View 2013 Champagne Catalog - Michael Skurnik Wines

Pierre Péters
Côte des Blancs // Le Mesnil-Sur-Oger
vineyard area // 18.5 hectares
annual production // 14,000 cases
villages & soil types // Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Grand Cru, Oger Grand Cru,
Cramant Grand Cru, Avize Grand Cru (Cretaceous chalk)
grape varieties // 100% Chardonnay
Côte des Blancs
First the headlines. The estate is now up to twenty hectares. However, this won’t prevent
us from maxing out our allocations, and so starting now, in 2013, both we and you
are going to need to plan how and what we purchase, or we’ll have out-of-stocks by the
middle of October.
Pierre Péters
Rodolph Péters is fastidious about these allocations.
When we tried to order after we’d already reached our
maximum, he seemed to be affronted. When I explained
it was a nothing-ventured nothing-gained proposition, in
case another of his clients hadn’t taken their allocations,
he assured me that all clients took their allocations. I want
to be him!
He’s making a second single-vineyard wine now, Les
Mont Jolis, a vineyard out near the Mesnil-Vertus road in
the plain. He has six parcels there, and wants a feminine
consort to the very “manly” wines of Chetillons. We’ll see
the results in a few years. The vin claire was excellent.
Finally there’s a new non-vintage wine called Reserve
Oubliée, the quantity of which is homeopathic. Alas, the
wine is completely superb, so I’m dustin’ off the knee
pads.
Maybe Rodolphe Péters is consolidating his regime.
He’s passionate and proud. And when these wines are
on – as they’ve been forever but especially for the past
three years – you wonder if anyone in the whole Côte des
Blancs is better.
At the beginning I had access to anyone I wanted in
Mesnil, and after many months of tasting and visiting
it was clear Péters was hors classe, an impression only
strengthened in the years since.
He took us through our paces this year; seven vins
claires (including the experiments with avoiding malo)
and for each of the actual Champagnes, multiple cuvées.
Rodolph harvests later than his father did, so there’s a
phenolic “sweetness” to some cuvées that mimics sugar.
Tasting this way is like exercising a new muscle in your
body. I’ll report how it was, as it happened.
Pierre Péters at a glance // As many of you discovered these are blow-your-mind Champagnes; you sold them
out in a flash! Crystaline, jewellike firmness and immense mealy depth give these a Krug-like profile nearly unique
among Blanc de Blancs.
how the wines taste // Let’s put it this way: if Blanc de Blancs Champagne has something in common with Mosel
wine in general, then these are like Saar wines, a concentration of the minerally essence of the type, and straining at
the leash as though the fruit wanted to burst free and run at full gallop. Lately I have described the wines as starched,
for they have that crisp stiffness. Though not exceptionally high in acidity, they are exceptionally low in pH, which
gives them their attack on the palate and their trilling high notes of aroma. My best German wine customers tend to
prefer these to any Champagne I offer.
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