This expression of Françoise Bedel’s prestige cuvée L’Âme de la Terre differs in a fundamental practical way from the Lot AX020121 (January 2021 disgorgement) offered in Batch 12: the same wine has here spent three and a half additional years on the lees beyond the earlier disgorgement, receiving its final preparation for the market in July 2024 rather than January 2021. This difference matters considerably. Extended late disgorgement allows the wine to accumulate the deepest possible autolytic complexity within the protection of the lees, and the wine disgorged in 2024 will have developed characteristics significantly different from the same base wine disgorged in 2021: richer autolytic complexity, deeper tertiary character and a more pronounced secondary development from the sixteen additional years of contact with the lees after the base fermentation. The 2008 Champagne vintage, one of the finest of the decade, provides base material of exceptional quality to support this extraordinary ageing period.

Extended late disgorgement is among the most demanding propositions in Champagne production: the wine must have the natural quality, structure and balance to support exceptionally long periods on the lees without losing its fundamental freshness or developing excessive levels of reductive character. The finest practitioners, including Bedel among the grower producers and Krug’s Clos du Mesnil among the houses, produce wines of unique character through this approach. A 2008 L’Âme de la Terre disgorged in July 2024 will have sixteen years of total development from the harvest, the vast majority of that time spent on the lees, producing a wine of extraordinary depth, complexity and the particular freshness that the finest late-disgorged vintage Champagnes maintain despite their age.

The two different disgorgements of the same 2008 Bedel L’Âme de la Terre offered across this catalogue, the January 2021 in Batch 12 and the July 2024 here, provide an unusual and genuinely rare opportunity for direct comparison of the same wine at different stages of post-disgorgement development, an experiment that few collections outside of the finest Champagne cellars could contemplate. The July 2024 disgorgement is the younger of the two in post-disgorgement terms but the more developed in pre-disgorgement lees ageing, creating a fascinating proposition for those who wish to explore the technical and aesthetic implications of these choices.

Deep gold with fine, long-lived bubbles and a profoundly complex nose of dried apricot, roasted hazelnut, honey, coffee, beeswax, aged Meunier vinosity and the extraordinary autolytic depth of nearly sixteen years on the lees. Full-bodied with remarkable freshness for its age, excellent natural acidity and a very long, complex, vinous finish of unique character. Drink now through 2035.