This is to say, the wines he sent me some time in the middle of last year, which reached me around All Saints Day, and to which I’m finally yielding to my constant temptation to lunge at them with unseemly eagerness.
There are a few cuvées MIA – a zero-dosage bottling which I’ve actually never tasted, his two cask-made wines (the Rive Gauche/Rive Droit which I like a lot albeit it pales next to the Special Club, and his new wine from the superb Dizy parcel Clos Leon, also cask made but more inferentially, tasting a bit like a Raveneau Chablis. He thought I’d quake at the wood flavor, but the wine is excellent and you should get some if you can).
The Champagnes are classy, gorgeous and sensible. Jean Paul Hebrart’s domain stands as a pinnacle in the Champagne grower community.
A final note; as quickly as these wines move through the market there are probably more recent disgorgements than these. I know for a fact that the Aÿ Blanc de Noirs is into 2016.
A funny Hébrart anecdote to share: last April a restauranteur friend and I road tripped from Paris to Champagne for a few days of indulgence and discovery...whilst visiting Hébrart for a reserved 10 am dégustation, it just so happened the two of us were to share an extensive tasting with an 8 man group of Dutch wine connoisseurs...they were a jolly and clubby bunch, having arrived Champagne Safari like, kitted with their smart Land Rovers, Mercedes wagons, etc. , all dressed in sporty jackets with their regal wine club crest in full display, looking rather posh and dandy. It seemed a tad silly for the occasion, yet who was I to deny that these lads indeed exuded an impressive 'espri…
p.s. The 2018 Special Club is fruit driven, but so good.
I was late to these wines (you steered Laura and I to the table in fall 2019) but have since become as enamored of them as I am of Vilmart and Peters (and Gimonne, and…).