Join us in Carlton from Noon-5p on Saturday June 23rd for one of the great marriages of all – White Burgundy & cheese! We’ll be pouring a flight of several top White Burgundies, each matched with a different cheese chosen to show off the wine AND the cheese at their best. Once again we’re teaming up with our friends at Cheese Bar for this year’s version of what was one of our most popular events last summer.

The wine line-up is spectacular:

’09 Chablis 1er Cru “l’Homme Mort” from Frédéric Gueguen, ’09 Pouilly-Fuissé “Clos Varambon” from Chateau des Rontets, ’09 Pouilly-Fuisse “Vignes Blanches” from Domaine Thibert, ’09 Meursault “Vieilles Vignes” from Buisson-Charles, ’09 Puligny-Montrachet from Benjamin Leroux, and the magnificent Grand Cru ’08 Corton-Charlemagne from Bonneau du Martray. Whoa!

Tasting fee is $25 for this special event, refundable with any 3-bottle purchase of the featured wines.

I’m back from three weeks in Burgundy and Champagne, which were filled with way too much great food and wine morning noon and night. So what do I do upon returning? A seven-course wine dinner at Noisette in NW PDX, a wine-fueled hang at Bar Avignon in SE PDX, and then blending trials for our 2011 Pinots. I need to eat beans & rice and drink water for about a week! At least I’ve been sticking to my training schedule and running the mileage, but it seems a good cleanse is clearly in order…

One of seven yummy courses at Noisette

As for the 2011s – in a word, I love ‘em. A true cool-climate Pinot vintage. Alcohol levels 12.5-12.9%, a crystalline purity to the fruit, and the type of acidity that makes you want to keep coming back for another sip. (Very much like the 2010s in Burgundy, btw.)

There will be three different wines from 2011. Eight barrels made the cut for Audrey, all of which are from our Block 12 at Maresh Vyd. in the Dundee Hills. The bulk of the production will be the 2011 La Paulée, sourced from our blocks of Maresh, Nysa & Ribbon Ridge vineyards, and including the first fruit harvested from our new estate site, Azana Vyd. on Chehalem Mountain.

Blending the 2011s

The third cuvée will be called “The Long Run” – reflecting both the late October harvest in 2011 (4 weeks later than average) and referring to the running of my first full marathon two weeks before harvest that year. The Long Run is another eight-barrel selection, this one all from our rows of Nysa Vyd. in the Dundee Hills.

Each of the three has a distinct personality, but are all very true to the vintage – understated, nuanced, and focused on crisp red fruits at this point. It will be way interesting to see how these develop in bottle over the next 18-24 months before release. Young Pinot is a constantly moving target, and they will take many twists and turns from here before arriving at their destination. It makes one realize that we are really only just along for the ride – the wine always has the last word, regardless of our hopes or intentions…

A Mugnier tasting, in the Clos de la Maréchale vineyard. Not a bad way to start the day. (Actually I started it with a nice run from Volnay to Meursault and back, followed by the usual baguette, Nutella and confiture, bien sûr!) Frédéric had suddenly left town without any advance notice to his staff, but his assistant Audrey and vineyard manager Severine met us in the Clos and conducted a fabulous tasting & mini-seminar.

In the vines at Clos de la Maréchale

A four vintage vertical of the rouge – ’07 thru’10, and the ’09 & ’10 in white, was preceded by an in-depth tour of the 25-acre Clos and an up-close close look at the viticulture chez Mugnier. Fascinating stuff, and we all learned a lot. The ’08 is drinking beautifully right now, but could easily go another 10-15+.

A tough act to follow, but we managed in fine fashion with a delightful lunch at Le Millésime in Chambolle, directly across the street from Mugnier’s home and winery. Some ’09 Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny was in order, as well as a Dauvissat ’09 Chablis, foie gras crème-brulée, white-bean soup with tempura squid, and a decadent pork loin wrapped in bacon with polenta fries and fresh peas. Major Yum.

