EVENTS

In addition to our existing range from Champagne Georges Laval, and Champagne Chartogne-Taillet, we have three new domaines for you to discover – Champagne Marie Demets, Domaine de Marzilly – Champagne Ullens, and Champagne Maurice Choppin. 

Join us at our K11 MUSEA shop to taste a range of Champagnes from all five domaines 

Wines to be served:
2017 Champagne Maurice Choppin - L'Âge et la Raison
2016 Champagne Maurice Choppin - La Côte Charmont
NV Champagne Maurice Choppin - Les Arpents
2017 Champagne Maurice Choppin - Les Bas Russelets
2018 Champagne Maurice Choppin - Les Terres des Reguins
NV Champagne Maurice Choppin - Rosé
NV Domaine de Marzilly - Champagne Ullens Brut (Lot 07)
NV Domaine de Marzilly - Champagne Ullens Brut L.P.M
NV Champagne Marie Demets - Brut Tradition
2017 Champagne Marie Demets - Fins
2017 Champagne Marie Demets - Intransigeance
2017 Champagne Marie Demets - La Foret
NV Chartogne-Taillet - Champagne Cuvée Sainte Anne Brut
2017 Chartogne-Taillet - Champagne Hors Serie
NV Chartogne-Taillet - Champagne Le Rosé Brut
2017 Chartogne-Taillet - Champagne Les Barres Extra Brut
2017 Chartogne-Taillet - Champagne Cuvée de Reims Extra Brut
2017 Chartogne-Taillet - Champagne Cuvée Orizeaux Extra Brut
NV Champagne Georges Laval - Garennes Extra Brut
2016 Champagne Georges Laval - Les Chênes 1er Cru Brut Nature
2015 Champagne Georges Laval - Les Hautes Chèvres 1er Cru Brut Nature

Champagne Marie Demets

After a generation of growing grapes for a major Champagne house, Alain and Marie Demets debuted their own label – Marie Demets in 1986. The domaine, located in Gyé-sur-Seine in the Côte des Bar, grew to 10 hectares in 15 plots across the villages Gyé-sur-Seine, Neuville-sur-Seine, Courteron, Polisy and Buxeuil along the Seine Valley. The soils here are Kimmeridgian and Portlandian, like we find in Chablis. 

The house wine is Brut Tradition, a lovely 100% Pinot Noir, clean, bright, full of freshness and fruit, it is round-textured and pleasing. An ideal aperitif. Although there is an easiness to this wine, there is a good proportion of reserve wine blended with the base year, giving it some pleasing depth too.

Alain and Marie’s son Pierre joined in 2008 and took over in 2014, and was joined by his wife Mathilde in 2017. Together they have brought some new ideas – and new small cuvées to the range. We thought they were very special, and are pleased to share them with you.

The first is 2017 Intransigeance, a blend of 56% Pinot Noir and 44% Chardonnay, it is very low dosage (1g/l) very pure and precise wine, crisp, long and gently chalky in texture, very finely balanced. It is a contemporary style Champagne, with the intensity for gastronomic parings suited for delicate dishes.

Then, two very special wines, both 100% Chardonnay and both having had primary fermentation in single large fût de chêne (oak casks). 2017 ‘La Fôret’ is an extra brut, the fuller, rounder, grander feeling of the two, with good freshness, and a saline-like note, while 2017 ‘Fins’ is tighter, more reductive (almost Roulot or Coche-like), taut and intense with a lemon-like citrus flavour

Domaine de Marzilly – Champagne Ullens

The usual story amongst the smaller Champagne estates is that a family has been farming for generations, selling fruit to the large Champagne marques. But not here. Maxime Ullens, a young architect from Belgium, arrived in Champagne in 2012, and built up his land holdings from scratch. He attended wine school in Avize, and made his first harvest in 2016. Unconstrained by any tradition, Champagne Ullens is the product of his intellect and passion. So rare is it to create something in Champagne from scratch that the authorities would only let him commence work on his own winery after five vintages in an existing facility (we met him in the old Ayala Champagne facility that he has been using in the meantime). 

