2021 Claude Branger “L’Eclipse” Méthode Traditionnelle

100% certified organic Melon de Bourgogne, hand harvested and fermented with native yeasts. The grapes for this wine come from three adjacent plots of Melon in the Clos Joubert vineyard. These grow down slope near the Sèvre River in relatively heavy clay soils on gneiss. Clay translates into power and acidity for white grapes, a big plus for sparkling wine production. The plots were planted in 1964, 1968, and 1976, and 1985, and total an acre and a half. The wine is made entirely in house rather than at an élaborateur, and this artisan approach is carried through to the back label, which details the date of bottling and the subsequent date of disgorgement, thereby showing the length of time the wine spent on its lees in bottle. The name comes from when Claude and Sébastien witnessed a partial eclipse of the sun while harvesting in the Clos Joubert vineyard. Dosage is about 7 g/L.

Tasting Notes

This wine has intense freshness and a bright, tangy character. Acidity and citrus zest give the wine a cool, bright and lightly spicy character.  Like good Muscadet- bright, crisp, mineral driven, zest and mouthfilling- just sparkling! This might just be the best oyster wine ever made.....

About Claude Branger

Claude Branger is a tall, soft-spoken gentleman with silver hair. He dresses neatly and modestly, and there is about him, as there is about his wines, a clear sense of refinement. His grandfather created the wine domaine of Haute Févrie during the first World War. Following his father, Claude took over in the mid-1970s, and handed the reins to his son Sébastien in 2008. But Claude still works the vines and drives the tractor. Together these two farm close to 70 acres of vines in two adjacent parishes in the heart of the Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Appellation. Among the small cadre of committed growers—and it remains a small cadre—the father and son team of Claude and Sébastien rank among the top. Claude was an early member of Terra Vitis, an organization that sets guidelines for sustainable farming and monitors its members’ practices to ensure compliance. Subsequently, Sébastien embarked the domaine on the road to full-fledged organic farming. The first parcel received certification in 2015 and by 2019 all of the domaine’s vines were fully certified.