We walked that off with an afternoon tour of all of the Côte de Nuits Grand Crus, from La Tâche to Mazis-Chambertin and everything in between, and a stop at the Chateau de Vougeot as well.

Then it was on to Gevrey to taste with Alexandrine Roy at Domaine Marc Roy, where the ‘11s in barrel were showing particularly well. She also poured us her range in bottle from ’10 and ’09 and ‘08, and then took us to see her new parcel of Gevrey village La Justice. Amazing to see how pristine and manicured her well-tended rows are, compared to the neighbors. Truly night and day…

Alexandrine in her vines in Gevrey

The quintessential Burgundy dining experience for visitors is always the venerable Ma Cusine in Beaune, where Pierrre & Fabienne Escoffier have been holding court for what seems like forever. People say the wine list is picked-over, the food is boring – blah, blah, blah. It is still a rockin’ good time, the food is always delicious, the wine list is more vibrant than ever, and I for one will continue to bring friends and customers there all the time. We had a stellar magnum of ’01 Roumier Chambolle-Musigny les Cras 1er, and a nice ’92 de Vogüé Musigny, among other things. The Musigny was captivating on the nose, a little tired on the palate – très ’92 but delicious all the same.

Yesterday was the last full day of the tour, starting off with an awesome tasting and lunch at J-J Confuron. Alain & Sophie’s son Paul led the tasting this time, through the entire range of 2011s in barrel. Only 13 different wines! Of course the Romanée-St. Vivant was in a class by itself, but it’s younger brothers and sisters all showed well. My fave of the day was the Vosne-Romanée Beaux-Monts 1er. Paul said he thought his dad’s favorite was the Nuits-St. Georges Boudots 1er.

Sophie made the whole group lunch – a tabouleh salad, a green salad, and a ham-cheese-onion-mushroom tart that was to die for. And then of course the cheese. And a heaping bowl of fresh strawberries and cream.  Alain disappeared in to the cellar and returned with a ’99 Beaux-Monts that had an amazingly complex nose (the first bottle was not to his liking – a 2nd was clearly fresher and showed brighter fruit), followed by a ’93 Romanée-St. Vivant that was vibrant, fresh, and surprisingly rich on first inspection. 15 minutes in the glass, and the richness then morphed into the lacy silkiness that is the hallmark of RSV. I seem to recall the room going very silent for a while… Wow. Merci Alain & Sophie!

To cap it all off, dinner at the fabulous Le Benaton in Beaune, the tiny Michelin 1-star that never fails to rock my world. A feast for all the senses in every sense of the word. One of the best and most creative foie gras preparations ever was truly a standout, but every one of the endless courses rocked. ’06 Arnoux Vosne-Romanée les Chaumes 1er and an ’07 Ponsot Griotte Chambertin also did not suck too badly.

All foie gras, all the time...

This morning was the chance for everyone to experience the Saturday market in Beaune, and we were blessed with a bright, sunny day and an abundance of goodness lining the streets. I grabbed some cheeses from Hess, paté and charcuterie and jambon-persillée from Moron, a spice cake, and the best 7-grain bread I’ve ever had anywhere, and we headed to Thiébault Huber’s Clos du Colombier vineyard in Pommard for a farewell casse-croute – lubricated by an amazing bottle of George Laval Brut Nature that I had picked up in Champagne last week. The perfect ending to a wonderful one-week intensive Inside Burgundy experience. Wow.

