A good Champagne is always elegant and extraordinary, but it’s hard to come up on the side of this exceptional bottle from Champagne Mandois. The producer himself calls them an ‘after dinner’ Champagne, and already when work with Le Clos began over 15 years ago, it was exactly the aim to create the perfect, exclusive end to the perfect, exclusive gastronomic experience.
The vines were carefully selected from among Mandois’ 40 sublime hectares of land, and this was done after a series of test tastings, which indicated that only a single field of 1.5 hectares gave exactly what was needed. It was a walled field with Pinot Meunier grapes, all of which are more than 60 years old.
The taste Mandois was looking for and found in this field is an experience out of the ordinary. With its ripe grape flavor and precise barrel aging, it is a Champagne that has an impressive intensity and an extraordinary complexity.
This is a Champagne that is the closest we can get to perfection in a bottle. The elegant and extraordinary end to an extravagant dinner.
Le Clos is one of the best you can find in Champagne. A single-field wine, where the grapes are specially selected to provide an experience that can act as the perfect ‘after-dinner Champagne.
About Mandois
Genuine and pure quality, founded on traditions with hundreds of years behind them. Champagne Mandois has not had to draw attention to itself with grand gestures and luxurious measures – the quality of the Champagne house’s products speaks for itself and over the centuries has achieved an impressive and deserved status as the preferred Champagne of the French Michelin restaurants.
And it is no wonder that Champagne Mandois has a quality that seems to be nothing less than divine. This is evidenced by the place in Le Guide Fleurus des Vins, the finest wine guide for French sommeliers – as well as the award as Vigneron de l’année 2003, which is one of the most prestigious awards in the French wine industry.
Heavenly – and almost divine
What today tastes like luxury and elegance actually started with austerity and abstinence from the Benedictine monk Brother Oudard. But there is a straight line from the thoughts he had when tending to the few vines at the monastery he had at home, and to the methods Jean Mandois swore by when he acquired his first vineyards in Epernay in 1735.
In 1860, it was Victor Mandois who founded the more commercial part of the Champagne house, and over the 1900s, the next generations developed the business into an internationally recognized brand, which today is considered one of the largest Champagne houses.
Today, Champagne Mandois has 34 hectares of vineyards, where all energy is put into creating the optimal Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir grapes for the house’s Champagne production. The vines are only plowed in every other row, so that the root network has even better space to spread, and this tradition has undoubtedly helped to ensure grape vines that can be even more intense in the way they collect nourishment.
Mandois also buys grapes from the best Grand Cru fields nearby, and together it gives a quality that has made the finest restaurants and sommeliers roll their eyes.
Storage in church chapel
The champagne is stored in 600 liter casks in very special surroundings under the chapel in the church in the village of Pierry just outside Epernay. And so the line is intact from Brother Oudard of the Benedictine monastery to the cellar under the chapel in Pierry and to the blissful and divine quality of Champagne Mandois’s wines.
Whether it is the classic dry Champagne or the crisp Brut Nature, which Michelin restaurants and gourmet experts praise, Champagne Mandois is a house that delivers top-class products, and it seems that the quality only increases every year. Whether it’s the classic Brut Origine, the luxurious Cuvee Victor or the extravagant Champagne Le Clos.
