Pierre Peters and Domaine du Bagnol rosé

I’ve been leading a ton of Zoom tastings during this quarantine period–a Zoom boom, if you will. We had this pair with a group recently and they really hit the ball out of the park: Pierre Peters, “Cuvée de Réserve,” Champagne and the 2019 rosé from Domaine du Bagnol in Cassis. (Find these wines at retail)

The Pierre Peters has incredible depth of flavor and is on my shortlist for best mulitvintage Champagnes. As Rodolphe Peters explained to me in my visit last year, it is entirely from the estate’s 19.98 hectares–fully half the fruit comes from the famed Les Chétillions vineyard. It has a big helping of the reserve wine, which is from a “perpetual reserve” (solera) started in 1998. Rodolphe said that he really wants this “flagship wine” to be “exceptional” because it will be most people’s first experience with their wines. Based on our Zoom call over the weekend, he just made a lot of people happy.

Rounding out our Mother’s Day duo, we had a stunner from the minuscule appellation of Cassis. Snuggled right on the Mediterranean between Marseille and Toulon and a national park, the tiny appellation has only 200 hectares (500 acres) of vineyards and a dozen producers. Domaine du Bagnol’s 7 hectares (17 acres) lies a short walk from the charming fishing village, under the spectacular bluff of the Cap Canaille. The estate has been certified organic since 2014 and this wine draws on grenache (55%), mourvedre (31%), and cinsault (14%). Although 2019 was a hot vintage, the wine is really stunning. It opened a lot of eyes to the potential of rosé being a wine of substance, rather than a toss-it-back quaffer. According to Rosenthal, the importer, only 500 cases of this make it to our shores. Run, don’t walk!