Getting deep with Anselme
It’s been worse than a bad year in Champagne.
“Dante-esque, horrible, unprecedented in my 50 years!” curses Champagne legend Anselme Selosse from his winery and vineyards in Avize (Côte des Blancs). But he adds, “It’s driven by our stubborn refusal to give up.”
Over the last half-century Selosse has been driven by a stubborn quest to go further into his terroirs.
Anselme Selosse in his vineyard near Avize winery
He’s created a polarizing love-it-or-loathe-it style of deep long-aged champagnes that taste of time and the chalky slopes of his hometown.
He’s an iconoclast who talks about farming in terms of eastern philosophy, who considers himself not a winemaker but a midwife obstetrician and despises the idea of “a brand” (even though he’s created the kind of mythic brand many producers would die for.)
He is a man of many other paradoxes who says “I detest technique but I adore science,” who abandoned Biodynamics as too formulaic and says he has been influenced more by the Mediterranean than his northern France.
Selosse in cellar pointing out chemical formula he has scrawled in chalk. Photo @ Robert Camuto
This month, Robert Camuto Meets… features a pair of conversations with Selosse in his vineyards and winery.
Read Part 1 (free) at winespectator.com