After releasing its pink sibling from the 2008 vintage, Celebris Rosé, in October last year, it is now the white wine's turn to be presented.
Bertrand Verduzier, international director at Champagne Gosset said at the London launch: “This is just the eighth release of Celebris, 27 years after the first release in 1995 of the 1988 vintage. It is a limited edition of 15,000 bottles.”
Verduzier continued: “The idea originally of Celebris came from Albert Gosset, he wanted to create a cuvée with a lot of freedom, something that would be the contrary of a recipe, something that you would never replicate but be the essence of the Celebris style. We don’t speak of prestige cuvées at Gosset, we speak of cuvées d’exception, exceptional cuvées. Celebris is not outside the range or above the range, it is very much part of the range. Here we are very much in the centre of the Gosset style, but to achieve the goal of bringing additional depth, structure, density and ageing, you need a certain year.”
Most other houses have already released their 2008 vintages, but Gosset cellar master Odilon de Varine explained: “At Gosset, in order to push this style, all the wines are tasted blind before blending, we do not know where they come from. That is why sometimes the quality is there to make a Celebris, some special vibration, not each year.” To characterise the 2008 vintage, he spoke of its “bonhomie – which for me is the main character for 2008. It was a cool year that was saved in September. We could save it because the grapes had enough freshness to accept this late maturity – that is why we are nearly the last to launch this vintage.
“Time is something very important and I think we don’t do good things in a hurry,” de Varine said. “We take time to make good things, and it is the same for a wine, it needs time to rest from all the things it goes through. And with this one we chose to wait for more than 10 years, feeding the wine from the lees. This is what we are looking for at Celebris, it is special maturity that comes from time on lees. That is the key point, to balance the natural acid of the grape. The wine needs time to express itself and the acidity needs this time to balance.”
Gosset Celebris 2008 Extra Brut will be available from 21 June, it was disgorged in 2021 with a dosage of 4.8g/l.
