Rosé des Riceys (Champagne)

Emmanuel Horiot in front of the double-basket Marmonier press (1956)Les Riceys, Aube (Champagne)
Here is one of the littlest-known rosé still wine with ancient roots : the Rosé des Riceys. You'll have a hard time finding a bottle of Rosé des Riceys, even in Paris, and the amateurs of this inimitably aromatic and lightly tannic rosé routinely have to drive to the very few family wineries where it's made on the edge of Champagne to buy some. The wine had its era of glory long time ago, particularly before the phyloxerra and also before the invention of Champagne wines, and King Louis XIV is said to have been an avid consumer of this wine. He discovered the wine because a group of workers taking part to the construction of the Chateau de Versailles, and originating from this corner of Champagne, had brought their wines along. He had a bottle brought to him for a try, loved it and ordered more from Les Riceys. Provence was too far from Versailles or Paris and rosé wines didn't travel that well then.
An other oddity of this wine is that it comes from a corner the Champagne region just a couple of kilometers from the Burgundy limits : this still wine comes from a tiny terroir named Les Riceys made up with three close-knit villages named Riceys-Haut, Riceys Haute-Rive et Riceys-Bas. We can credit the monks of the abbey of Molesme (which is located a few kilometers away) for this wine, as they are the ones who selected these particular south-oriented slopes to make this very aromatic bright-red rosé. Actually each of the three Riceys villages were backed by competing bishops, respectively the ones of Dijon (Riceys-Haut), Troyes (Riceys-Bas) and Auxerre (Riceys Haute-Rive), that's why the churches are particularly interesting (there's a church in each Riceys even though they are barely a kilometer from each other). I think that these religious people were wise indeed because they gave a good place to wine in their world order and probably competed on this field too [see this sculpture featuring foot stomping on the church of Riceys-Bas]...All the best slopes (côtes) of the Riceys like for example the Côte de Tronchois were owned by the Abbey of Molesme.
Altogether, only 65 000 to 80 000 bottles (more like he first than the latter) of this atypical rosé are made yearly by the 20 estates on the tiny Appellation (only 30 hectares are actually used for this rosé). The three biggest producers of this still rosé barely make 10 000 bottles of it each, and not every year, only when the vintage is sunny enough for the right ripeness and natural sugar.
Scroll down this precise map of Champagne and enlarge it when you spot the purple area above "21 Côte D'Or" : this is the terroir des Riceys, and as you can see, this is the largest in Champagne.

