Champagne Warehouse

Helen’s interview with Gauthier Legros – Part 2

Helen conducts the second part of her interview with Gauthier Legros pictured above. Gauthier runs Champagne Roger Legros an award winning house based in Prouilly in the northerly reaches of the Champagne region.

H:It’s great to talk to you again. Can you tell me what you say to people trying Legros champagnes for the first time.

G: The first thing I do is listen to their personal experience of champagne, in order to define what they will most enjoy. Do they like it sweet or dry, old and rich or young and fresh? When I determine the purpose of the tasting I will then suggest one of our six champagnes.

H: Okay, and what are your feelings about the 2009 harvest and its potential?

G: 2009 and was a very good year for the health of our grapes, no boytris was reported. The natural degrees of sugar were good with no excess; our winery’s average was 10. So it is not a surprise that we will bottle some vintage in January 2010, using only the best cuvées from 2009. The blending will be 50% Chardonnay, 45% Pinot Noir and 5% Pinot Meunier. We will also bottle some Cuvée Spéciale using some Chardonnay from 2008 and some of the best cuvées from 2009. The final blending will be 70% Chardonnay, 25% Pinot Noir and 5% Pinot Meunier. Our Brut will be a standard blending of the three grapes 40% Pinot Noir, 40% Pinot Meunier and 20% Chardonnay with up to 30% reserve wines from the 2007 and 2008 harvests.

H: What is the best moment so far in your champagne making career?

G: I joined the family business nearly 5 years ago and I have had lots of great moments. Off the top of my head I can think of our first medal at a wine competition in 2006, of our first ever exhibition at the prestigious London Wine Fair in May 2008 – a fantastic experience! and of the praises of our vintage 2002 in a famous French weekly magazine, VSD in December 2008. Then both my children were born while working in the family business. Therefore it is difficult to take out one single best moment.

I would however like to share with you the powerful feeling of well being that I have every year at the harvest. As tradition demands we offer champagne and cakes to the pickers at the end of each working day. I do not know whether the tasting sensations are reinforced by the lingering smell of grapes on our clothes or by the fact that we are physically exhausted, but there is a blissful feeling with that first glass that makes you feel at peace with yourself no matter what.

H: Gauthier I feel like I’m almost there. I feel awful breaking the moment by asking you another question! But from good to bad -have you any worst moments you can share with us?

G: The only worst moment so far that I can think of was just before Christmas 2009 when I was delivering champagne in a snowstorm. I had several deliveries to make but things went wrong due to the heavy snow and I ended up with my car in a ditch. Oh and another delivery nightmare a couple of years back involved my van roof stuck in a Parisian underground car park; I misjudged the height of my van and had to flat the tyres to get out!

H: On a brighter note Gauthier was is your favourite champagne at the moment?

G: Right now it is our Champagne Rosé. It is a blending of 15% Côteaux Champenois red wine and 85% champagne. It has a brut doasge and is mainly made from the harvest of 2006 – a very good year. We chose an old meunier vine nicknamed the ‘Peachtree’ (oddly enough there is a peachtree inside the vine) to make the red wine. The champagne has aged for more than three years and has a wonderful bouquet. It is really worth tasting.

H: And finally Gauthier, what inspires you?

G: Like everybody else I guess, I take inspiration from my various experiences in life. It is clear that my father is my primary source of inspiration as he is the one who built the infrastructure from scratch to make this champagne business in the 1970’s. His productive mind is definitely something to emulate if we want to take the business one step further. The location also inspires me; our house is next to the vines in this bucolic part of France. We have some projects in the pipeline, especially in the wine tourism field.