Ratings:
92+
John Gilman - View from the Cellar
"The new release of Gatinois 'Brut Tradition' is another simply lovely bottle of wine. As I have noted in the past, the house style at Gatinois reminds me strongly of the older, toastier Bollinger style, and I had the good fortune to taste this new Gatinois Brut NV alongside that of the Bollinger this year. Interestingly, the Gatinois is a bit richer and toastier these days than the Bollinger. The cépage of this cuvée is eighty percent pinot noir and twenty percent chardonnay, all from the family vineyards in Aÿ. The base wine here this year is from 2008, with the customary thirty percent of the blend made up of reserve wines. The wine is outstanding, with its pinot noir majority clearly evident in the superb bouquet of peach, warm biscuits, a touch of tangerine, a very complex base of soil tones, citrus peel and gentle smokiness in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex and very well-balanced, with a fine core of fruit, crisp acids, lovely soil signature, elegant mousse and a very long, classy and youthfully complex finish. This is dynamite wine. 2013-2025+." (08/13)
92 Wine Spectator
"Juicy notes of creamed apple and plum puree are lightly spiced, with ground ginger, anise and clove accents. Hints of roasted almond, pastry and crystallized honey add richness and ride the fine, creamy mousse to a lightly chalky finish. Disgorged February 2013. Drink now through 2020. 2,100 cases made. -AN" (11/13)
91 Antonio Galloni - Vinous
"A sophisticated, cool, bracing wine, the NV Brut Tradition Grand Cru is full of Aÿ personality. Veins of chalk, white pears, red berries and flowers all take shape in a complex and beautifully layered Champagne. The Tradition delivers superb intensity and balance, especially for a wine at its level. Floral notes, honey and Chamomile all linger on the fine, chiseled finish. This release is based on the 2009 vintage, with the addition of 30% reserve wines from 2008 and 2007. This bottle was disgorged in February 2013. Dosage was 6 grams per liter." (11/13)
90 Allen Meadows - Burghound
"There is just enough reduction present to hide the fine nuances of the nose. There is lovely punch and very good detail on the energetic flavors that possess fine depth on the moderately dry finish where there is a hint of bitterness that is more like lemon pith than under ripeness." (06/13)
Product Description:
"This highly respected estate traces its roots in Aÿ back to 1696, when Nicolas Le Cacheur married Françoise Remy. Seven generations later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Emile Michel-Le Cacheur continued to carry on the family tradition of vinegrowing in Aÿ, and in 1921 his daughter Marie married Charles Gatinois. Since 1980, Gatinois’s granddaughter Marie-Paule and her husband Pierre Cheval (pictured) have been at the helm of the estate, representing the 11th generation of the family to grow vines in the region. The Gatinois estate owns 7.2 hectares of vines, all in the grand cru of Aÿ, and planted almost entirely with pinot noir. Of these vineyards, about five hectares are used for the production of estate-bottled champagne, with the rest sold to the négoce. Due to the family’s long presence in the village, the Gatinois holdings, which are spread over 27 parcels, include some of Aÿ’s most favored sites, such as Vauregnier, Valnon, Chaufour and Chatillon. Above all, Cheval seeks to express the character of this fabled terroir in his wines. “Aÿ wines are vinous and puissant but also elegant,” says Cheval. “They have strength and finesse at the same time.” He points out that the unique character of Aÿ is derived from the fact that nowhere else in the Champagne region can you find a fully south-facing slope with a river at its base and nothing but an open plain facing it. To preserve this character of place, Gatinois’s wines are handled as little as possible in the cellar. There is no fining, no filtering and no cold stabilization. The wines always go through a natural malolactic fermentation, and while wooden barrels are used to make the red wine, oak is never used for the champagnes. The disgorgement is carried out à la volée, without freezing the neck of the bottle, and dosage is kept low, at around six grams per liter for all wines except for the demi-sec, which at 15 grams per liter is still unusually low for the style." -Peter Liem, Champagne Guide
Our biggest wine deals. Available by text! Join Winetext.com today!