Pinot Noir vineyards just outside Riceys Bas (road to Chaource)The Rosé-des-Riceys Appellation rules are among the strictest for a rosé wine and the goal is to perpetuate a vinification mode initiated by the monks who overlooked this small wine region. The grapes must come from old vines (at least 12 years old). Because the Pinot Noir grapes have to fit to a particular level of natural ripeness and because the area sits also in the Champagne Appellation, the less-than-20 vignerons of Les Riceys don't make Rosé des Riceys every year. This far-flung region of Champagne is the only one to have three Appellations at the same time : Champagne, Coteaux Champenois and Rosé des Riceys. When the conditions are not optimal for Rosé des Riceys, the growers make usually Champagne with their grapes of Pinot Noir. Actually, it is even easier to make Champagne here than succeed to comply with the Rosé des Riceys rules, plus, consecutive decades of bubble years and high-and-easy sales of Champagne (I mean bubbly Champagne) pushed opportunist vignerons to let down the little-known still Rosé and concentrate on the bubbles. Many, but not the Horiot family : In the 1970s' when the temptation to bank everything on bubbles was high, Emmanuel's father Pierre and grandfather Jules were the last vignerons around to keep making Rosé des Riceys. It must be said that according to the INAO rules, if wine from a given Appellation isn't made at all for 5 consecutive years, the Appellation isn't valid anymore and ceases to exist. Emmanuel says that it was then more profitable to sell the grapes to the Champagne houses and Négoce than to make Rosé des Riceys, but never mind, this was a deep-rooted tradition and Pierre & Jules Horiot maintained it against all odds [note down folks : here again we see how brave people who were'nt just square business types allowed a rare qualitative wine to survive and prosper back to our glasses. Kudos to these few and proud rebels ! ]. So this particular family winery can be credited for allowing the Rosé des Riceys to survive as an Appellation. Later when the INAO and other growers awakened to the importance of this little-known wine heritage, other vignerons joined and helped revive this ancient rosé. Incidently, the Horiot family enters its 13th generation as vignerons (if we count Emmanuel's son Jules who was born recently). They traced their ancestry back to 1600, and the Horiots were always vignerons, sometimes also coopers at the same time because winemaking didn't make a living.
After the Rosé des Riceys wine was revived, an ad campaign was even made in the Paris Metro (I never saw it or I don't remember) and for neutrality reasons the vigneron featuring the ad was a retired grower of Les Riceys with no descendants to follow suit [see the ad on the left]. His name was Didi Pion (he passed away since), he was a hunting pal of Stéphane's grandfather Jules and he was very proud to have had his portrait on giant posters in the Paris Metro...The age-old open wooden vat used for the Rosé des RiceysEmmanuel Horiot receives us in the large room with a fireplace on the side where the pickers have lunch during the harvest. Nell the dog follows us inside first but he wants to play and is a bit unruly so he's sent back in the courtyard. They used to take Nell to the vineyards for the harvest but he always came back with his long fur sticky and dirty with the crushed Pinot Noir so they stopped...
Everything is hand picked of course here and about 10 pickers do the job. The vineyards make up 8 hecares (plus 0,5 ha recently replanted) and it's all in the vicinity near Riceys-Bas. Most of it is Pinot Noir, with a bit of Pinot Meunier and barely 2 hectares of Chardonnay. Emmanuel and his sister who joins us along the inteerview says that there's no limitation on wine for the pickers' meals and they all make a good team. The harvest lasted about 10 days, it lasted a bit less than usual because the yields were lower in 2009. He says that the Pinot-Noir clusters that we saw still hanging on the vines were left over to respect the yield quota.The quota changes every year and in 2009 it was 9700 kilograms per hectare (they were lowered because of excessive stock). Actually he picked at 13 000 kilos/hectare because thus he could make individual reserves this year. A particularity of the Champagne rules is this possibility to set wine on the side in expectation of accidental low yields in the following years. This "réserve individuelle" is blocked and he can't bottle it. Because he has lots of old vines, he hadn't enough grapes to reach the quotas limits of these last years which was 15 500 kilos. He will be able to use this wine when the quotas (which is applied for the three types of wines) rises back.
In the area, the Rosé des Riceys is much older than Champagne as they were allowed to make bubblies only after 1911 : there were riots then as the growers were particularly suffering, this was the Révolte des Vignerons de l'Aube. They couldn't stand the fact that the Marnais (the Champagne Houses from the Marne) came here to buy juice and make Champagne with it while the Aubois (the growers of this southern region) were then forbidden to make some themselves with their own juice. The revolt will open the way to the full integraption to the Champagne Appellation in 1927.The vatroom with the giropallets loaded with ChampagneThe Riceys region has a total vineyard surface of 866 hectares of which 300 hectares could be theorically vinified as Rosé des Riceys but only 30 hectares are actually used for this still rosé. The selected vineyards allowed for the Rosé des Riceys Appellation are south-oriented slopes because the Pinot Noir grapes must reach a natural ripeness of 10° (for Champagne it is 8,5°-9,5°). Emmanuel Horiot remembers that in 2004 he had only 9,5° of natural sugar on the Tronchois slopes (one of the good terroirs of Les Riceys) and he couldn't make anything with it. The wine is limited at 12° and if the vintage produces more natural sugar in the grapes they have to ask for a special allowance from the Appellation bodies. To reach the 12° when the natural sugar is lower (which is almost always the case), they chaptalize like it's the norm in Champagne and Emmanuel says that in 2009 they didn't need lots of sugar because of the very nice summer. He noted that on the 25 marcs (a marc is a 4000kg press load) that they made altogether at Horiot he had an average of natural sugar of 10,4° which is parrticularly good for the region. The last vintage with similar sugar levels was 2003, the heat-wave year. But 2009 will be a better vintage because the acidity has been much higher. Here like for most of Champagne wineries the vinification style is conventional and re-acidification is the norm when the vintage is thought to require it [makes me think there's progress to make in that regard].
