Jerome Prevost Champagne La Closerie Extra Brut Les Beguines 2019

Few names carry more weight among serious Champagne lovers than Jérôme Prévost, a grower who took an unglamorous grape from an obscure village and turned it into one of the most sought-after wines in France. In 1987 Prévost inherited two hectares of old, massale-selection Pinot Meunier in the tiny hamlet of Gueux, on the Petite Montagne de Reims — a plot called Les Béguines, planted on a rare seam of fossilised seashell sand and limestone over pure chalk. He spent his early years learning at the side of Anselme Selosse, using Selosse's cellar in Avize to make his first bottlings, before returning to Gueux to build his own tiny, purpose-built winery. In the cellar he ferments with indigenous yeasts in old 450–600 litre barrels, ages the wine for around ten months before bottling for a second fermentation, and disgorges everything from a single tirage without fining, filtration, or more than a whisper of sulphur — a hands-off, single-vineyard, single-grape approach that was radical when he started and remains uncompromising today.

The result is a Champagne that behaves more like a great still white wine than a conventional blend: pale gold in the glass, with a nose of orchard fruit, dried spice, hazelnut, and a faint smoky, saline edge that speaks unmistakably of its chalky, sandy terroir. The palate is textured and vinous rather than merely bubbly — taut, mineral, and long, with the barrel-aged richness of the Meunier balanced by real cut and tension, especially with a few years in the cellar to let it unwind.