I loved sharing “my” Burgundy with everyone on the trip, and thank them all for making it a total blast. Our driver and major-domo Brooke B made it all a seamless breeze, and it seems a good time was indeed had by all. Now, a couple of days of rest and a few more meetings, then back home to Oregon on Monday. I am already itching to return to the Côte…

We’re just past halfway through the 2012 Scott Paul client tour in Burgundy, and the first few days have been a total blast. After a welcome-to-Burgundy lunch at Chez Guy on Sunday and dinner at Levernois that night, we hit the wine trail in full force on Monday with a ride down to the Mâconnais for a tasting visit with the charismatic Fabio & Claire at Chateau des Rontets, lunch in their home, and then down the hill to see Christophe & Sandrine Thibert at Domaine Thibert. The ’10 Mâconnais whites are a joy – I especially loved the Les Birbettes at Fabio’s and the Vigne Blanche at Thibert – a truly superb year for Pouilly-Fuissé… Dinner that night was at Auprès du Clocher in Pommard. Get there at least once in your life and have the Époisses special. OMG!

In the cellar with Fabio at Ch. des Rontets

Tuesday was a busy day, with visits to Benjamin Leroux at Comte Armand, Thiébault Huber in Volnay, and Patrick & Kate Essa at Buisson-Charles in Meursault. The ‘11s in barrel were gorgeous throughout – generous fruit, good acidity, supple and tender – a vintage of pleasure and yumminess to be sure. Thiébault poured a ’73 Pommard 1er Cru that was pure silk, and Patrick proffered a bottle of ’78 Meursault Charmes 1er that was still lingering on the palate an hour later. Whoa. Dinner was at my fave hang in Beaune, Caves Madeleine, where proprietor Lolo rocked us with some killer Poulet de Bresse and Mugnier ’08 Clos de la Maréchale, and a bottle of ’09 Pacalet Chambolle for good measure. Oh, and we finished off the night back in Pommard with a couple of bottles of grower bubblies from one of my new discoveries. Oh, what a night indeed.

Amber & Jim - two happy Scott Paul campers at Huber-Verdereau in Volnay

Today started with one of Burgundy’s great characters, Thierry Violot-Guillemard in Pommard, and his lineup of ‘10s and ‘11s. I love how he finds the elegance and finesse in Pommard – all the power without all the extraction. And finally – his first vintage of Clos des Mouches Blanc is in barrel. I will beg for every bottle we can get – I was absolutely floored.

Thierry Violot-Guillemard. A picture says a thousand words...

Then we lunched at Auberge de la Miotte in Ladoix – one of the coolest road-house bistros ever. I could eat the Duck Confit with duck-fat fries everyday, starting with breakfast! Their dark-chocolate mousse may be the best on the planet. I would eat myself into a coma there if left unattended…

Heaven on a plate at Auberge de la Miotte

François Millet, the poet-philosopher-winemaker at Domaine de Vogüé kindly led us through a deep and thorough exploration of his range of 2011s. The Amoureuses was the most expressive and seductive today, but the Musigny – ahh, the Musigny. Is it the single greatest red-wine terroir on earth? I am often convinced so…

François Millet, Dom. de Vogüé

Mugnier, Confuron, Marc Roy, Ma Cuisine and Le Benaton still to come. We do what we must…

Another insanely great day of discovery in Champagne yesterday. The furthest reaches of Champagne, to be exact. Out on the frontier in every sense – cutting edge winemaking, and edge-of-the-known-world locations so far off the beaten path that GPS can’t even find ‘em.

I’m talking about the Aube (also often referred to as the Bar), the southernmost part of Champagne, some of which is nearly two hours away from Reims. It’s mind-boggling to drive the Autoroute at 130 Km/h for that long, and still be in the same appellation. But hidden down in some of these tiny villages are some of the most exciting artisans in Champagne today.

We’re talking villages – hamlets, really, of around 120 inhabitants max. Strung along the valley of the Aube river on one end and the Seine on the other, these little settlements in this remote section of Champagne are home to nearly 20,000 acres of vines – though most of this land wasn’t planted to grapes until the early 1960s.  And only very recently has there been much actual production of Champagne in these parts – the grapes have historically been sold to the big Champagne houses up north. Grower Champagne has come to the Aube in a big way, with astonishing results given the short window of time.