The Rosé des Riceys is a bled rosé, the whole-clustered grapes ferment first in large wooden vats (at Horiot they are more than 100 years old) to get the color from the skins. The first wooden vats take a bit more time to ferment, but the following profit from the higher temperature of the vat. In the midst of the fermentation they separate the juice from the grapes. The color is not central for Les Riceys even if it's known to be darker than in Provence for example. What is central is the taste and the vinification talent here is to get that particular taste of cooked cherry every year. The Rosé des Riceys ages very well even if it changes gradually after a long laying-down time, Emmanuel says that they have 20-year old bottles that fare very well.The cellar : The old pièces for the vinification of the roséWhen the grapes arrive at the winery, they're put to ferment in the open wooden vats and then after a careful monitoring to get the perfect taste (and the color), they're pressed. Here at Horiot they use a vintage Marmonier press dating from 1956 [see picture on top]. There are only two such presses still in use in the Champagne area. Marmonier is an old brand which was bought up by Pressoirs Coquard since. It is a double-basket press (you can see the second basket in the background) which is powered by water pressure. When the first basket (in the foreground) is pressed, the press moves to the second basket thanks to an ingenious rotative system (you can see the circular rail on the ground).
The yeasts used for the Rosé des Riceys are as usually purchased laboratory yeasts, they are not of the same type than for the typical Champagne bubbly, this is a strain suited for still colored wines. He recognizes that there was a time when they didn't add any industrial yeasts : they would just brush the wooden vats a bit with water and let them that way until the next harvest, there was probably yeasts that survived year to year and helped start the fermentation at the following vintage. Emmanuel says that because he has less wooden vats now (he had to let down a few of them because they were too old and now works with only two) he has less time to go through the fermentation and considers that he can't afford to wait the indigenous yeasts to do the job by themselves. As he makes also one or two marcs of Champagne Rosé plus some red Coteaux Champenois for a Négoce house, he has to find the time for all this. This year (2009) he made two marcs (8000 kilograms) of Rosé des Riceys bit he doesnt make this wine every year. His last vintages of Rosé des Riceys were in 2005 and in 2003. The 2003 is on the market and the 2005 is still in the cellar. When he doesn't make Rosé des Riceys, he makes more Champagne as the rosé production (or any Coteaux Champenois) bites into his quota (yield) allowance for the year.Emmanuel Horiot in the cellarThe fermentation stage of the Rosé des Riceys takes place in vats and then the wine is racked into casks in the cellar for the elevage. These casks have already been through many years and vintages and Stéphane says they're about 20 years old. I didn't count them but I remember there were about a dozen of them in the cellar. These casks still bring a positive result on the wine in spite of their age and anyway Emmanuel says that he doesn't need the tannins of the wood for this wine. The malolactic fermentation takes place by itself in spring. He doesn't use external yeasts for the malo, except in 2009 (for the 2008 wines) because for some unknown reason (he says all his neighbors noticed the same thing) the malolactic fermentation didn't seem to want to start last spring. So except for 2009 he doesn't force the malolactic fermentation and one of the reason is also that unlike elsewhere he doesn't "heat" the wine to accelerate the process.
The foudres on the picture was a choice of Emmanuel's father (who passed away in 2006) and who wanted to experiment with this type of elevage in foudres. Up to now they use very moderately these foudres because the wood is stil prominent, so for example the Rosé des Riceys 2003 spent one day in there only after the cask elevage. They put what they call VO (vin ordinaire) to soften the foudres year after year in the perspective of its future use. The vins ordinaires are the still wines resulting from the second press (taille) and which is less qualitative, they don't sell it and it will be sent to the distillery Goyard in Ay. For the information, here in Champagne the first press is called cuvée and the second press taille.
We taste the wine :
__Horiot Père & Fils, Rosé des Riceys 2003. The bottle has a dark fall-leaf color which suits well this long-keep rosé wine. The wine has a clear ruby color edging on coral. Stéphane serves it at about 10-11° C (cellar temperature) which he says is better than the colder temperature at which other rosés are poured. This lets the aromas of this wine express themselves best, he adds. Crushed strawberry notes, jam. B. notes a neat attack with a refined structure. Nice ample mouth. Long mouth also. After a while (we chat a lot) the aromas develop : B. feels some wild rose notes (she's good as naming what she feels) for example. Definitely a unique wine of its kind. This is also a pleasure wine but it has the backbone to go with food I think. As we took our time, its temperature probably reached something like 14°C and it was opening itself generously this way. A bottle of Rosé des Riceys costs 12 Euro.Champagne cellar : elevage and