View 2013 Champagne Catalog - Michael Skurnik Wines

Moussé Fils
Vallée de la Marne // Cuisles
vineyard area // 5.5 hectares
annual production // 4,100 cases
villages & soil types // Cuisles, Jonquery, Olizy-Violaine, Châtillon-sur-marne
(chalk, marl)
grape varieties // 80% Pinot Meunier, 16% Pinot Noir, 4% Chardonnay
It was my first appointment the morning after the big snowstorm that paralyzed northern
Europe in mid-March. Cuisles is, let’s say, not on the main road, and I was curious how
I’d manage. But Champagne sure was pretty in the snow, and I managed to glissade my
way there.
Vallée de la Marne
Moussé Fils
Several years ago Didier Gimonnet told me there
would be a new member of the Club Tresors (of which
he was then president) who would provide the very first
Spécial Club bottling entirely from Meunier. He added
that the guy was still below-the-radar but definitely an up
and comer, a super-nice man, young and ambitious.
So I made a beeline. And all of it was true. I had long
been aware of the Meunier-Rennaissance taking place
way up-valley in the Marne, in all the terra incognita
near Château Thierry, an ad-hoc group of growers who’d
rediscovered their old vineyards and wanted to give
Meunier the respect it almost never got. I went first to
Loriot in Festigny, liked the people and the wines (and
especially liked the landscape, the loveliest I think in all
of Champagne), and mixed a case to ship back and drink.
I then went to Cuisles, to find young Cédric Moussé.
Getting to Cuisles is no simple matter. You make one turn
off the Marne into a side-valley, and then another turn off
the side valley into an even smaller valley, and then another
turn to the quietest most out of the way village, one of
those places where you can hear the chickens clucking in
the next village, it’s so still.
I visited twice and assembled wines both times. I
emphasize this point, because I find it urgently necessary
to drink the wines as you do, before I commit to a new
agency. Tasting of course is fine, but wines are one way
being “tasted” and another way being “drunk.” And I
need to see, as I work my way through a case, if the wines
remain as interesting and attractive as they seemed at the
moment of “tasting.” A wine that shows well but grows at
all tiresome after the 4th or 5th exposure is too superficial.
What I liked and admired about Moussé’s wines was
their poise and polish. They were refined, even intelligent
for Meunier wines. As a rule the Meunier Champagnes go
either into deeply earthy areas (e.g., Chartogne’s Les Barres)
or they’re hedonistic fruit-bombs, but Moussé seems both
to thread the needle between those profiles and to add
something of his own. I would call that thing “good posture,”
but that’s a silly Terry-image and you may not know what
I mean by it. Put it this way; the Champagnes are highly
flavory and loaded with Meunier charm, but they’re also puttogether,
color-coordinated, all the flavors “drape” perfectly;
they’re fit, symmetrical, contained. They don’t sprawl.
Cuisles has 20-40cm of topsoil over what Cédric calls
“schiste.” The existence of such a soil in Champagne was
news to all of us. He swears there is a vein of schist running
from Villers-Sous-Châtillon directly through Cuisles, and
to his knowledge it’s unique in Champagne. If you go to
his (or our) website you can look at photos. The sub-soils
are porous but the roots can’t penetrate them. Other soils
are the usual mixture of marls and micraster chalk common
to this part of Champagne – but we have to understand
the geology behind Cédric’s claim, and also resist the
temptation to assume we’re “tasting” it—though we’re
certainly tasting something and it might as well be schist.
The estate is 5.5 hectares. “I don’t want it to be too
big; then I couldn’t go to the vineyards,” he says. The
new winery is indeed impressive, especially from the
Moussé at a glance // Our favorite among the Meunier pilgrims in the Marne Valley (and elsewhere), an up-andcoming
young grower who’s the newest member of the Club Tresors.
how the wines taste // Classy Meunier beauties; savory and dark-bready and with the sorghum-sweetness of
the variety, but also with a certain reserve and containment – elegance is the right word.
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