I had lunch yesterday with a producer in the village Channes, joined at table by his mother and father, two of the vineyard hands, a family friend, and a dog. The dog was very much part of the meal, from standing on his hind legs at the stove and sticking his nose in the frying pan to lick some sauce from the beef Daube, to sitting in the old man’s lap during the meal, placing his long Cocker Spaniel ears and head neatly in the bread basket. Ahh, the country life.

The table was in the middle of a tiny stone hut that sat in the middle of a back yard – it was the “summer kitchen” – fully equipped, glassed-in on end, a fire roaring in the stone fireplace in the other, and mama and the dog at the stove in perfect harmony. Looking out across the lawn and over the house, a glimpse of the vine-covered hillside was visible across the rooftop. Those vines were planted in 1961 by Pierre Brigandat, and are in fact the very last vineyard at the very southern limit of the Champagne appellation. Or “the first vineyard in Champagne as you come up from Burgundy”, as Pierre’s son Bertrand likes to put it.

Bertrand took over the estate in 2002, and from the frontier his father blazed is now making ridiculously good wines. When asked about his philosophy of viticulture and winemaking, Bertrand said simply “Peace & Love” (the only words he spoke in English all day, btw) – explaining his passion for working in harmony with nature, and being intensely focused and attuned to his vines and his wines.

Then I headed to the micro-hamlet of Gyé-sur-Seine, where one dedicated vigneron is farming his entire estate Biodynamically – with Champagne being perhaps the hardest place on the planet to grow grapes without the benefit of chemical protection. Obviously, it can be done. His name is Vincent Couche, and his wines are flat-out stunning. In the days and weeks to come I’ll be writing more about Bertrand and Vincent and a number of their brethren – suffice it for now to say that I left Champagne with my head spinning. What we know of Grower Champagne is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many delicious discoveries in our future indeed…

Chambolle 1er Cru Les Fuées

Then it was a lovely drive down to Burgundy and back to my home base in Volnay – after a cruise through the Côte de Nuits to check on the vines, and a brief cruise around the hill of Corton.  Everything looked in pretty good shape. Until the most violent storm I have ever witnessed arrived at about 4pm – with 75 mile-per-hour winds and the hardest rain imaginable. Traffic stopped dead everywhere, even on the Autoroute – it was truly fear-inducing. The vineyards are in the middle of the delicate flowering period here, and the winds and heavy rain surely have removed a portion of the potential crop. Heavy hail fell in parts of Meursault and Pommard I keep hearing – maybe elsewhere as well – by tomorrow we should know the extent of the damage. At the very least it will be another low-yield year, following ’10 & ’11 which both produced hardly any wine. Merde!

Bavette steak, sauce Époisses. Oh, yesss...

This morning, a great run from Volnay through Pommard into Beaune and around and back – a nice 10K that made me feel like I was back in my own skin. Part of this course was the same as the half-marathon I did here a couple years ago – I remember cursing some of those same hills! My traditional Burgundy breakfast of baguette, confiture, Nutella and café – voilà, I’m back!Then lunch in Beaune with Becky Wasserman and crew, and then a very exciting tasting with a new producer just launching her new label. I love it when I stumble into things like that. Sometimes the universe arranges to offer you the right things at the right time. I’m a big fan of serendipity. More as it happens…

The road to discovery in Champagne is long, winding, and full of delightful surprises all along the way. When I first started coming here, no one had ever really heard of “Grower Champagne”. What we knew of Champagne in the US was the big brands – Moët et Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Mumm, Piper-Heidseick, Dom Perignon, and if you were really “in the know”, Krug, Bollinger, and maybe Salon.

Not that some of those aren’t excellent wines, but to me they are officially no longer what Champagne is all about. We have importer-par-excellence Thierry Thiese to thank for first bringing to our attention that there is something other than industrially-produced wine made here, and that these small farmers bottling their own wines are in fact what Champagne is all about.

