A Visit with the Goutorbe Family at Champagne Egrot
One of the highlights of this trip, among many, has been a chance to visit Elisabeth Goutorbe at her winery (EGROT) and at her home. Many of you have met her and tasted her magnificent Champagnes at our annual Champagne Tent Events. She is charming and bubbly and very, very, fun. As are her husband, Jean Marie, and daughters Lily (bon anniversaire!) and Camille. We started in the beautiful town of Aÿ to visit Elisabeth and Jean Marie. The last time that I saw her winery, a number of years ago, it was just starting to be refurbished. What a difference had taken place, from the sleek equipment to the beautiful new tasting room! Prior to leaving on this trip, I was able to do a blind tasting of great-year, good-year, and not-so-good-year Champagnes for the staff. Included in this was Elisabeth’s 2011 vintage Brut. Nobody guessed that it was a more difficult vintage because it was so good! It was the same for her 2003 vintage, a vintage that I am generally leery of. She seems to have that magic touch of turning straw into gold. After a tour of the new machinery and tanks, we popped down to the cellar to see the wines aging. Although there was a relatively decent amount of wine there, in a few months, the quantities will balloon with the magnificent 2019 vintage being cellared to begin their transformation into bubbly. Luckily, the cellar has been largely untouched and retains its centuries’ old character. Ah, nothing like that French charm, is there?
Before tasting the 2019 vin clair, we tasted her current selections of Extra Brut and 2011 Brut. The Extra Brut is very clean, of course, but the underlying rich apple undertones come through. It has a long finish of saline and spice that lasts and lasts. The 2011 Brut showed wonderfully with crunchy apple fruit and lemon curd. A nice overlay of toasted nuts on this one, and, like the Extra Brut, it had a long, spicy finish. A super exciting development in their program is the addition of a 2016 vintage Brut in magnum only. It has a bright flowered nose with a lot of citrus fruits. On the palate, white stone fruits and limestone. Very, very pretty and floral, with a low dosage of 4g/l. I can’t wait until these come in! They are really, really, good.
That evening, we were super lucky to go to Elisabeth and Jean Marie’s new home, just a few minutes from the winery. She made an absolutely wonderful braised beef stew with potatoes and a salad. On these trips, though the restaurant meals are impressive and delicious, it is usually the home-cooked meals that stand out the most. Gary and I are both suckers for hearty and tasty meals such as this. We even got to have a piece of cake to celebrate Lily’s 12th birthday. What fun! It was a great way to end day 3 of our Champagne odyssey.
– Scott Beckerley