Born in 1981, Bruno Paillard is among the youngest maisons in Champagne. Yet it boasts one of the oldest “perpetual reserves” in the region, given that it was in 1985, after the terrible 1984 harvest that forced the company to give away the wine in barrel without bottling it, that Bruno Paillard thought of putting aside a substantial quantity of wine every year to use it as a reserve wine for use in unhappy years. His intuition, however, was not to use the classic system of conserving reserves separately but to create a continuous assembly. Every year the wine of the vintage is “married”, to the extent of more or less two thirds, to the reserve wine, which in turn is composed of two thirds of that of the previous year and one third of the older ones, preserved in oak and steel barrels, and so on. This allows, year after year, to have an increasingly deeper reserve which guarantees the progressive evolution of the wines.
This choice was born from the consideration of Bruno, and his daughter Alice, who follows in his footsteps, that Champagne is a living wine, which evolves over time, and this is the key to its longevity. And after all, the Paillards have always aimed for an aging duration of the various labels that is two to four times longer than what the Champagne regulations impose
The perpetual reserve thus becomes a living story, a sort of profound sensorial archive that transmits the vertical and vigorous style of the maison, enhancing every moment of its history. A sort of rich and powerful base and at the same time an insurance policy against some less favorable seasons. “After four decades – explains Alice Paillard, owner and director of the maison – the Perpetua Reserve accompanies our search for a living, precise and vibrant Champagne, capable of crossing time. This presentation invites you to discover this moving memory and its prominent role in our multi-vintage cuvées. A way to explore our philosophy and embark on a journey through time”.
There are two Champagnes that express the power of the perpetual reserve, in two different phases of its life: the Première Cuvée Extra-Brut and the Cuvée 72. The first boasts approximately 33 percent of perpetual reserve in blending with the rest of the vintage wine, even if this is an average percentage of the last ten years and can vary from year to year to adapt to what nature has provided. Then after blending, a new phase of aging in the bottle begins: first a stay of at least three years on the yeasts and then, after disgorgement, a further rest in the bottle for at least six months. The latest vintage of the Première Cuvée Extra-Brut released, the one based on the 2015 vintage, is an assembly of 32 crus vinified separately, 45 percent Pinot Noir, 33 Chardonnay and 22 Meunier, to which the reserve wine was then added. The wine was disgorged in August 2019. The alcohol content is 12, the dosage is measured (6 grams of sugar per litre), the cuvée is straw yellow with golden reflections and has a nice thick and persistent perlage, the nose exhibits tropical fruit and citrus, the characteristic red fruits of Pinot Noir and exotic fruit. In the mouth it is elegant and balanced, with a mineral note given by the chalky soils on which the vineyards are located and a good fleshiness, and the elegant pastry note.
Then there is a further step, that represented by Cuvée 72, which is the same wine which however is subjected, after disgorgement, to a further refinement process without yeasts for thirty-six months (hence the 72, or 36+36). It is therefore like seeing a beautiful woman in a different phase of her life, when she has acquired experience and temperamental complexity. And it is nice to recognize the same aromas of the Première Cuvée on the nose, which however soon give way to more evolved, toasted aromas of spices, saffron, cedar wood, incense. In the mouth it is sumptuous, with a solemn strut, creamy, with notes of dried fruit and honey and great length.
Bruno Paillard, born in Reims in 1953, chose to produce his own Champagne after years spent as a wine broker, encouraged by expressing his idea of purity and integrity.
He was the first in Champagne, in 1983, to indicate the disgorgement date on each of the bottles of his production. The Bruno Paillard maison boasts a particular bond with Italy, where they are distributed exclusively by Cuzziol Grandi Vini.