🍾 Alfred Gratien Clos Le Village

Alfred Gratien Clos Le Village is the vintage Champagne line of the house Alfred Gratien in Épernay (Marne): each release carries the harvest year on its label. Each year has its own page on this site: 2018.

According to the house, the house’s first single-plot wine: a 19.5-are walled vineyard in Cumières (premier cru of the Marne Valley); 100 % Meunier, fermented in small oak barrels without malolactic fermentation, fewer than 2,000 bottles.

Alfred Gratien is a family house from Épernay founded in 1864; according to the house, its wines have been fermented in oak from the start, and the cellar holds close to a thousand barrels.

The boundaries of the Champagne area were set by a law of 6 May 1919: parts of the Marne, Aube, Aisne, Haute-Marne and Seine-et-Marne departments. The designation’s specification allows seven grape varieties, dominated by Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier; grapes are picked as whole bunches, that is by hand, and the yield is limited to 10,400 kg per hectare.

According to the Comité Champagne, Champagne is served chilled to 8–10 °C, and bottles are kept in the dark at a steady 10–15 °C, without vibration. An opened bottle is best closed with a sparkling-wine stopper and kept cold.

Under the rules of the Champagne designation, vintage Champagne is aged for at least 36 months before sale; the bubbles come only from a second fermentation in the bottle.

Why it matters to you. The year on the label is the harvest year, so different years of the same line are different wines. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.