On an early summer evening in Anselme Selosse’s Champagne cellar, he is holding court with a group of wine-passionate visitors while downplaying his own importance.
“It’s not about a brand,” says Selosse in French. With 50 years of experience behind him, he is coolly modest in jeans and a polo shirt. “It’s about representing a place.”
“I don’t consider myself a winemaker,” he explains to the group, some of whom have travelled across Europe or the globe to stay at his small hotel next door in the tiny Côte des Blancs town of Avize. “I consider myself a midwife or obstetrician bringing a baby into the world. Whether it is beautiful or not is unimportant.”
The irony is as delicious and French as a mille-feuille: Domaine Jacques Selosse has the kind of elite brand power others dream about. His cult Champagnes are among the most acclaimed, priciest and, at times, controversial bubblies in the world.
This year, Selosse’s current release of “Initial” Brut ($245)—his largest-volume cuvée at 2,750 cases—scored 95 points in Wine Spectator blind tastings. His deeply nuanced “Substance” Extra Brut ($475, 275 cases)—bristling with Sherry notes and made using a solera-style blending system—scored 96 points.
Farming and Philosophy
Selosse’s Champagnes can divide people into exuberant followers or detractors. For his part, he remains the charismatic philosopher-vigneron, disinterested in fame and wealth but passionate about terroir and translating his chalky grand cru vineyards into complex liquids.
Since 1974, when he joined the small Champagne house started by his father, Selosse has shaken up Champagne. Working in the Chardonnay-dominated Côte des Blancs, south of Épernay, he became a north star of the region’s artisanal grower-producer movement by championing terroir, eliminating pesticides, pushing fruit ripeness, fermenting on wild yeasts, and extending the aging of his wines in cask and in bottle.
Now at 70, he is officially retired, having turned over the domaine to his son, Guillaume, in 2018. Yet Selosse hasn’t gone anywhere. He is still experimenting in the winery and vineyards as if in search of some new truth.
That afternoon, I accompanied Selosse through vineyards a short walk from his winery for the usual discussion of site soils, microclimates and the like. But beyond those aspects of terroir, Selosse, who studied biology before enology, is obsessed with ecosystems at the molecular level.
“The idea is above all not to be a colonialist in the vineyard—not be a boss,” Selosse says. “If I direct an ecosystem, it is no longer authentic.”
By this point after berry set, most area vineyards have already been mechanically trimmed in identical rows. But the Selosses have waited, giving their grape bunches the maximum window to get established before workers touch the vines.
We are in a vineyard called Les Bauves, which goes into the “Initial” blend. Nearby, a vineyard team led by Guillaume’s wife, Caroline, is now trellising and pruning by hand at synchronized speed, with arms and leaves flying.
Selosse, cradling an unlit cigarette in one hand, explains his journey in 1990 to organic farming, then some years later to biodynamics and finally to his 2002 permaculture epiphany that came from meeting in Japan with Masanobu Fukuoka, the farmer, naturalist and philosopher who wrote The One-Straw Revolution. “I abandoned biodynamics, because it wasn’t adaptable to nature,” he explains. “You can’t have a recipe for something that is variable.”
“I realized, in the West, our religion is a set of dictates of what to do and not to do,” he adds. “Fukuoka was a Taoist, and it’s a philosophy more adaptable to nature.”
For the last 20 years, the Selosses have abandoned farming labels and practiced their own approach to soil-boosting, beyond-organic viticulture, which changes with the vintage. “We practice a kind of Eastern medicine,” Selosse says.
A Scientific Approach
This year has been a challenging one in Champagne, with near-constant rains into July bringing an epidemic of mildews. (When I touched base with Selosse last week mid-harvest, he cursed the vintage in categorical terms as “Dante-esque, horrible, unprecedented in my 50 years.” But he added: “It’s driven by our stubborn refusal to give up.”)
In addition to spraying the usual copper and sulfur antifungal treatments permitted in organic viticulture, the Selosses responded by doing a lot of canopy work by hand: removing affected leaves, generally trimming and thinning the north- or east-facing parts of each vine.
“The best treatments are the sun, the wind and high temperatures,” Selosse explains.
The Selosses’ close observations of the growing cycle also directly affect how they make the wines. To demonstrate, Selosse plucks one berry out of a nascent green bunch. Holding it between his fingers, he slices it open with his thumbnail, revealing a pair of pale seeds inside.
“Seeds contain tannins and essential oil,” he says. “If there are two seeds or more [on average per grape], you risk having overly woody-tasting wine if you ferment in smaller new barrels.”
So the Selosses sample and monitor seed counts. Harvests from plots in which grapes typically have one seed are fermented in 228-liter Burgundy barrels, sometimes new. The fruit from plots with typically two seeds or more is fermented in 400-liter, used barrels.
“I detest technique, but I adore science,” Selosse says. “With science you are able to see things differently tomorrow than you do today.”
Selosse leads me a couple of hundred yards south along the plateau into a century-old vineyard called “Les Chantereines,” which slopes gently eastward. The site contributes about half the grapes for his “Substance” cuvée and additionally produces tiny quantities (about 50 cases annually) of a “Les Chantereines” single-vineyard bottling—part of Selosse’s “Lieux Dits” collection.
“It’s all about finesse,” Selosse says of the vineyard, which gets morning sun and has 30 inches (relatively deep) of clay topsoil, which typically adds ripeness and structure to the fruit and wines. “It has body, but it’s not muscle,” Selosse observes. “It’s like a smile.”
Prized Champagne vineyards are typically shared by different owners who work scattered plots. The Selosses own and farm about 50 vineyard plots totaling a mere 21 acres—almost all in the Côte des Blancs, with a tiny amount of Pinot Noir crus in the Vallée de la Marne and Montagne de Reims.
Everything about Champagne—from its architecture, forests and rigorously tidy agricultural landscapes to the butter-based sauces in its cuisine—is northern French. Yet Selosse has drawn a lot of inspiration from the farmers in Europe’s more laid-back, sunny south.
“I am fascinated with the Mediterranean basin,” Selosse says, revealing one of his many paradoxes. “Sometimes we [Northerners] consider them lazy, but they understand that nature can make extraordinary things, without forcing it.”
Continue reading the story of Anselme Selosse in Robert Camuto’s next column, coming on Oct. 15.
