Piper-Heidsieck: 2017 Vins Clairs and Rare 2002 from Methuselah

After a delightful morning spent tasting finished champagnes at Charles Heidsieck, we popped over to sister house Piper-Heidsieck to taste the Heidsieck 2017 vins clairs (and were subsequently treated to a range of reserve wines and one very special champagne!). Our tasting was hosted by Champagne legend and Chef de Cave Régis Camus along with his deputy Séverine Frerson & International Brand Ambassador Catherine Curie.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who’d been busy tasting that morning. As we visited in early March – during which time much of the blending is done in Champagne – Camus and Frerson had just finished tasting 48 Pinot Noir still wines. “We are looking forward to the freshness of Chardonnay,” Camus smiled – and so it was with Chardonnay that we began our insight into the 2017 vintage.

Vins Clairs 2017

Although Camus began by telling us it wasn’t a terrible year in general, it quickly emerged that Chardonnay was the saviour of the vintage. We tasted Chardonnay still wines from the Côte des Blancs and the Montagne de Reims and both were showing quite forward fruit quality – mature grapes had produced much more mature still wines than expected.

The first, Montgueux – a village Piper have shared with Veuve Clicquot and Henriot  for 40 years – was the only plot not affected by adverse weather in 2017. “If 2017 had been a good year, all would be as nice as this,” Camus added. The second, Trépail – a rare Chardonnay village in the Montagne de Reims – Camus described as “usually like a gentleman’s horse… but this year a stallion!” Rich and balanced yet with an excitable nervosity, this needs time in the bottle to be tamed.

The Pinot Noirs however, did not fare as well in 2017. Although some villages in the Côte des Bars survived, the bigger plots in the Montagne de Reims were “very complicated”. Camus and his team even found undesirable aromas of moss and fresh mushroom in Grand Cru plots such as Verzy – as such these will not go into the blending this year and will likely end up in the distillery. “We don’t all have the same perceptions of these negative characteristics and so we have to careful discarding them,” Camus commented. “They are maybe not good right now, but there is something – will it grow? We have to taste it many more times to see if it can offer something.”

For our educational benefit, Camus shared with us a sample of Pinot Noir from Verzy, which had been subject to hail and rot throughout August and would not be used in the blending. Understandably, winemakers typically prefer to show off their best quality vins clairs, so this was a rare and welcome opportunity to taste a less-than-perfect still wine.

Champagne

To conclude our visit, we tasted some finished champagnes from the Piper-Heidsieck range, which included a surprise ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ champagne experience. Leaving our tasting room, we were led to a small open-air courtyard decorated with a picturesque wall of vines that replicated the experience of overlooking a vineyard. Awaiting us on the small serving table was a 6L Methuselah, that’s 8 x 75cl bottles!

Although impressive enough alone, the liquid inside was the real star – Piper-Heidsieck Rare 2002. Having spent more than a decade on the lees, bottles of Rare 2002 were disgorged in May 2016 and decanted into the Methuselah, which was subsequently laid in the cellars for nearly 2 years. With only twelve in existence, the magnitude of the occasion cannot be overstated. A champagne that is frequently decorated at awards ceremony the world over from bottle – and even a previous winner of Best Champagne at FINE Champagne magazine – takes on a whole new dimension from Methuselah.

Rare Methuselah 2002: one of only twelve made