Immediately after joining the house in January 2000, Charles Philipponnat dared to shake long-standing traditions and craft a rosé from within Clos des Goisses. If a rosé was an unexpected move, so was its style. Rather than creating a flamboyantly big and bold wine, as might have been expected from the warm south-facing site, Charles Philipponnat went for a refined and pale-coloured wine – ‘hardly a rosé’, as its name aptly suggests. Juste Rosé was first crafted by blending the red wine of Clos des Goisses to a white base of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but a few vintages later, Philipponnat shifted to using the saignée method for producing the colouring component. A mere 2,000 to 3,000 bottles are crafted every vintage year, and they quickly vanish into the cellars of dedicated Philipponnat fans. Thus, this tasting was truly one of a kind, a complete vertical from the inaugural 1999 to the recently released 2012 vintage.

The whirlwind of developments initiated by Charles Philipponnat were palpable in the wines. Fine-tuning the winemaking was his first task at Philipponnat. Oak barrels were reintroduced to the cellar, and now 40–100% of Juste Rosé is fermented in seasoned oak barrels. Both a state-of-the-art cuvérie with stainless steel vats and a proper temperature- and humidity-controlled barrel room were built. Philipponnat decided to maintain the wine’s characteristic brisk, non-malolactic style yet halved the sweetening dosage to around 4.5g/l. Untypically for the region, Philipponnat dosages remain the same no matter the vintage conditions. This is Charles Philipponnat and chef de cave Thierry Garnier’s way of maximising the imprint of terroir.

And of course, there hardly exists a greater terroir Champagne than Clos des Goisses. Charles Philipponnat understood the work that needed to be done in the vineyards to realise the wine’s full potential. Today, the viticulture is close to organic: rows of vines are once again allowed to grow grass, and since 2012 all the weeding is carried out by mechanical means – which is no easy task on a vineyard reaching, at best, a 45-degree incline.

At this tasting, the improvements could indeed be seen in the glass in the form of precision and purity increasing through the years. The two earliest vintages, 1999 and 2000, were showing full maturity, whereas the 2002 still has a notable future ahead of it. The biggest surprises for me were from the warm vintage years. Considering the unusual warmth of the site (according to Charles Philipponnat, customarily 1.5°C [2.7°F] higher than average), vintages like 2005 and 2006 showed no signs of overripeness or heaviness. The luxury of fully ripe Pinot Noir with great depth and intensity and yet an absence of harsh tannin or heaviness is a Clos des Goisses calling card. The fine 2009 and 2012 vintages in their pure brightness and detail, then again, show the future direction for Juste Rosé.