riddling giropalletsThere are three Champagne wines at Horiot Père & Fils : a Champagne Rosé (maceration - Pinot Noir), a white Champagne Brut made of 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay, and a white Cuvée Spéciale (Cuvée Jean Baptiste, also a Brut) Champagne with 50% Chard/Pinot-Noir. Tey're all Brut and the dosage is 15 centiliter. He makes his liqueur d'expédition himself and doesn't buy it ready-made, like this MCR (môut concentré rectifié) that may others buy. Emmanuel Horiot says that if every one uses the same standardized liqueur all the Champagne wines will taste the same and he doesn't want his Champ to taste like his neighbor's. His father also always made his own liqueur d'expédition and he likes that. For the information the Rosé des Riceys costs 12 Euro a bottle and the Champagne barely more at 12,5 Euro for the Champagne Brut, 13,8 Euro for the Cuvée Jean Baptiste and 13,5 Euro for he Champagne Rosé.
We taste the Champagne wines with Emmanuel sisters and mother who joined us, plus a friend vigneron [pic on left].
__Horiot Père et Fils, Champagne Rosé. Small bubbles in steady vertical lines. Here also the Pinot Noir has given the wine its marked color [pic on right]. Fruity aromas, strawberry, strawberry jam. 13,5 Euro. About the small bubbles, Emmanuel says that the Champagne wines or the bubblies in general which have big bubbles have often been heated : some winemakers heat the wines to speed or start artificially the malolactic fermentation.
__Horiot Pére et Fils, Champagne Cuvée Jean Baptiste (white). Thin bubbles in steady streams. 50% 2006, 50% 2005 wines and 50% Pinot Noir / 50% Chardonnay. Wheat notes on the nose. Brioched notes too with lemon and orange peel. 13,8 Euro.
As B. asks if they know about the color of the wines in a distant past in Champagne and about the roussets which were these lightly-dark white wines, Emmanuel says that in the past the Champagne white wines had a darker yellow color (especially the ones made with Pinot Noir) because the wines weren't artificially bleached. Today most Champagne Pinot-Noir juices get their clear color with the use of additives like enological charcoal [This question of the use of additives to change the color for marketing reasons is an untold story of commercial wineries and I wrote on the subject in my Domaine Le Reire post - The amateurs of Jacques Sélosse's Champagne wines now understand why his wines have an unusual color : Sélosse for sure doesn't bleach his juice]. When the grapes are pressed to make Champagne, even though the juice is white, there's a light color intrusion of the skin into the juice leading to this oeil de perdrix (partridge eye) color that they call here couleur tachée (stained color) when white wines are involved. This color question is more or less acute depending of the vintage, the years with more maturity and sun bringing a higher "risk" of darker whites.
View on the vatroom : riddling tablesThe riddling stage is part traditional, part with giropallets holding 297 bottles each. The latter gives them the same ability to finetune the riddling as they wish, just that it is done with 297 bottles at a time.
For the disgorging stage they hire a contract service company which sends a truck and can handle the 6000/7000 bottles in a day. It's not pertinent to invest in this machinery for a small winery like theirs, he says. At Horiot for example they make maybe between 40 000 and 50 000 bottles of Champagne a year (less in 2009 because they made some Rosé des Riceys) and they don't even sell to supermarkets, their customer base is really the loyal customer who comes at the winery year after year.
On the vineyard management side, they plow between the rows and use natural cow manure as fertilizer in winter. Emmanuel Horiot says that the vines need this help, they don't add this compost to increase the yields but to have a good wood on the vines, because this is crucial for the health of the vineyard.
They don't make yet small-batch wines from their best terroirs but Emmanuel says that he considers doing it one day. His father thought about it, particularly for three plots that they own on what is possibly the three best terroirs of Les Riceys : Le Tronchois, La Velue and Pragnon. That's with this idea in mind that he had ordered the three foudres that we saw in the cellar.
Horiot Père & Fils don't export their wines, they don't even sell in Paris and their buyers are regular customers who drive to the winery (some from as far as Belgium or Germany) to buy wine. I think that with their rates and the quality of their wines they could sell to a wider audience, but in fact this way of things is fine for them. Emmanuel Horiot says that actually from the 8,5 hectares of vineyards that he owns (0,5 being still too young for production), he vinifies between 4 and 5 hectares and sells the remaining juice to the Champagne House Maison Burtin (now part of Marne et Champagne). This lets them [that's my opinion here] a window of opportunity in the future for bigger bottlings and sales.
History of the Rosé des Riceys (in French)Wire caps with the portrait of Jules Horiot.........Champagne Horiot Père & Fils11 rue de la Cure10340 Les Riceysphone +33 3 25 29 32 21fax +33 3 25 29 13 55champagne (dot) horiot (at) club-internet (dot) frHoriot website

Comments

[The Wine Mule]

Thank you! Thank you! It's been 9 years since I've even seen any of this, I'd all but forgotten. And the photography is wonderful.

[pedalaforte]

Great timing to this information (in a selfish way.) A friend and I are going to Alsace in a few days, then on to Paris. We thought it would be interesting to drive back to Paris on back roads, and we considered the Champagne region at large for a couple of days. Eventually, through research, we narrowed the choice to the Troyes area instead of the upper regions, then we found THIS incredibly fascinating web site with this story. Thanks. We're going to stop!

[Monique Talabac]

I have personally tasted all of these Rose wines and champagnes from this region and can wholeheartedly attest that these are the finest of their kind! The experience is unforgettable!
Posted by Monique Talabac, New York