Vincent Couche Champagne Brut Eclipsia 750ml

Expert Review

Roger Voss of The Wine Enthusiast 89 Points | This is a ripe wine. Pear and quince flavors are cut by lemon zest acidity, making for a fresh, rich wine that is well balanced. From vines in the Cte des Bar in the southern Aube region of Champagne, the wine has a warm, rich while still crisp character. Winemaker Description Vincent Couches story is perhaps a familiar one, especially in Champagne where the past two decades have seen a small but real revolution against conventional agriculture. Vincents parents were vignerons in the Aube.

Winemaker Description

20 years ago he made his first vintage, and in the 2000s, he began working the soil. As of 2008, Vincent has been certified in biodynamics, and is obsessed (to say the least) with farming living soils and making living wine.

His cellar work is marked by long, slow lvages for the base wines, fermentations with native yeast, as well as both low dosages and low sulfur additions. His wines see as little manipulation as any Champagnes weve come across. 10 of Vincents 13ha are in Buxeuil, in the Aube.

This terroir is marked by kimmeridgian limestone soil that is more akin to the terroir of Chablis than to the terroir of the Marne. In fact, Buxeuil is not more than an hours drive from Chablis. Like the majority of vineyards in the Aube, Vincents Buxeuil vines are Pinot Noir. Vincents other 3ha are in Montgueux, the isolated chalk outcropping 5km from the city of Troyes, and are planted to Chardonnay.

This diversity of terroirs and duality of grapes, combined with Vincent’s obsession with responsibly incorporating oxygen into winemaking (“wines are like people; if they dont have oxygen, they die”) results in wines that are broad and vinous in style, with with a rigid spine of mouthwatering acidity.