R. Pouillon

August 13, 2022|Sara Underdown.

Smiling man in vineyard surrounded by grapevines during harvest

Fabrice Pouillon may not know it yet, but his celebrity as a sought-after Champagne wine grower is about to take off. In Australia, and indeed from what I hear the world over, sommeliers and fine wine lovers are nabbing every bottle as it comes…and with good reason. Fabrice makes exceptional champagnes. Rich, textured and multi-layered, sparking with energy whilst remaining incredibly elegant. Therein lies his superpower – to achieve this necessary balance between power and delicacy – which sometimes eludes other growers with a heavy hand.

The picturesque village of Mareuil-sur-Aӱ is home to Pouillon’s family estate going back to 1947. This is pinot noir territory – some of the best - hinged to the banks of the Marne River, facing south. Nestled between the grand cru villages of Aӱ and Tours-sur-Marne, its status is premier cru, and perhaps unfairly so. But with a 99 percent ranking, it sits at the very top of the former échelle des crus scale.

The pinot here isn’t dissimilar to its more celebrated neighbour, Aӱ; elegant yet powerful with velvety tannins. Philipponnat and Billecart-Salmon are the village’s famous inhabitants, and source some of their best fruit from its surrounds. Clos des Goisses, Philipponnat’s lauded prestige cuvée, shares the same terroir as Pouillon’s Le Montgruguet - sitting just below it - on the chalky slopes of Montgruguet hill.

The character of Pouillon’s wines comes from both sides of the Marne Valley, principally Mareuil-sur-Aӱ and Aӱ, but also Avenay, Epernay, Festigny, Mutigny and Tauxières. There are just seven hectares of land - dispersed across 40 parcels - mostly planted to pinot noir and chardonnay (four and two hectares respectively) and just a little meunier (one hectare). There’s nothing in the Côte des Blancs, but he’s unfussed by that.

“My grandparents had vineyards in Le Mesnil, but now my uncle cultivates it. For me, it’s easier to stay around my village because we’re organic. But, yes, I would like to buy more land,” he says in response to whether there was any pressure to expand his estate. “But we do regenerative viticulture, so we need to have vineyards close together. Also, my specification is pinot from this area.”

Strategic positioning, primarily along the Grande Vallée, has made it possible to chart an organic path, though he’s more pragmatic about it than virtuous.

“For me, when I drink wine, first it needs to be good. If it happens to be organic, it’s even better. If organics helps me to make better wine, that’s great.”

Pouillon’s cardinal pursuit is in fact maturation – specifically phenolics and taste – which he believes trumps the conventional thinking of monitoring sugar and acidity to ‘correct’ a harvest. Where organics pushes vines further to extract freshness and salinity – low pH - from their chalky bedrock, maturity makes flavour.

Strategic positioning, primarily along the Grande Vallée, has made it possible to chart an organic path, though he’s more pragmatic about it than virtuous.

“If I harvest at 10.5, for example, I lose many things,” he says. “You only get sugar and vegetal aromas, but not flavour or the origin of the grape. For me, grape varieties are just an instrument, but I want to taste the origin of the grape. So, if you’re on chalk in Montgruguet, you need to smell the salinity. If you’re on clay in Festigny, you need to find the power of clay.”

Pouillon’s 2021 vins clairs (still wines) are a revelation of this grand pursuit of terroir. Les Blanchiens, a 50 / 50 percent pinot noir and chardonnay blend (and his dad’s favourite parcel) had high levels of sugar (12.6) and low pH (2.98) whereas Le Montgruguet, a 100 percent pinot noir, had slightly less sugar (11.5) and higher pH (3.10). Astonishingly, with Le Montruguet, you can smell less acidity but still detect chalk “because of the sugar,” says Pouillon. So, you don’t always need low pH, but maturity and sugar are important.

Managing maturity and sugar can be a game of cat and mouse. Pouillon begins ten days out from harvest, monitoring by numbers and taste, and sets the date three days before. Total phenolic maturation is important, but so too is gentle pressing to keep tannins low and elegance high.

Since my first taste of Pouillon’s wines in 2018, when I was impressed by their deliciousness and concentration, I’ve noticed more delicacy and freshness. Pouillon points to a vineyard system “which is now good” and key changes in the cellar which have elaborated some of the freshest and most elegant champagnes I’ve experienced from a grower in recent years.

“If you’re a winegrower, you need to be patient to achieve your vision,” he says. “When you change, the effect takes three to five years in the wine.”

Pouillon presses four to five times to release juice in fractions which he says respects the anatomy of each berry and is different to the traditional method of separating the cuvée from the tailles. With each press, a slow 30-minute extraction targets different parts of the berry and pressure is increased each time. The first press delivers more sweetness with acids and minerals, the second and third more tannins from the skin, followed by the pip.

