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About the Domaine
Champagne La Closerie was founded in 1998 by Jérôme Prévost, who took over his grandmother’s 2.2 hectare vineyard Les Beguines in Gueux, Montagne de Reims. The vines in this plot were previously tended by tenants, and thereafter by Jérôme, who initially sold the grapes to negociants. Jérôme's working stint at Jacques Selosse led to production of his own wines under the mentorship of Anselme Selosse. He eventually built his own winery and thereafter shifted his production to his home next to the vineyard.
Jérôme’s winemaking approach mirrors that of Anselme, in which most work is focused in the vineyard. The old style Selection Massale propagation is practised, chemical additives are strictly eschewed, and harvesting done by hand at optimal maturity. In the cellar, the vinification methods are just as natural. Fermentation is left to occur naturally, with malolactic fermentation never forced, using only indigenous yeasts. The wine rests in used barrels of different sizes and thereafter bottled without fining, filtering, cold stabilisation, with minimal sulphur addition.
Production at the domaine is minuscule, as the yield of wine from the grapes is exceptionally low. Yet, Jérôme’s cuvées, from his iconic ‘Les Béguines’ to the highly rare ‘Fac-simile’, unequivocally elevate the status of the previously under-appreciated Pinot Meunier. And for that, La Closerie earns the status of being amongst the most revered and cult-like amongst the growers.
Notes from William Kelley - The Wine Advocate
Jérôme Prévost farms just over two hectares of old-vine Pinot Meunier in the village of Gueux, where the soils are a millefeuille of calcareous sands and clays. Working with a variety that's often sneered at, in a village few had heard of and with terroirs that are far removed from the clay-chalk stereotype that dominates discussion of Champagne, Prévost's tiny estate named La Closèrie nonetheless produces some of the most sought-after wines in Champagne.
Prévost started making his wine in Anselme Selosse's cellar with the 1998 vintage, moving into his own facility in 2003. He harvests late—something that's essential if Pinot Meunier is to have character—and ferments his wine in barrel. Like Selosse, he doesn't top up his barrels while the vins clairs mature, so they often develop a light "voile" or veil of yeasts that lends subtle biologically aged characteristics of sotolon to his wines—though those qualities are much less pronounced than they are in Selosse's wines, it's worth noting. "I wouldn't do that if I were making still wines," he explains, "but I think of the second fermentation in bottle as being like a 'furnace' that enables one to remodel a wine. The base wine may be tired after a year in barrel without topping up, but the fermentation in bottle gives it new life." Dosage is minimal, and Prévost says that in principle he likes working in a non-dosé because "it makes me uncomfortable—it doesn't forgive any faults, there's nowhere to hide."
Powerful but fine-boned and immensely characterful, these are some of my favorite wines in the region, and I intend to make Prévost the subject of a more extensive essay in the near future. While they've become incredibly hard to find, I encourage readers to try them.
Les Beguines
The soils in this area, just west of Reims, are a mix of sand and calcareous elements, due to being a seabed around 45 million years ago, and they’re filled with a number of tiny marine fossils leftover from the Eocene Epoch period. This creates a highly specific terroir that’s distinctively different from other sub-regions of Champagne, and the chalky bedrock that appears prominently in some other areas of the Montagne de Reims is submerged about 20 meters underneath this sedimentary material. With Jerome's 'terroir wine' approach, the Pinot Meunier grape has possibly achieved their fullest potential under the hands of Jérôme.
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