Founded by seven families in 1947, and today operating as a kind of boutique co-operative, Champagne Palmer & Co has released another vintage of its top wine, Grands Terroirs 2015.
Champagne Palmer & Co concentrates its vineyard holdings in the Montagne de Reims: in the grand cru villages of Mailly and Verzenay and the premier cru villages of Trépail and Villers-Marmery. While they also have holdings in the Marne Valley, the Côte de Sézanne and the Côte des Bar, their prestige cuvée Grands Terroirs, channels those north- and north-east-facing slopes with power and precision.
The 2015 vintage is blended from 50% Pinot Noir, 38% Chardonnay and 12% Pinot Meunier, sourced from Mailly and Verzenay as well as Trépail, Villers-Marmery, Ludes, Chigny-les-Roses and Rilly-la-Montagne. Palmer & Co refers to the vintage as “exceptional” because it combined high temperatures and little rainfall – spelling little disease pressure and even ripening. Sunny days and cool nights in August, they say, allowed for “perfect” ripening.
Alongside this vintage wine, Palmer & Co also presented its portfolio, shifting the focus from a single vintage to something the house is famous for: its generous proportion of reserve wines used in the blend as well as its use of so-called ‘soleras.’ The Champenois borrowed this term from Jerez in Spain, where this system is used to age wine – and for Champagne there is no legal definition of what constitutes a ‘solera.’ In effect, it is a perpetual reserve of wines that is topped up with the new vintage every year, so very young, fresh wine is added to a multi-vintage reserve of many previous vintages, leading to a reserve wine that has the depth of mature wine and the verve of young wine. This adds a lot of depth and character to these wines.
