The Grand Soir 2012 cuvée from Louis de Sacy is a vintage champagne, made from the 2012 harvest.
This is a cuvée that speaks of red fruit and spice, before a touch of honey begins to show through. The palate unfolds wide and mineral, carried by a saline edge that extends the freshness right through the finish.
This is a bottle you can pour from the aperitif onwards, alongside comté gougères for instance, before bringing it to the table with poultry and morels.
The Terroir
The Grand Soir 2012 cuvée is a blend of:
- 29% Chardonnay
- 71% Pinot Noir
These grapes come from two villages in the Montagne de Reims: Verzy, classified Grand Cru and situated on the Grande Montagne de Reims, where Louis de Sacy tends his vines, and Cernay-les-Reims, which rounds out the blend. Verzy's Grand Cru classification singles out the plots where the grapes reach their greatest quality, a benchmark that carries real weight in the final balance of the cuvée.
On this terroir of the Montagne de Reims, Pinot Noir, which dominates the blend by a wide margin, lends the wine its structure and depth, while Chardonnay adds freshness and tension.
The Winemaking
Jonathan Sacy, the winemaker at the helm of Louis de Sacy, chose to vinify this Pinot Noir-led blend entirely in stainless steel tanks. This choice preserves the brightness of the fruit, with no oaky notes. Malolactic fermentation was carried out in full, softening the natural acidity of this 2012 vintage and lending a velvety character that's noticeable on the palate. After bottling, a wafer-thin dosage of 2.2 g/L places this cuvée in the Extra Brut category, a style that lets the wine express itself with no perceptible sugar, for a clean, almost saline finish. The result is a Grand Soir that keeps all the tension of the Chardonnay while gaining, thanks to the Pinot Noir, a welcome, fleshy roundness.
The 2012 Vintage
The 2012 growing season began with a harsh winter on the Montagne de Reims, with severe frosts that left their mark on the vines of Verzy. A wet spring prolonged the uncertainty, but summer turned things around: generous sunshine from late July onwards allowed the grapes to reach full ripeness. On this north-facing slope, Pinot Noir in particular benefited from this late warm spell, gaining in concentration despite lower yields. This interplay between winter freshness and summer ripeness gave this cuvée a dense richness and a pure, vivid fruit character, the hallmark of a vintage widely regarded as one of the finest of the decade for the Montagne de Reims.