Under this system, volume is different depending on grape variety and origin of soil. Chalk results in less juice, pinot more, and vinification is adapted for each – barrels by size and age – to control oxidation. The first and last press oxidises in different ways; the latter is kept on élevage for more than a year. Meunier is given more oxidation and chardonnay less because chardonnay from the Montagne de Reims loses expression.

There are two foudres (large format oak) in Pouillon’s cellars used for aging wines – one for his cuvée, Grande Vallée, and the other for his eponymous champagne, Solera. Due to their size, the foudres limits oxidation and promotes more graceful aging.

Solera is exclusively pinot noir and chardonnay from Mareuil-sur-Aӱ. Every year, Pouillon draws off 25 hectolitres for bottling (no other wine is added) and tops the foudre up to make a “very regular system of aging” going back to 1997. For Grande Vallée, he reverts to a more traditional reserve wine approach with a blend based on the current year of harvest.

Vinification is undertaken in barrels, for the most part, ranging from 600L down to 220L, spanning various ages. Pouillon’s Les Terres Froides sees the least amount of oak, swapping it out for ceramic amphorae and concrete eggs, that he says keeps lees moving (as they would do in oak) but without the oxidative influence.

Pouillon has also increased time on lees before disgorgement – adding two or three months each year.

“Aging in bottles is very nice and you need balance between barrel and bottle. Wine from barrel gives a lot of texture before bottling, so the amount of aging after bottling should be more,” he says. “It’s my vision. For me, you need time for terroir to come back in front.”

Stylistically, Pouillon prefers less intervention in the cellar to allow the terroir to do its work. To this end, he uses a small debourbage, no pumping, engages gravity, and allows natural malolactic fermentation to occur.

With endless talk, these days, on terroir-driven wines, Pouillon offers a skilful take on it. A sensitive hand elaborates wines of the highest order – defined, characterful but also elegant – and elegance is never sacrificed for the former. These are some of the very best terroir champagnes you can get.

Solera Extra Brut

50% chardonnay / 50% pinot noir from Mareuil-sur-Aӱ from 2016 - 1997. Matured in 75 hectolitre French oak foudre. 36 months on lees. 4g/L dosage. 3,800 bottles.

One of the fastest-selling champagnes belonging to R.Pouillon, and you can see why. This is a surprisingly fresh solera – one of the best on the market - whilst boasting the fullness and complexity you might well expect from a champagne like this. There’s plenty of spice and candied peel, but the pleasure is in its smoothness and seamlessly integrated acidity which goes on and on.

Counterintuitively, Pouillon suggests opening this champagne at least 30 minutes before serving to give it ‘more oxidation’. He says that with oxidation in foudres, and then four years in a reductive state on lees, the wine is reserved when opened. “If you taste an hour after opening, you can really taste the wine,” he says.

Le Terroir Froides 2018

100% chardonnay from 40 year old vines in Tauxières, Montagne de Reims. Vinified in French oak, concrete eggs and ceramic amphorae. Bottled 6-9 months after harvest using indigenous yeasts. 36 months on lees. 2g/L dosage.

A very easy to drink champagne marked by noticeably less influence from oak and north-facing freshness on chalky soils. It makes for a very pure and clean style loaded with saline crispness and a length that goes on.

Disgorged in January 2022, this will be released around June/July and reach Australia toward the end of the year.

Pouillon says that 2018 was an ‘easy year’ for his vines. The lack of struggle results in ‘clean and beautiful’ grapes, and especially when you compare with 2019 which is much more expressive.

“I always think that expression and texture comes from the climatology of year. If difficult, the vineyard gives more flavour to the grape,” he says.

Les Châtaigniers 2017

100% meunier from Festigny in the Vallée de la Marne. Vinified in oak casks ranging from new through to 10 years of age using indigenous yeasts and bâtonnage. Bottled 12 – 18 months after harvest with natural cork. 3 - 4 years on lees. 1,000 – 2,000 bottles.

Historically, the Pouillon’s didn’t own meunier. In 2002, they acquired this parcel and so began their journey learning how to cultivate and vinify it. The parcel is located off a small valley with a microclimate that imparts more freshness, so meunier from here appears particularly pure.

To the eye, Les Chatâigniers is exciting to watch as it bubbles and froths in the bottle once the cork is released. It’s the effect of a particularly long time in barrel – around 12 months – before bottling, and then four years’ time on lees with cork. Pouillon says that cork helps the champagne to adapt from barrel to bottle, allowing the transition to be “more progressive” because there is oxygen inside the cork.

“The oxygen goes into the wine and carbonic gas from the second fermentation goes into the cork,” he says.

To have a good result, he believes it’s necessary to wait more than four years. After this, it starts to become more reductive.

2017 wasn’t a great year in Champagne, but rigorous sorting ensured only clean grapes were pressed and the result here is very good. Aromatically, there’s honey, lemon zest and candied citrus. On the palate, juicy plums and a little tartness. Above all, there’s a lovely delicacy and creaminess to this meunier that makes it particularly refined, helped along by a fine bead.