View 2013 Champagne Catalog - Michael Skurnik Wines

Jean Milan
Côte des Blancs // Oger
vineyard area // 6 hectares
annual production // 9,000 cases
villages & soil types // Oger Grand Cru (chalk)
grape varieties // 100% Chardonnay
Côte des Blancs
If you’re new to this portfolio, then all you need to know is Milan is the best grower in
Oger, and the wines thread the needle between minerality and fruits and smokiness,
which is Oger at its most vivid and expressive.
Jean Milan
The domaine is 6 hectares, and some fruit is purchased,
in excess of the 5% limit whereby one is still a Recoltante.
Thus you’ll see a little “NM” on Milan’s label, but this is
nothing to be concerned about. There are growers who
deliberately buy grapes, often from their cousins or other
relatives, often as a means of flim-flamming French tax
laws, and in some cases they too exceed the 5% limit.
If you know the portfolio, you will maybe remember
than Milans had a few years where there were technical
issues in many of the wines, the reasons for which were
identified and fixed. The family was impeccably open and
transparent with me, and though I’m sure I caused them
a few sleepless nights, we’ve reached the best possible
outcome. I sat tasting this year’s Champagnes and thought
“This is exactly why I loved these wines in the first place.”
Oger sits between Avize to the north and Le Mesnil
to the south, and though it’s tempting to suppose its
wines are a stylistic bridge between those communes, I
see it otherwise. There’s more steep hillside land in Oger,
a lot of it on a south-facing hill that gives the wines more
generosity than, say, Cramant or Chouilly. Gimonnet
finds them entirely alien to the cool green stony wines
from his neighborhood. To him Oger is masculine and
smoky, but again, I see it otherwise. Oger is big-bodied,
Jean Milan at a glance // Wonderful discovery in the heart of the Côte des Blancs. Champagnes of marvelous
purity and focus.
how the wines taste // They have that pencil-y minerality beneath the loveliest imaginable fruit. They are truly
exquisite wines. Just don’t miss them. Prices are amazingly reasonable and availability is better than you’d expect
from a small domaine.
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