Suenen Cramant Les Robarts Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru 2016

 Suenen Cramant Les Robarts Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru 2016 (Disg Jun 2022)

Suenen’s vines lie just across the border in the Cramant section of this vineyard, at the top of a small hill. Originally planted in 1952—with further plantings in 1978, 1984 and 2005—the average age of Suenen’s vines is now almost 40 years. The planting contains a large portion of mass-selection vines. Suenen describes this terroir—30 cm of silty clay over degraded, upper Campanian chalk—as combining the tension and salinity of Oiry with the concentration of Chouilly. It is often the most textural of Suenen’s four lieu-dit releases (although Mont-Aigu takes that mantle this year) and also, arguably, the most complex.) Less is more! Minimal intervention or Lo-fi wines encapsulate those producers who keep additions and manipulations to a minimum during the winemaking process. This means the wines are wild fermented, unfiltered and unfined, and only add sulphur during the process. 

The 2016 was aged in a single Rousseau foudre for nine months before bottling. As with all the single-site wines, this spent a minimum of five years on lees before disgorgement (with 3 g/L in this case) in June 2022.