Currently at 30,000 bottle annual production in Hermonville in the Massif de Saint-Thierry at Champagne’s northern limit, Max has a long-term vision to build a true Champagne “Maison”. Small grower estates typically make their nominally “non-vintage” Champagnes almost exclusively on the base vintage each year, but here at Ullens the goal is to build up the reserve wines to blend for a consistent house style expression.  

Great care is taken in the primary fermentation – all in oak barrels, without lees stirring. The flat sides of the barrels are made of glass rather than wood (“These barrels ends are usually not toasted as well as the staves, and can give a greenness to the wine that I don’t want, so I use glass ends”). Wood for the barrels comes from the Domaine de Marzilly’s own oak forest.

“We are making a more concentrated, structured Champagne, with tension, rather than the typical light style of Champagne”. Named by wine guide Gault & Millau their winemaker of the year in 2020, Maxime Ullens is one to watch.

There are two Champagnes – Brut, 80% Pinot Meunier, 20% Chardonnay and around 4g/l dosage, is a lively Champagne with richness and fine fruit, crisp and well-balanced. ‘L.P.M.’ (La Petite Montagne) is 100% Pinot Meunier, 2.4g/l dosage, and is in a similar style, really fragrant with fuji apple-like aromas. We also have a tiny quantity of still white wine from 100% Pinot Meunier grapes – the 2019 Côteaux Champenois. Only 245 bottles and 75 magnums were produced.

Champagne Maurice Choppin

 

In Damery, near Epernay, Benjamin Choppin is the 7th generation of his family to work the land here in the Marne. There is an intensity of personality to the wines here. They are gastronomic in style. Visiting here we spent at least as long tasting the still wines in barrel – the vins clairs – as we did the finished Champagnes. 

The house wine – Les Arpents – comes from a blend of plots across the 6.5ha estate, and is made from 85% Pinot Meunier, 10% Chardonnay and 5% Pinot Noir, a 3g/l extra-brut style. It is mid-weight, fresh and accessible in style with a distinct spicy note marking the house style. The Rosé, from 93% Chardonnay and 7% Pinot Meunier, 3g/l extra-brut, is gastronomic, with lots of flavour, raspberry cream and spice, it is delicious. 

There is a range of ‘lieux-dits’ cuvées made here, expressing single grape varieties from single plots, extra-brut in style, 2g/l. ‘Les Terres des Reguins’ is 100% Pinot Meunier, from St Martin d’Ablois from vines planted in 1966. Benjamin says his inspiration here is Burgundy. This is aged in 600 litre fûts de chênes, and the style is rich, creamy, spicy, a really ‘vinous’ Champagne. ‘La Côte Charmont’ is another 100% Pinot Meunier from St Martin d’Ablois, the expression here is fresh, open, fragrantly fruity – apples and musk, it is a really joyous style. ‘Les Bas Russelets’ is 100% Pinot Noir from vines planted in 1981 in Damery, and feels like a controlled explosion – there is richness here, framed by a tight chalky texture, a wine of tension. (And in a show of just how age-worthy these are, at the end of our visit Benajmin pulled a 1972 Les Bas Russelets from the cellar, which was vivacious, smokey-savoury, bright, elegant and long-flavoured.)

Champagne Maurice Choppin’s wines are food-friendly, intense and characterful in style, super interesting to explore.

Grower Champagne Walkaround Tasting
Tasting
Date Saturday 22 October 2022 - Saturday 22 October 2022
Time 15:00 - 17:00
Venue The Fine Wine Experience K11 MUSEA Wine Lounge and Shop (Shop 606, K11 MUSEA, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui)
Ticket HKD 900 per person (fully redeemable upon HKD 8,000+ purchase that day of the wines served at the tasting.)
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