all based on the inherent generosity of fruit style of the Côtes des Blancs, they are all decidedly delicious when they are first released, with a dancing palate impression that combines both zesty acidity for lightness of step and purity, with a generous fruit component redolent of fresh-picked pears and delicious apples that is immediately captivating. These beautiful fruit tones are layered over truly stunning expressions of the Côtes des Blancs classic, Kimmeridgian limestone soil component, which makes the Pierre Moncuit bottlings some of the most soil-driven and pure examples of bubbly to be found in the market today.

Champagne Pierre Moncuit is one of the great defenders of a style of Champagne that emphasizes the expression of terroir in the finished wines. For that reason, the wines from the different villages are never blended (except of course for the Brut Rosé), so that their Cuvée Hugues de Coulmet Blanc de Blancs Brut is the perfect expression of their holdings in the village of Sézanne, while the Cuvée Moncuit-Delos Réserve Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Brut and the vintage-dated Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut are quintessential examples of the glorious terroir of Mesnil-sur-Oger. The Moncuit family’s fidelity to great terroir can even be found in their one blended wine, the Brut Rosé, as they have chosen to augment their superb Mesnil-sur-Oger fruit with pinot noir from what many savvy Champagne connoisseurs consider the greatest grand cru commune (along with the village of Äy) for this red grape, Ambonnay. The results are consistently some of the most beautiful and soil reflective Grower-Récoltant bottlings to be found in all of Champagne, as across the board there is an elegance to the balance and a refinement to the mousse, wedded to great purity of fruit and stunning soil inflection, to be found in every bottle of Champagne Pierre Moncuit.