‘A Very Fine Vintage’ – Florent Roques-Boizel on 2020 Champagne Harvest
In theme with our previous blog post, we thought it would be interesting to continue to talk about wine harvests, and who better to discuss the topic than the head of a Champagne house. Florent Roques-Boizel is the sixth-generation chief executive of Champagne Boizel, and he offers us an interesting insight into the wines of the 2020 vintage and the process of choosing the right ones to make into their wonderful cuvees. The selection process perfected over the 185-year history of the house results in a sublime Boizel range, which EWGA has the pleasure of distributing since August of 2019.
Each year, the Boizel family tastes over one hundred clear wines from fifty champagne crus, each with their own unique personality to decide which ones will make it into their cuvees. They select their favourites from the Grands and Premiers Crus of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and choose the ideal Pinot Meunier crus to complete the blend. To reveal their champagnes’ full potential, every Boizel cuvee is aged for a minimum of 3 years on the lees, the best vintages for 7 to 15 years.
Speaking of the best, Florent revealed that the 2020 harvest will end up as a Grand Vintage 2020 – a champagne type, Boizel only produces in the best vintage years. This will be joined by their excellent Joyau De France range, which will be available in 10 to 12 years. If you would like to discover what similar, exceptional Boizel vintages were like, we currently list Joyau De France 2004, Joyau De France Chardonnay 2007 and the Boizel Grand Vintage 2009. Get in touch to discuss your requirements.
Founded in 1834 by Auguste and Julie Boizel, the champagne house was continually helmed by a Boizel family member, passing their wealth of experience from one generation to another. Florent Roques-Boizel has an abundance of knowledge in his own right working as the export manager for Boizel since 2010 and being around the family business most of his life, before succeeding his mother as the CEO of Champagne Boizel in 2019.
Florent declares the 2020 vintage to be ‘a very fine vintage’, complementing the wines as ‘fruity, luscious, generous and very expressive’, adding that the wines ‘offer great substance, structure and volume on the palate’.
This sounds very exciting and we cannot wait for new Boizel champagnes, which will undoubtedly continue their award-winning ways – like the current Boizel Brut Reserve that was the 2020 Decanter World Wine Awards Platinum winner. Learn more about the 2020 champagne vintage by reading the full interview below:
Florent, how would you describe the clear wine tastings that take place each year?
The tasting of clear wines is one of the highlights in the life of our House. As a family, with my brother Lionel and our parents Evelyne and Christophe, we taste the wines from the previous year’s harvest: more than one hundred wines from fifty crus representative of the Champagne region. Each wine has its own characteristics, so it is necessary to decide which ones, when blended, will give the best champagnes and reflect the House’s style. It takes a little experience, but we like to think that there is also some intuition involved. It’s a fairly magical moment.
What do you think of the wines from the 2020 vintage?
2020 will be a very fine vintage. Our tastings revealed fruity, luscious, generous and very expressive wines; wines that offer great substance, structure and volume on the palate. This year the Pinot Noirs have stolen the show, especially those from the Montagne de Reims. They have true power underpinned by very fine tautness. With each tasting, I am always delighted to see how our decisions have brought out the best quality in the wines. Our work on grape selection is fundamental. We choose to press the grapes according to their origin and to vinify the harvest from each vineyard individually, to better understand the special characteristics of each plot. We are developing barrel-maturing of the wines. All this allows us to obtain the widest and most precise range possible and makes the composition of our blends particularly exciting. This year, we also worked on single-vineyard batches that we vinified in vats as well as in barrels. I like the idea of being able to progress a little more each year, to gain in precision by working on plot-by-plot selection, on the identity of each wine.
When will the wines from the 2020 harvest be ready for drinking?
We are preparing a Grand Vintage 2020, which will be ready to drink in 7 to 8 years. Joyau de France 2020 will be available within 10 to 12 years. This might seem a long time to wait, yet it is also very short for a champagne house that is nearly two hundred years old. In any case, these are the ideal times for our wines to be enjoyed at their full maturity.
