This parcel marks our first Agrapart offer in quite some time, bottles having become considerably tougher to source in recent years. The list is wider than it is deep, though, with several cuvées totalling just 2-3 bottles.
For once some ‘Vénus’ to share. The wine issues from a 1959 planting in Avize (lieu-dit ‘La Fosse’) on a remarkably complex terroir spanning clayey soil to bright bone-white limestone. At once a marvel of dry extract and intense minerality, the wine shines as the completest in the cellar three years in four.
Theoretically ‘Vénus’ unites the more polar personalities of ‘Minéral’ and ‘Avizoise,’ each of which isolates specific parcels in pursuit of stylistic particularity. ‘Minéral’ leverages the high chalk content in its two contributing parcels (Cramant, Avize) toward a sparer and more pleadingly stony expression. Yet salt rather than stones has always seemed this cuvée’s defining feature, a sense deepened by a recent bottle of the 2017.
Cheers,
Jason
