Champagne Philipponnat vertical: rare and recently-disgorged Clos des Goisses

Walking 130 meters up uneven steps along the 45-degree incline of Champagne’s warmest slope – the Clos des Goisses – Champagne house director Charles Philipponnat was looking forward to a vertical of vintages reaching back to 1964.

Scroll down for Panos Kakaviatos’ Clos des Goisses tasting notes and scores

Gripping chalk from the 5.83 hectares vineyard, he was determined to prove that precision and freshness co-exist with maximum ripeness, even in an era of global warming.

After surviving a serious case of Covid-19 last year, he was happy to invite a few people to a vertical of mainly special-edition wines – vintages disgorged after at least 25 years on their lees in bottle.

Halfway up the summit, French wine critic Michel Bettane stressed how Pinot Noir grown on the slope ‘handles climate change better than Chardonnay‘.

Indeed, Clos des Goisses tends to be a blend of two-thirds Pinot Noir and one-third Chardonnay. To maintain as much freshness as possible, the wine almost never undergoes malolactic fermentation, Philipponnat stressed.

Philipponnat’s son, François, 28, joined the team in September last year to focus on exports, after having working three years in sales in Paris for several Champagne houses.

Going organic

As employees worked the soils along the slope in early June, François spoke of a recent push towards organic viticulture to increase wine purity: ‘2021 will be the first year that Clos de Goisses will be worked 100% organically,’ he said.

For all grapes used to make other Philipponnat wines, the estate aims for HVE (High Environmental Value) by 2025, François added.

Sharing the organic vision, with prior experience at Mareuil-Sur-Ay, is recent hire Aurélia Jamain as vineyard manager (chef de culture), who replaced Claude Laurent after he retired in 2019.

The drive towards organic certification, expected ‘within three to four years’, says François, will not change winemaking methods, which recently include a series of rare ‘LV’ bottles (long vieillissement) of Clos des Goisses disgorged 25 years after ageing on lees in bottle.

Charles’ enthusiasm to share such rare wines was palpable, adding a ‘mystery magnum’ after the vertical, made mainly with 1976 harvested grapes.

See Panos Kakaviatos’ full tasting notes and scores

See also:

First taste: Krug new releases

Champagne De Venoge: producer profile

How Champagne 2020 wines are shaping up