Suenen Cramant Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Les Robarts 2013

Champagne nerds might recognise this lieu-dit as one of the sources of Pascal Agrapart’s stunning Avizoise cuvée. Suenen’s vines lie across the border in the Cramant section of this vineyard, at the top of a small hill. Originally planted in 1952, then further in 1978 and 1984, the average age of Suenen’s vines is 37 years old with a large portion of massale selection vines. 

Suenen describes this terroir—30 cm of silty clay over degraded, upper Campanian chalk—as combining the tension and salinity of Oiry with the concentration of Chouilly. It is the most textural of Suenen’s four lieux-dits releases and also, arguably the most complex. Depth and concentration yet with great freshness and drive—it’s impossible to describe neatly but it’s superb. 

The 2103 was aged in a single Stockinger 20-hl foudre for 10 months before bottling in July 2014. As with all the single-site wines in 2013, this spent five years on lees until disgorgement, with 2 g/L, in June 2019.