The endless carpet of vines that is Champagne

The stats I’ve seen say there are over 5,000 registered Récoltant-Manipulants (“R-M”) in Champagne – meaning people who grow their own grapes and produce wines from only their own grapes. These 5,000+ RMs own over 85% of the vineyard land in Champagne, yet they produce only about 12% of the wine. Obviously they are selling a lot of their fruit to the big houses. That’s all good and fine, but what interests me most is what they’re doing with the fruit they keep to use for themselves. Interesting to say the least –  and in some cases fascinating.

Exploring every corner and nook and cranny of Champagne could take you months – it’s ridiculously vast. You can leave Epernay, hop on the Autoroute and drive for an hour and a half, and you’re still in Champagne! Driving around for hours on end, it becomes quite clear how Moët and Clicquot are producing millions and millions of cases. There are grapes EVERYWHERE, and everybody is selling at least some of their fruit to Moët or Clicquot or one of the other industrial giants.

When all of those grapes from parcels scattered over 100 miles or more are combined to make a single non-vintage cuvee – it’s obvious that any possibility of any terroir character in the wines has been fully obliterated. It’s Coca-Cola, just made with a commodity called grapes, rather than water, high-fructose corn syrup and “natural” flavorings. The concept and practice is the same.

Small-scale winemaking at its finest...

At the other end of the scale, we have small, family operations, some with as little as 5 acres of vines, growing grapes and producing wines of great originality, personality, character, quality, and that are at their foundation wines of terroir – an expression of a specific place. This, this is what interests me most. And I believe will likely interest you the most as a consumer – at least if you have any interest in wines that have something to say. (If you don’t, that’s all-right too. That’s why they make vanilla & chocolate…)

Many parallels with Burgundy have emerged with the rise in awareness of Grower Champagne. Small parcels are the norm, rather than large, contiguous vineyards. Keeping grapes from individual villages and individual vineyards separate is now being seen as important. This is the only way that we can see with precision what the mosaic of terroirs of Champagne have to say. Up until recently we’ve been drinking blends that would be the equivalent of mixing Gevrey-Chambertin with Volnay with Pouilly-Fuissé and Chablis. Yes, those are all “Burgundy”, but we know that they are extremely different. Now we finally get see the difference between Cumières and Ambonnay and Mésnil-sur-Oger and Rilly-la-Montagne. You’ve been drinking them all for years – but they’ve been mostly conjoined and cajoled into a lowest-common-denominator mush.

We started importing Grower Champagne just five years ago, and in that time the number of producers exporting their wines has more than doubled. The market share in the US has grown at a staggering rate (though it’s still only about 3% of the US Champagne market.) I’m here to taste, learn, search, and discover, and hopefully add to our portfolio some producers that are deserving of your attention. With your help we can shoot for a whopping 4% of the market in the next few years. Who’s with me?

You've never heard of this man. He might be making the best wine in Champagne...

All of this is not to say that all of the Grower Champagne is excellent, or even good. Proportionally, there may actually be more mediocre, flawed, and downright disappointing Grower wines than there are from the big guys. But the good ones are flat-out emotionally thrilling wines – something rarely encountered in the mass-produced model.

Another thing to consider is that many of the most interesting Grower bubblies are made in such tiny quantities that they can be as hard to get a hold of as some of the rarest Grand Cru Burgundies. (There’s that Burgundy similarity again…)

In the months to come, I’ll be introducing you to some of the most exciting wines I’ve ever encountered. It’s too soon, and I’d be speaking out of school to name names at this point – but stay tuned. Action to come, as they say.

Now that's what I call dinner...

On a related note, I cannot praise highly enough Peter Liem’s fabulous Champagneguide.net – an indispensable resource for all things Champagne, and more than well worth the subscription cost. Peter turned me on to what may be the best wine bar on the planet – Aux Crieurs de Vin in Troyes. Stopped in tonight for a killer charcuterie platter and a nice Demarne-Frison Brut Nature. Life is pretty good…

Late yesterday afternoon, winemaker Clotilde Chauvet let me join in on the dosage trials for the next cuvées of the Chauvet Brut Sélection and Brut Rosé. It is always fascinating to see the enormous difference one gram of sugar per liter can make – and even more fascinating to find that often the samples that have had the most sugar added to not appear to be the sweetest, and vice-versa.

