What on earth is happening at Chiquet?  I mean, the wines have just been screamin’ the past two years, so much so it was almost absurd.  Part of it is the introduction of 1998 wine into the blends, so I asked Nicolas Chiquet “What happened to you in 1998?”  He looked at me wanly.  “We had good weather,” he said...

     ...I insist there is an active relationship between drink and drinker.  We don’t just sit there lumpen, waiting for the wine to come to us.  We engage it.  We taste ourselves tasting.  Thus I suspect there are wines for which we are either not yet ready, or perfectly ready, or past ready.  Nicolas doesn’t believe his wines have changed or improved markedly.  I think they have, but what do I know?  Last year I opened my last bottle of the sensational 1990 Special Club, and found in it many of the same flavors I’ve come to cherish in the younger wines.  Nicolas might be right.  Maybe it’s me, and I’m finally ready.

     What I’m tasting are wines of pure terroir.  They are, in effect, anti-varietal.  Even the celebrated Ay Chardonnay isn’t so much a variant on Chardonnay as it is another dialect of Ay.  Chiquets are both the chalkiest and most succulent of all my Champagnes.

     This is a large estate as Recoltantes go, with 22 hectares.  Quantities won’t be quite so mangy here, so you can hog out if you like them.  Which you will!  Of all the Champagnes in this offering, Chiquet’s are the “easiest” to like, the wines with the highest lip-smack quotient.  And yet they sacrifice nothing of seriousness or dignity; they just taste so good.

     Chiquets have vineyards in Hautvillers, Mareuil-sur-Ay and in Ay, from which they make what is probably the only all-Chardonnay Champagne to emerge from this Pinot Noir town.  Their base wines always undergo malolactic, but the Champagnes are quite low in dosage, yet they have a suave caramelly richness.

Nicolas Chiquet is a genial but reserved young man, but the longer I know him, the more I like and respect him.  In his modest way he is turning out Champagnes of great clarity and substance.  It’s a quiet revolution, you see.

I paid a between-visit in September 1999 just to hang out a little, and I had my colleague Theresa Ryder along.  She and Nicolas share a birth year, and so a liquid citizen of that year was ushered from the cellar to our table, and I have rarely had a more emotional experience with a bottle of wine.  If you’ll indulge me, I’ll share my notes with you (or just skip it!)

“1965 Blanc de Blancs dAy: a wonderfully nutty-birchy bouquet; fantastically bright, still has fruit and even sweetness.  Saffron, sweet corn, mimosa; this is a vigorous, mature wine; I’m veering between the thrall of its intricacies and the sensual grin of its deliciousness.  Jambon and fraise de bois.  Almost meaty, like veal demi glace with a drop of meyer-lemon concentrate.  Spicy, sweet; very long tertiary finish.  Like the BEST green Oolong.  Wine doesn’t get any more fun than this; you want to kiss everyone in sight.”

It does bear mentioning: good Champagne ages wonderfully.  And I don’t just mean five years, or even ten.  Antique Champagne, such as 34-year-old Blanc de Blancs from a middling vintage can be as lovely and mystic as wine ever is.  The capacity to age for decades and to develop spellbinding complexity is common to most northern European whites.  Champagne is no different.

Gaston-Chiquet at a glance:  22 hectare estate means we can get some wine to sell!  Which is lucky for us, because these are sensually gorgeous, hedonistic wines that everyone can cozy up to.

- Terry Theise on Gaston-Chiquet -

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