Italiano
Jacquesson Cuvée n°741, the Chiquet challenge
With Cuvée 700, Maison Jacquesson enhances the value of their non-vintage wines with a progressive numbering system that links them to the prevalent vintage in the blend.
When a Maison de Champagne has an identifying interpretive style, each harvest is an opportunity to underscore it by shaping the characteristics of that year through an alchemic rite called assemblage (blending). This is the most important term in the world of Champagne and yet great wine lovers and collectors prefer to dedicate themselves to a quest for the Maison’s vision in extraordinary years, through vintage wines and cuvee de prestige, while often overlooking the non-vintage bubbly.
Maison Jacquesson has overcome this dichotomy with Cuvée 700 and numbering their non-vintage cuvee in order to make them unique and underscore how they are exceptional, rather than seeking to make them consistent year after year. Using progressive numbers that link the Champagne to the prevalent vintage in the blend, Maison Jacquesson states that the role of the reserve wines is important to exalt the complexity of a particular vintage.
The Chiquet family acquired the Maison in 1974 but the Jacquesson name originates in 1798 in Châlons-en-Champagne. Brothers Jean-Hervé and Laurent Chiquet began their Cuvée 700 adventure in the year 2000: its characteristics are that the grapes come from Grand Cru and Premier Cru vintages, the wine is fermented in wood, matures on the lees for around four years (longer for the Cuvée 700 D.T. that stands for Dégorgement Tardiff) and is given an Extra Brut dosage (between 1.5 and 2.5g/l). This is a further confirmation that the Chiquet brothers have always had the goal of making “great wine” rather than “great Champagnes”. And you have to hand it to them, they have done just that considering that the Cuvée from Maison Jacquesson have become a point of reference for Champagne production and this because the vision this Champagne expresses is now burned into the memories of bubbly lovers.
