Lovers of world-class, vintage Champagne: it’s Friday and time to start your engines! Tonight’s bonus is a shimmering gem of a wine that has spent many years aging to perfection and is dripping with elegance and complexity. Hailing from the excellent 2009 vintage, this portrait of precision from innovative winemaker Gilles Dumangin is sourced entirely from the estate’s top Premier Cru vineyards in the Montagne de Reims, and spends many, many years aging on the lees in order to achieve what the estate calls “Simplexity”—when a wine’s elegant simplicity gives way to profound complexity. Bottled Extra-Brut, with just two grams of dosage, this bone-dry beauty has that elusive combination of delicacy and strength, along with a gloriously persistent perlage, that makes a bottle disappear fast. And since we have only a few cases, that is exactly what is going to happen, so don’t hesitate to grab some before they are long gone!
Dumangin J. Fils has been growing grapes and making Champagne for over 130 years in the famed region of Montagne des Reims. But it’s the past two decades, under the leadership of Gilles Dumangin, that has seen this picturesque estate in Chigny-les-Roses make a big splash on the world of luxury beverages. Gilles is a voraciously curious winemaker who likes to spend his time existing where art and poetry intersect with science and technology. Along with a range of tiny-production, meticulously made Champagnes, he is also a leading producer of artisanal Ratafia de Champagne—a fortified apéritif wine in a similar category as Lillet or Pineau des Charentes—and one of the very few Champenois who ages, bottles, and sells whiskey. Yes, you heard that right: Gilles is passionate about American Whiskey, especially Bourbon, and for years he has been buying barrels then shipping them to his cellar where they continue aging in the used Ratafia casks. Very curious indeed!
But of course Champagne is still the focus and the flagship, and here Gilles knows exactly what he is striving to achieve: “There is no shortcut in winemaking, only precision,” is his guiding principle, and indeed his wines are acclaimed for their elegance, finesse, delicacy, and of course precision. The full range is excellent, but his vintage, or millésime, really gets the star treatment when it comes to fruit, terroir, fermentation, and long aging on the lees in the deep, cold cellar of the estate.
The excellent, robust 2009 vintage produced sexy, precocious wines that are exceedingly enjoyable today (while we wait on the 2008s and 2012s to eventually hit their own optimal drinking window). For Gilles, the exuberant nature of the vintage plays perfectly with his restrained, meticulous winemaking style. The fruit hails from his best vineyards, where a very thin layer of topsoil sits on a bedrock of pure, chalky limestone. After fermentation and aging in steel tanks (zero oak), the 2009 was bottled and then spent over ten years aging on its fine lees before disgorgement and a miniscule dosage of 2 grams per liter. Serve this monument to precision in an all-purpose stem (preferably of hand-blown glass) at a cool 48 to 50 degrees. The full array of aromatic complexity quickly opens up: White raspberry, peach skin, hazelnut, lemon blossom, candied orange, and wet rock lead to a bright, fruit-forward palate with a tickly, delicate texture and a long, sea salt and mineral-laden finish. This is a no-brainer with raw oysters, or shellfish of any kind, but if you're feeling adventurous grab some uni and seaweed and make the hand rolls below. That sounds like a deliciously luxurious weekend activity!