The next version of the Brut Sélection is based on the ’07 vintage, with about 20% reserve wine from ’06 in the blend to round out the weaker year of 2007. Roughly 50-50 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and a portion (about 5%) was aged in oak barrels before going to bottle for the 2nd fermentation. Clo presented three samples, one with 7 grams per liter, another with 9, and the third with 11 grams.

To say they were dramatically different is a huge understatement. Three completely different wines – night and day. I think I tend to prefer Champagnes with a lower dosage, but when doing these trials I am often fooled. In tasting them blind, the 7-gram version seemed too austere, almost grippy, and seemed to show the wood a bit. I was split between the 9-gram and 11-gram versions for a favorite, but finally chose the 11-gram bottling, which I felt was fresher, had a cleaner nose, and more precise flavors. I was shocked to find that it was the one with the highest dosage!

We then tasted three versions of the next cuvee of the Brut Rosé, which has about 16% Pinot Noir red wine blended in to a an equal mix of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Pinot Meunier, primarily from the 2009 vintage. The three samples had 6,7 & 8 grams per liter dosage, but again we were tasting blind. The 8-gram version smelled and tasted like sweet cookies dusted with strawberry-scented powdered sugar – I found it way to sweet and guessed it must have been the one with the most sugar. The 7-gram sample seemed a little tart, was drier overall and had more bite, but left an unpleasant sour note on the finish. The 6-gram sample was the one I liked best, and interestingly I found it to be the richest and juiciest of the three, with a lovely savory edge to it and a very “pinot” weight and texture. Was amazed upon the reveal to find it had the lowest dosage. Fascinating stuff – there are so many more variables, so many more decisions to be made in the course of the Champagne process. We have it comparatively easy just making “simple” Pinot…

A new "Classic" - the Chateau de Rilly

Dinner last night was at the newly opened Chateau de Rilly, a gorgeous mansion that has undergone a 4-year, multi-million-Euro renovation, and is now a luxury boutique hotel and ambitious restaurant. Unfortunately, the chef has not yet arrived, so the kitchen was not up to the heights they expect to achieve. Here’s an idea – wait for the chef to show up before you open the restaurant! Seems like that might have occurred to someone along the way. At any rate, the place is really well done, and I will return to eat there when they actually have a chef in the kitchen. I will say that the Moelleux de Chocolat with fresh mint ice cream was a stellar dessert…

Breakfast of Champions

Today is Mother’s Day in France, and I awoke to a house full of relatives and guests and swarming kids, kicking off the celebration with platters of prosciutto, bowls of anchovies, and magnums of Champagne. Every year the Chauvets pull a 30 year-old Mag from the cellar to check in on the evolution – so this year it was the ’82 Brut. Wow! Still very young and fresh, and not very evolved at all –a really vibrant, intense wine. Flat-out loved it. We washed that down with some ’04 Special Club, ’05 Brut, and ’03 Brut. Breakfast of Champions indeed!

Clo then cooked us an amazing brunch of escargot (wild-gathered by her father, in the vineyards and forest!), roast chicken in Moroccan spices, cheeses, and tons of fresh cherries, with a nice ’07 Gevrey from Dupont-Tisserandot to help it along.

I will now not be eating for the next 24-48 hours. Ok, maybe a fresh baguette with jam in the morning, and maybe a little chocolate. At least until lunch. I’ve just settled in to the fabulous Hôtel les Avisés in Avize, owned by Champagne superstar producer Anselm Selosse (his winery is next door to the inn.) Another renovated mansion, this one is modern and elegant and très chic, and I would never leave it if I didn’t have to. Highly recommended for your next visit to Champagne.

Your new home in Champagne...

