NV Bereche et Fils Vallee de la Marne Rive Gauche

Based on 2011 vintage. Dosage 3 g/l. Now this wine seems a little tart and dry. Slightly hard work. I’m sure the intentions are very honourable but the result is a little challenging. Very crisp indeed. English style! (JR)

Featuring Meunier from 40-year-old vines in a north-facing Mareuil-le-Port vineyard, the Bereches’ NV Extra Brut Rive Gauche Disg.12/2012 delivers tart plum and red currant, lemon and orange, smoky black tea and pungent green herbs, with a brightness, focus and grip that would indubitably have led me astray if trying to guess its grape of origin blind. This is texturally spare and perhaps a bit too obviously dry (but then, I wasn’t there for whatever bench trials may have taken place). But tangy, chewy fruit skin and mouthwatering salinity render the finish invigorating and engaging, inter alia of the next sip. I expect this to be worth following for 2-3 years. And as Bereche disgorges bottles, year after year (perhaps even more often?!), I predict the list will rapidly grow of those whose “wish list” it adorns. Raphael Bereche began working with his father Jean-Pierre in 2004 – which was also (and probably not coincidentally) the year in which this estate went organic – and has gradually taken the lead. This estate has holdings in the area around their home base of Ludes; in the gravel and sand “Meunier” belt of the Petite Montagne de Reims; and around Mareuil-le-Port on the Left Bank of the Marne. Amazingly, other than the (far from) “basic” Brut and Extra Brut “Reserve” bottlings, all of the wines here are disgorged by hand after aging under cork rather than crown capsule, a luxury (and, true, to some small degree a risk) that applies to few Champagne estates today, and if at all, then usually only for a couple of their most expensive bottlings. This is also, I’m told, one of those precious few wine estates in any given region that perpetuates the work of massale selection from its old vines. Given that the Bereche wines do not “do malo” – though most wines see barrel – and are typically finished with very low dosage, it’s not so surprising that as a group they tend toward tartness and a certain austerity, but for the most part, that is well-buffered and subsumed into a complex whole. Except for their Brut Reserve – and the “Reflets d’Antan,” to which this notion doesn’t apply – all of the non-vintage Bereche wines I tasted on this occasion were from vintage 2009. They were, as a group, sharp as the proverbial tack, so I can imagine that in a year naturally high in acidity – notably malic – they may well draw blood! A Thomas Selection Paris (with various importers); fax 011-33-1-46-45-15-29; also imported by Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608-9644; and Transatlantic Bubbles, LLC, Woodbridge, CT; tel. (203) 464-0051

Based on 2009. Disgorged January 2013, dosage 3 g/l; from Meunier vines planted in 1969. Relatively deep gold. Very complete and fruity on the nose. Nice, tiny little bead and finishes very dry but readier than the Réserve Extra Brut. Almost flattering – quite an achievement for an Extra Brut. Punchy and yet bone dry. (JR)