Champagne Christian Gosset is a brand new project by one of the most experienced winemakers…
and family names synonymous with quality in the village of Aÿ in the Vallée de la Marne. Christian is focused on exalting the great terroirs for pinot noir from Aÿ, which has been home to the Gosset family for over 500 years. Pierre Gosset was the first recorded winemaker of the family tree in 1584. Descendants Gabriel Gosset and his wife Andrée Brabant produced the first bottles of their eponymous Gosset-Brabant Champagne in the 1930’s. Their son Jean Gosset and his wife further developed the domain after WWII, which was in turn passed onto their children, brothers Michel and Christian, who made wine as a team until 2015.
The next chapter for Christian Gosset began in 2015 after 35 years of making wine at Champagne Gosset-Brabant with his brother. In 2015, they separated and, at the age of 50, Christian Gosset decided to change his life by creating a personal project based around the terroir of his village. From his five hectares of vineyards in the Grand Cru villages of Aÿ and Chouilly, as well as the Premiers Crus of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Dizy and Avenay-Val-d’Or, he crafts a range of terroir-expressive Champagnes focused on absolute quality, above all. His first harvest took place in 2016 and his wines were made in the cellar of his friend and colleague, the oenologist Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy. Christian, whose creative energy is infectious, considers himself a young vigneron with 35 years of experience, as he is just beginning to define the wines he always dreamed of.
Shortly after the 2018 harvest, Christian moved into a cellar on rue Jeanson in Aÿ,
just opposite his friend Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy. At the beginning of 2020 his first vintages were ready for release: two blends from Grand Cru vineyards (Brut and Rosé) and four single-vineyard lieux dits Champagnes, the terroir expressions he had always dreamed of making. All of his estate-vineyards are planted to pinot noir and are classified as Grand Cru, farmed without herbicides, pesticides, fungicides or other chemicals and are certified HVE – Haute Valeur Environnementale Level 3. Following his personal philosophy that great Champagne starts with exceptional fruit, Christian is pragmatic in his approach in the vineyard. Drawing from his deep understanding of his terroir, he encourages a healthy biodiversity in the vineyard as a means to soil health and regeneration.
His pinot noir vines have a high average age (45+ years) and are naturally low-yielding, giving very concentrated grapes with great character and identity.
His vineyards are in prime locations in the middle of the Aÿ terroir, on the tops of the hills with southwestern exposure. It is a succession of small valleys, with different altitudes, different slopes, different soils and therefore a great diversity of terroirs in a very small area. One of his favorite parcels is called Loiselu, a lieu-dit planted in 1963. Christian maintains that one of the most desirable characteristics of the terroir is its complexity and intensity.
Vineyards in Aÿ are predominantly south-facing, and mostly planted to pinot noir. Although inclination varies by plot, the hills behind the village are the steepest. Aÿ is often the source of the most powerful pinot noir-based wines of Champagne, as they are at a lower altitude than those of Bouzy and Ambonnay.
Each plot is hand-picked and vinified separately in barrel. Winemaking is low-impact and low-intervention,
with the pressing done using a traditional Coquard press at his neighbor Geoffroy’s winery. The coeur de cuvée arrives by gravity into Christian Gosset’s cellar, directly into the vinification barrels, where it undergoes a spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts. As he says, “let the wines ferment quietly and then we meet again in July for the bottling”. For the Brut Reserve, he makes his decisions as late as possible for the assemblage and proportion of reserve wine, around the following June, before bottling and secondary fermentation. The wines are aged in his cellar for a minimum of three years on the lees, regardless of the vintage or cuvée. The naming standards for his non-vintage Brut and Rosé reflect his organized and pragmatic approach with his Brut A01 being his first assemblage, containing base wine from 2016, subsequently Brut A02 will be based on the 2017, and so on.
The Christian Gosset style is aromatic, powerful, and structured, but always in search of finesse and elegance, with a common thread of verticality, precision, and intensity. Christian Gosset crafts gastronomic Champagnes destined to elevate world-class cuisine with a trademark long, complex finish.
