“An amazing price for such a mature wine.”
26 March 2021

Pascal Doquet is one of the leading lights in Champagne’s organic movement. He’s a hands-on grower nurturing pockets of old vines in the Cotes des Blancs. Very much the vigneron, his vines sit like verdant islands amongst the lunar landscape of Champagne’s barren vineyards. Ten years ago his approach to soil health might have been considered ‘out there’. Today, it’s seen as enlightened, gaining converts from houses big and small. Combining great fruit with low tech winemaking and long ageing prior to disgorgement, the Doquet wines offer a genuine glimpse of Champagne production as an artisan pursuit.

With Horizon tending to go directly to our restaurant partners, Arpège represents the entry point into Pascal’s philosophy for our private customers. A blend of three premier cru vineyards from the Southern Côtes des Blancs villages of Vertus, Villeneuve, Le Mont-Aimé, it is aged for a full six years sur latte; an astonishing length of time given the price point. This bottling is the wine Jancis recently described as “Beautifully mature. Really appetising but firm enough to be drunk with food. Long. An amazing price for such a mature wine.” The full note can be found here.

We’re also delighted to present two special releases from the brilliant 2008 vintage – a year that offers lovers of the Doquet wines a chance to taste them at their very best. In Pascal’s Vertus you have the Chardonnay richness of the most southern village of the Côte des Blancs married to the raciness and torque of a great vintage. It is a wine of volume, depth and structure, backlit by the luminescence and acidity of 2008. It is full of character yet as fine and detailed as we’ve ever seen from this cuvée.

In Mesnil you have a wine of genuine sophistication. The sheer chalkiness and austerity of a great Mesnil terroir is bolstered by depth charge of intensity. It is finer in texture than the Vertus, with a striking salinity and very savoury complex minerality that is as interesting as it is utterly delicious. Fine and very long, it’s the best wine of Pascal’s we’ve ever tasted.

These wines are in stock and available for immediate delivery.