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  • Weather

    8° C Light rain
  • Time

    00:32 AM
  • Wine average?

    93 Tb
  • Country Ranking?

    363
  • Region Ranking?

    24
  • Popularity ranking?

    125

History

Jacquesson was at the time of its foundation in 1798, one of the first champagne houses in Châlons-sur-Marne. By the time of the Paris world exhibition of 1867 Jacquesson & Fils was a major house whose sales exceeded one million bottles. Napoleon had a great impact on the house’s success, as Jacquesson was one of his favourite producers. Alongside several other occasions, the house’s champagnes were served at Napoleon’s wedding to the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. When Napoleon visited Jacquesson in 1810 he granted them a gold medal – the highest imperial accolade for an outstanding commercial enterprise – in recognition of “the beauty and richness of its cellars”. The medal is featured on the Jacquesson labels to this day.

 

The glorious days of Jacquesson came to a sudden end with the death of Adolphe Jacquesson in 1875. His descendants showed little interest in winemaking and the house drifted away from family hands. It was in 1974 that Jean Chiquet bought the property and its new life began. However, Jean’s sons Jean-Hervé and Laurent must take most of the credit for giving the company its prosperity and reputation of today. “We had a tough ten-year negotiation with Daddy about taking charge here…” Jean-Hervé Chiquet grins.

But during the ten year period in which they have run the company, impressive results and inspiring innovations have become almost commonplace. Jacquesson launched a trilogy of late-disgorged champagnes from the successive great vintages 1988, 1989 and 1990. The DT (Degorgement Tardif) range was quite ahead of its time when launched and today many houses are attempting to show the ageing capacity of champagne this way.

Jacquesson used to produce a top of the line wine called Grand Vin Signature and its rosé equivalent. With the 1996 vintage, the wine’s name was changed to simply ‘vintage’, with the single-vineyard wines taking the position of prestige wines.


 

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Vineyards

Single-vineyard wines are quite a natural development in Jacquesson’s range. The Chiquets are true grower producers, their own vineyards totalling 26 hectares in the Grand Cru villages of Aÿ, Avize and Oiry and in the Premier Cru villages of Hautvillers, Dizy and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. These are complemented by a further 15 hectares of grower’s vineyards in these same villages, as well as Chouilly and Cumières. Chiquet says, “Even though we also buy grapes we still consider ourselves essentially growers.”

 

Jacquesson has launched two single-vineyard champagnes to date, Dizy Corne Bautray and Dizy Terres Rouges Rosé. The remaining two, Aÿ Vauzelle Terme and Avize Champ Caïn, are still waiting for their premiere in the cellar.

“The single-vineyard wines are sort of ‘accidents’ that are produced when conditions are favourable. So we do not produce all of them each year. The single-vineyards may account for eight to ten per cent of our annual production, which is relatively significant”, Chiquet explains and continues, “Terroir wines assist in developing champagne into a serious gastronomic wine. To me, champagne is only at the beginning of its evolution.”

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Winemaking

A great majority of Jacquesson’s wines are vinified in large oak vats that do not impart wood aroma to the wine. These casks and barrels, which are used to carry out controlled oxidation of the wines during the six to ten months that they spend in wood, bring complexity and structure, as well as vinosity, to the wines. Chiquet continues, “Our wines go through the softening malolactic fermentation. We try to minimise intervention in the cellar, such as adding sulphur dioxide or heavy sweetening dosage. Indeed, all our vintage wines can technically be classified as extra-brut. Also, no filtration takes place before bottling and this applies to every single wine of the house."

 

One of the bizarre customs in champagne is to leave the age, blend and constituents of the non-vintage champagnes unmentioned. This apparently makes champagne easy to buy and understand. However, it leaves us with very little knowledge of what we are drinking.

 

Jacquesson makes wine foremost, not champagne. But they have managed to become leaders in the new wave of champagne communication. The back label of all their wines lists exactly what is it made of, how and when, while the technical information sheets go even further than that. Also, Jacquesson’s non-vintage blend was reborn a few years ago. The former Brut Perfection was renamed with a numbered cuvée that changes every year: “We started with the cuvée 728 – the number came from our internal bookkeeping for cuvées. The current launch is cuvée 734, which is based on the 2006 vintage.”

 

The idea with Jacquesson’s non-vintage is not to keep a consistent style and taste from one year to another but to make the best possible wine every year. It is also fascinating to compare the development of these non-vintage champagnes side by side.

It is time to leave Jacquesson and Jean-Hervé Chiquet, but I can’t wait to see in which direction this house is going next. >

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26 different wines with 79 vintages

Winemaking since 1798

  • Jean-Hervé Chiquet

    We are still in the process of development. We know where we want to be, but we are still seeking to find better ways to get there.
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