Alice Paillard describes making her Vintage wine in terms of an “adventure,” an opportunity to broaden the stylistic palette from the necessarily consistent Non-Vintage template and maybe a chance to challenge the reputation of the year in question. This certainly appears to be the case with her latest release, the 2014 Blanc de Blancs. Despite the general perception of 2014 being a modest, unchallenging year, Alice emphasizes the wine’s depth, specifically on its gastronomic potential. “2014 for us was a shock, a surprise,” she confides. “We did not expect this type of open and generous expression.”
A relatively cool year, overall, but not built in the “classic” late-harvest style of 2013, 2014 was precocious, edgy, and beset by problems engendered by irregular and unpredictable rainfall patterns. But not everywhere, pace Alice, who reveals that there was significantly less rainfall in the vineyards of the Côte des Blancs, the principal source of the fruit for this, the house’s tenth iteration of its Vintage Blanc de Blancs. The appeal of the Côte des Blancs fruit from this privileged enclave was such, indeed, that Alice once again decided to forsake a grand cru nomenclature for the wine, determined as she was to add some of the finely chiseled fruit from the premier cru of Vertus to the assemblage. Paillard’s Blanc de Blancs labels glory, therefore, in the somewhat eccentric idiosyncrasy of their Non-Vintage always meriting grand cru status, but when it comes to the Vintage wine, the accreditation is awarded only intermittently.
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