Looking forward to a good night’s sleep and a then a nice run through the Côte des Blancs in the morning. Then, my search for the next great Grower Champagne producer continues. Have I mentioned I love my job?

Greetings from Champagne – otherwise known as my “happy place”, or at least one of them… Arrived yesterday at noon, semi-delirious from the flight, grabbed my rental car at Charles de Gaulle (the trusty Citroen C3, that’s how I roll, baby), and stopped on the Autoroute for the traditional Diet Coke and a Kit-Kat bar – the best ammunition I’ve found for combating the fatigue-induced dizziness that sets in about 5 minutes after I get behind the wheel…

Rolled safely into the tiny village of Rilly-la-Montagne about 90 minutes later, and plopped myself down on the deck at the home of Clotilde Chauvet & hubby  Digger – their commanding view over virtually the entire Montagne de Reims never fails to stimulate and provoke jaw-dropping awe. Vines everywhere for as far as you can see in every direction – it’s truly mind-boggling.

As Martha & I learned last trip, the best way to combat jetlag is by consuming several glasses of fine Champagne upon arrival. (Even if it doesn’t help the jetlag, it’s always a good plan anyway.) Clo pulled out the soon-to-be-released ’05 Millésime – bright, crisp, and ethereal. It doesn’t have the concentration of the great ’02, ’04 or ’06, but I consumed three full glasses just to make sure I fully understood it. In a word, love.

Then we moved on the the ’04 Special Club, which we’ll be releasing in the US this fall. In a word, lust. Deep, long, vibrant, rich, intense – a truly great Champagne. It was perfect with a mound of paper-thin slices of prosciutto and fresh breadsticks. God, I love my work.

Digger slapped two monstrous ribs of beef on the grill (cooked over 2010 vintage vine trimmings), Clo steamed up a massive plateful of fresh white asparagus from the village farmers market, and everything seemed to melt into a warm, drowsy, happiness. I do remember a plateful of cheeses and some fresh strawberries too.

I slept like a rock, and rose this morning to head down to the Aube – the southern-most section of Champagne, about 90 minutes away on the Autoroute. I had an appointment with a small grower-producer in the village of Ville-sur-Arce, who could only see me today, as he’s leaving for Japan in the morning. Man am I glad I made the trip.

Old-vine Pinot over Kimmeridgian limestone and clay in the Aube

I can’t disclose all the details quite yet. Suffice it to say that I’ve found what may be nearly unique in all of Champagne. Stunning, single-vineyard, single-variety Champagnes – 100% Pinot Noir from about 5 acres of old vines growing into ancient limestone beds and strata of clay. The terroir is identical to that of the Grand Crus of Chablis. This produces some intensely mineral-driven bubblies that totally blew me away. The production is so small we may only be able to get a few cases, but these are wines I’ve got to have as part of our portfolio. Sorry to tease, but I can’t let the cat fully out of the bag until the deal is done…

We're talking major minerality here...

And I have 12 more new growers to see in Champagne over the next 4 days, before I head down to Burgundy for two weeks! Whew. Right now I’m chilling out after a quick 5K run through the vines this afternoon, and looking forward to dinner with the Chauvet crew at the just-opened Chateau de Rilly, which has everybody buzzing here in the megalopolis of Rilly-la-Montagne. More as it happens…

Join us in Portland for our continuing series of First Friday Happy Hours – 5-7p on Friday June 1st at Scott Paul PDX (2537 NW Upshur.) Note – FREE PARKING is available nearby at the Selco Community Credit Union lot, at the corner of 25th & Thurman.  This event is open to all, and we extend a special welcome tonight to our friends from French American International School.  We’re kicking off the weekend and celebrating the end of the school year with some great white Burgundies that are perfect summer sippers, along with our new ’09 La Paulée Pinot Noir and more goodies. Tasting fee $10, refunded with any three bottle purchase.  RSVP not required but helpful, martha@scottpaul.com.  See you here!