List of products by manufacturer Champagne GUIBORAT

Champagne Guiborat - VignArtea

CHAMPAGNE    CÔTE DES BLANCS    3 ha    SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE    WINEMAKER : Richard FOUQUET


ESTATE STORY


The GUIBORAT CHAMPAGNE Estate is located in the heart of Cramant, a classified Grand Cru village of Champagne, where the wines have for a long time a strong reputation. Richard Fouquet and his wife Karine, the owners, have 8 hectares of vineyards but they only grow 3 hectares, the remaining surface being used by the Lauret Perrier Champagne Estate.

Born in Paris, Richard took over the formerly run by the grandmother's domain when he was 18 and produced his first vintage in 1996.



TERROIR


The Côte des Blancs is framed by the Saran hillock to the north and by the Mount Aimé to the south. The slopes are gentle at the beginning, less than 8%, but become steeper and steeper and can reach up to 40% at the top of the hillside. The vines in this region are essentially based on Campanian chalk (Upper Cretaceous period from 83 to 70 Ma) and its alterations (chalk gravels).
The Upper Cretaceous is marked by a major transgression due to a general rise in the sea level: the waters arrive from the north-west and cover the Paris basin to the north and the Aquitaine basin to the south, without these two basins meeting. The transgression therefore remains weaker than the one encountered during the Jurassic area.

The Campanian chalk is made up of a pile of microscopic unicellular algae skeletons, sedimented in warm, shallow sea conditions, and forming a calcareous mud that gradually settled over millions of years.
In the Côte des Blancs, the chalk is very pure and has a high porosity which makes it friable and gives it a high water retention capacity. These properties ensure a good soil drainage and a regular water supply for the vines during the summer.
Its other advantage lies in its thermal and hygrometric regulation qualities, which are ideal for the wine conservation in the cellars.



WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING


There is no organic certification at Guiborat Estate. But the vines are grown according to the principles of organic farming, without using any chemicals. Treatments are generally based on herbal teas and essential oils. Richard Fouquet departs from this principle only if the weather is bad, when he has to cope with nature and to use chemicals to save the crops. An independence that is dear to him yet deprives him of any official certification.

The vines are 30 to 70 years old, and are planted on parcels shared on the classified Grand Cru communes of Cramant, Oiry, and Chouilly, next to the Saran hill.

Richard Fouquet makes a plot's vinification, meaning that the grapes of each plot are all fermented in separate vats or barrels. But the champagnes are generally made of a blend of plots, except for the exceptional vintages that are also plot's wine (made from grapes of a single plot): this is the case for the champagne Mont-Aigu.

Richard and Karine Fouquet do not cheat with the plot's designation of their cuvees: strict and honest, they classified the wine as a plot's one only if they consider the latest deserves it.

Their champagne's profile is unique. They are wines without any artifices and rarely marked by the wood. A style that they are constantly fine-tuning, little by little, and are trying to make as pur as possible: if for the former wines, the malolactic fermentation were done, the current wines did not the malolactic fermentation. They are classified as Extra-Brut, or Brut Nature when there is no addition of liquor: they are sapid and straight champagnes, a beautiful work!


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