| WA | 93 |
2019 Adrien Dhondt Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs 'Les Potées', Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Grand Cru
SKU: B510
Regular price $199.95"From a lieu-dit just below the tree line where the soils tend to be deeper, Dhondt's 2019 Extra-Brut Blanc de Blancs Mesnil sur Oger Les Potées delivers generous aromas of yellow orchard fruit, plums and pear mingled with notions of beeswax and buttery pastry. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and vinous, it's layered and textural, with a charming, giving profile and a long, saline finish.
As I wrote last year, Adrien Dhondt's small négociant project under his own name is the fruit of a desire to explore the terroirs of the southern end of Champagne's Côte de Blancs. Picking small parcels in different sites every year, the first releases from the 2018 vintage featured Avize, Le Mesnil sur Oger and Oger. In 2019, Dhondt instead opted to work with three plots in Mesnil sur Oger: Les Potées, from the top of the slope; Chétillons de haut, from mid-slope; and Les Coullemets, from the bottom of the slope. Readers versed in the Côte de Blancs's geology will remember that soils are actually thinnest at the bottom of the slope, producing more incisive wines, than they are at the top—the inverse of the situation in Burgundy's Côte d'Or, for example.
Champagne Mesnil Sur Oger is a Grand Cru Champagne from Adrien Dhondt. This vintage, numbered 13, is the second edition. An exacerbated curiosity. A panel of several plots in search of local wines. Avize, Oger, Le Mesnil sur Oger as playgrounds. Develop sensitive, thrilling and touching wines on utopian terroirs. This champagne comes from old vines located in Le Mesnil sur Oger. The vines are located on chalky soils, at the top of the hillside and exposed to the east. This champagne is vinified in barrels and aged for 8 months on whole lees.
Dosed at 1.5g/L, was disgorged in February 2023. (WA, 93 points)."