Jérôme Prévost is a micro grower-producer based in the picture-perfect village of Gueux, on the edge of the Mountain de Reims or what the locals call la Petite Mountain. Here, in the northwest of Champagne, he grows a tiny quantity of remarkable, age-worthy Pinot Meunier from a single, two-hectare plot of forty-year-old vines. His wines have garnered a cult following across the globe and are sold strictly on allocation.
The Prévost story is a long one. Let’s simplify and simply state that he inherited a vineyard from his grandmother and that it was his friend Anselme Selosse who encouraged and helped him to begin making wine from this parcel. His first vintage was 1998. Selosse let Prévost use his winery until 2003, after which Prévost began making the wine in the garage at the rear of his home in Gueux.
Prévost is an artist at heart: he was a painter as a young man and later turned to sculpting, photography and other passions that he prefers to keep to himself. His interest in art has led to several artists coming to visit his Estate and work with him in his vineyards. He has also organised wine and poetry celebrations with many great French poets: Valérie Rouzeau, James Sacré, Bernard Bretonnière and even the famed American poet John Giorno. He once said, “I like words because they are like vines, planted in the soils of culture.”
Prévost’s vines were planted in the ‘60s before what Prévost calls the “…great industrial revolution in Champagne”. This was prior to mechanisation, chemicals and clones becoming the norm. So, for this reason, the vines were planted with a good rootstock that was based on quality rather than yield. It’s a rootstock that descends deeply but that takes far longer to grow above the ground; the opposite of what producers were looking for post-70s.
Prévost’s initial idea was to produce one wine, each year, from one vineyard (les Béguines), one grape variety (Pinot Meunier), and one vintage. Sometimes Prévost also bottles a small amount of rosé. Over time, mainly thanks to the treacherous nature of his frost-prone terroir, this has evolved. The domaine devastating losses in 2017 prompted this grower to pivot from RM status (estate-only fruit) to NM (estate and purchased fruit) in order to make sustainable levels of wine. Prévost managed to secure some fruit from his neighbour’s vines in Les Béguines along with some other parcels in Gueux, all on the same soils as the estate vines. The wine from these new sources is simply called La Closerie and carries a striking red ampersand motif on the label.
The wines of Jérôme Prévost are as complex and intriguing as the man himself. So how to sum them up in a few words? Tasting notes are useless as the wines shift, turn and evolve. Even when you open bottles of the same vintage (at different points in time) the wines are often very different. What we can say in general terms is that they are dry, vinous, aromatic, floral and spicy wines with huge energy, drive and longevity. They are textured yet very tightly wound. They are wildly complex, never boring, and they are great with food. They also benefit enormously from time (1-5 years) in the cellar.