The Stone
55 million years have been laid end to end for the sea flesh to apease, horizontally decomposed, letting tightly bed-bound limestone fossil carapaces with innumerable millimetric marine shells. Today, equally patiently, the symbiotical colonised roots of the vine set free currents of calcium cations in it. When comes the time of the wine, the dazzling saline along with the enabled sap will join forces during tasting. Mouthwatering time scale through the mother tongue
«In everything that is operated in nature, It does not do anything brusquely»
Jean baptiste lamarck
The vessels
First current of 2 parallel forces : The alcohol of the wine and the heliotropism of the vine stretch upwards.
Second current of parallel forces :
The mineral of the wine and the extensive root system gravitate downwards.
The result of these opposite forces is :
The tropism of the vine/the Mimesis of a glass of wine
«I too went where you went»
Le grand Meaulnes,
by Alain Fournier
The casks : individuals that can but be assembled.
All the casks put together consitute the barrel.
All the little vessels put together constitute the flotilla.
On these Béguines once immerged
The wood takes roots
And the vine-tree broadens out.
When it comes to this two-way trip of the concentric tree-ring intrinsic to the wood
It is always about memory, breathing and journey
The skin
When the grape is ripe
the vegetal which bears it becomes wood.
It is a sign of the coming threshold.
It is the time for Kairos,
The time for harvest.
The lignin is formed into humus,
skin of the earth,
flexible and airy.
The lignin with which the barrel will be made
skin of the wine
Tempered, porous, intimate and curious.
Wood material for nests
That wraps these two fertilities.
HUMUS-HOMME-HUMBLE
Three words beginning with the same stem
From the same earth
inseperable from good wines
The intimate
The Vine of a life…
It is a 200 stride square,
orderly bound on a similar edge to the pages of a book.
I must make a proper noun out of a common noun:
Go from the Vine to the Béguines
I must make a noun of my own out of a proper noun :
Behind the Golf course, along the orchard, the long rows of vines,
In front of Grandma’s, at Nono’s,
On the top path, Above the well,
Near to the ponds, The ‘Pinots Gris’,(the fanleaf) have enough intimate creases and folds that tell ‘My Béguines’. We tame one another
We examine one another quite closely,
We figure each other out
We give to each other
And have been doing so for more than 45 years.
« It is as though I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words » Fragments of a love speech ‘Fragments d’un discours amoureux’ – by Roland Barthes
The plot
To the vine,
Pick up and bury a multitude of details
Apply the gesture accordingly
Ignore orthodoxy
(smile when it will not grow straight)
Bend down your eyes
Tame the emotional coincidence
Irrigate a rhizome of thought
Admit the strength of the little,
the depth of the not much
Live from the inside and the outside
Relive from the above and the below
Weave from bits and pieces
Collect scent herbarium
Go there and come back as you breathe
Fall behind
Then step aside
Imagine the vine happy
Underground
The wine grows in the cellar
in this « inner well »
dark, humid, silent and wild,
for ever such a long time :
a rooted wine that is recollected from its earth
buried underneath vaults put together in burstones concentrically
to the barrels,
in the interstices of which myriads of tiny gardens bloom
maturing the wine
where ‘the classical only exists, speaks and reigns whenever some disguised barbarian is present (...) »*
*Pierre Michon
Les Béguines
La Closerie Les Béguines | a place known as ‘Les Béguines’ |
| Closerie’ means : vine plot of around 5 to 7.5 acres minded by a tenant |
| Les Béguines’ means : vine shoots swath. A bundle is composed of several béguines |
| Area : around 5 unsegmented acres – border under the name of ‘Champagne’ |
| Geology : paleocene 59 -55 million years – limestone sand of the Thanétien |
| Altitude : 120m |
| Grape variety : 94% pinot meunier- massal selection
3309 and 5BB teleki rootstock planted in 1964. 2% pinot gris
massal selection- riparia and 41B rootstock planted in 2000.
2% chardonnay – massal selection- riparia and 41B planted in 2000. |
| Density : of 8333 to 10000 plants per hectare |
| Orientation : north-south axis |
| Size of permanent and royat cord |
| Undocumented viticulture: manual work has been produced after observation
Adapted to the natural habitat without dogmatism |
| Since 1994 no more insecticides : pionneering reintroduction of typhlodromes |
| Since 1996 no more herbicides : soil work by scratching and weeding on the whole estate |
| Since 2000 work on mycorhization |
| Use of moistening sulphur and absolute restriction in use of copper |
| First harvest : 1987 |
| First produced wine : 1998 |
| Spontaneous fermentation – lazy vinification |
| Fermentation 10 month ageing on the whole in wood barrels |
| Malolactic fermentation without obligation |
| Without machine or electricity |
| Barrels in different woods and capacities of 225, 228, 400, 500, 600 litres |
| Slow bottle filling by gravity |
| Exclusively extra brut since 1998. Dosage : 2.5 g per bottle |
| Drawings, label and back label text : Jérôme Prévost |
Fac Simile
| Blended Rosé Champagne |
| Facsimile, (definition) : reproduction identical to the original source |
| 87% ‘Les Béguines’ basic wine |
| + |
| 13% of still ‘Les Béguines’ red wine |
| intra-parcel selection of pinot meunier loosened with small grapes |
| alcoholic fermentation of destemmed bunch : mobile roof tank |
| spontaneous fermentation without SO2 |
| ageing 10 month 228 litre barrels |
| gentle and slow bottling with no machine or electricity |
| first wine produced in 2007 |
| annual production : around 3300 bottles |
| extra-brut rosé – dosage : 2 to 3 g per bottle |
| drawing, label and back label text, created by Jérôme Prévost |
The wine-grower
My maternal grandmother was standing in
the garden : next to her I lived the
sensuality of the earth for the first time.
My mother, my grandmother’s daughter,
gave me the taste of the beautiful and the requirement
for integrity : one evening she put like a seed
in the palm of my hand :
‘le grand troupeau’ (the big herd) by Jean Giono.
My father, my mother’s husband
opened me to curiosity, to necessity of doubt
and to the extatic joy of effort in the mountains.
My friend Anselme patiently revealed to me
for 24 seasons the meaning of the gesture.
They were my ecosystem.
And so many other encounters.
As time goes by, we are always
the breeding ground of someone else.
I know it now.
The Keys
Champagne La Closerie
Agnès & Jérôme Prévost
65 rue des Dames de France 51390 Gueux.
Tel : (33) 03 26 03 48 60
champagnelacloserie@orange.fr
Visits are possible on an appointment basis only with by email, if we still have wine on sale and insofar as we are available.
Visits are impossible during the harvest period.
Purchase offer
You are a private individual : you can buy bottles at the property or have it sent to your home in mainland France in accordance with available stocks.
Contact us by email to receive your personal bottle allocation
You are a professional :
Contact us by email.