Jacquesson & Fils Champagne Cuvée No. 736
We number our Cuvees to give an idea of their age and to give to each the personality thought proper [to the foundational year, the current vintage.]
Two thousand eight started with a spring very chilly and rainy, with numerous frosts, followed by a very dry summer that stayed cool and windy, but without other remarkable climactic incident. This cool summer disturbed flowering just a little; but oidium, mildew, and grey rot are for all purposes nonexistent, a gift of that wind.
September was still cool, windy, and above all dry, without being very sunny.
As in 2002, one saw during the entire vegetative cycle, a relative deficiency of cool days, and that doesn’t impede ripening the grapes in excellent conditions, above all if you can get for yourself somewhat restricted yields resulting from attentive viticulture
The musts are rich in sugar and benefit from excellent acidity, allowing us to predict that we will have wines of great quality.
The early spring tastings confirm our expectations that at the Domaine Jacquesson, we taste perhaps the best grands vins made in our generation. Power, complexity, structure, and minerality, are a just recompense for the combination of the more than usually good harvest and the years of effort we have spent to perfect our viticultural practices and gain experience in vinification.
The wines are brought up in small new oak fuders, sitting upon the gross lies, with stirring up (batonnage); and then it is assembled to produce the Cuvee No. 736. If this harvest 2008 is the foundation of the Cuvee, reserve wines, issued mostly from the products of 2007 and 2006, and additionally helped by a proportion of the previous Cuvee no. 735 consisting overall of 34 percent of the assemblage to strengthen that effect. Avize and Oiry in the Cote des Blancs; in the great Côte des Blancs; Ay, Dizy and Hautvillers in the Grande Vallée de la Marne, la Cuvée held together upon the armature of the Grands and Premiers Crus
In our Domaine and its associated ones 53 percent of the vines are Chardonnay, 29 percent of Pinot Noir, and 18 percent of Pinot Meunier. The bottling, without the aid of filtration, produces, 252,992 bottles, 9,432 magnums, and 346 jeroboams.