At this time of year my thoughts turn to festive fare, especially wine and the stuff that I like to drink at Christmas above all else, because it goes with everything and nothing, is Champagne. Well as it happens I visited one of the greatest Champagne houses of all the other week and thought that I would share some thoughts about them with you. The Champagne house is Gosset, which is famous for producing a relatively small amount of Champagne, but of impeccably high quality.
Ruinart actually started making Champagne before they did, but Gosset are older. I have loved what Gosset do for decades, so was delighted to visit and see it all for myself. I have to say that I was not disappointed by anything. The house remained pretty small and still owned by the Gosset family right up until when they sold it to the Renaud-Cointreau family who own the enormously respected Frapin Cognac house — of which more another day.
This purchase has more than doubled their cellar capacity, which is very important when you consider that every bottle that you sell needs to be replaced by five other bottles. This is because of the long time the wine has to be aged in the bottle.
So you can see that expansion is an expensive and space consuming business. Of course all great wine, whatever style it ends up, is born in the vineyard. Gosset only own a tiny amount of vineyards, but — as is normal in the region — they have long term relationships with many growers whose vineyards they favour.
Many of these relationships go back many generations and allow the Gosset winemaking and viticultural teams to control what goes on in the vineyards. Something that I admire about Gosset is their creative inconsistency. Most Champagne houses construct a range and stick to that vintage after vintage. Gosset seem quite happy to create an astonishing wine, like their Blanc de Noirs made from Pinot Noir, and then only release it once. It means their range is more like the playlist of a great band than a static list.
