L’Amour de Deutz 2015

This Cuvée de Prestige is a love letter to Champagne’s finest Chardonnay terroirs, to the precision and creativity of the art of blending, and the singular power of time to bring these wines to their ultimate expression.

From its earliest days, Champagne Deutz has remained steadfast in its commitment to championing the prestige and exacting standards of the Champagne region and its terroirs, across the world.

Champagne Deutz launched Amour de Deutz with the 1993 vintage in 2000 to celebrate the joy and optimism that accompanied the advent of the new millennium. It represents a deep belief in the Champagne region and an affirmation of the Champagne House’s dynamism and spirit of freedom. Deeply rooted in Aÿ, the historic heart of Champagne and the preferred terroir of the Pinot Noir grape, Champagne Deutz already had an iconic cuvée that paid tribute to its origins: William Deutz. With Amour de Deutz came a new expression of excellence: the chalky purity and golden hues of the finest Chardonnays.

A bold Cuvée de Prestige, this Champagne reflects the desire to break from convention and reveal another facet of Deutz’s blending expertise with panache and creative flair.

Rather than looking to a historical figure for inspiration, Deutz took a more contemporary route by choosing to celebrate the power of emotion and naming this new champagne Amour.

A quarter of a century on, the love story lives on, each vintage casting a new light on the complexity of its many facets.

Blending is an act of creation, born of the balance between constraint and freedom.

The constraint lies in having to balance the highest expression of the finest Chardonnays with the distinctive character of each vintage. Amour de Deutz has historically drawn its light from the finest terroirs of the Côte des Blancs – Avize and Le Mesnil-sur- Oger – and is produced only in years when nature and time come together in perfect harmony.

But freedom is what lies at the heart of the Amour de Deutz blend: the purity of the Grands Crus of the Côte des Blancs, combined with the subtle yet complex nuances of the Montagne de Reims and harmonised through the transcendence of time.

The creation of this Cuvée de Prestige unfolds in a series of intuitions, resonances and affinities, culminating in a point of perfect harmony.

“Each vintage of Amour de Deutz is a moment suspended in time: a rare Champagne shaped by the nobility of its origins, the precision of its craftsmanship, and the patience of its long ageing. Dedicated to the exceptional and the emotional, Amour de Deutz is a tribute to elegance and freshness, a love letter to the radiance of the finest Chardonnay terroirs, magnified by the work of time, from the harvest to the cellars. Inspired by a quest for purity and the honest expression of the fruit, it offers a voluptuous mouthfeel. This is a Champagne that unfolds in three dimensions – breadth, depth and length – revealing a wealth of nuanced elegance, creating a pleasure and an emotion that ignite all the senses.”

2013, 2014, 2015… The last three vintages of Amour de Deutz highlight the diversity of climatic conditions and the transformative power of the blending process. They represent three years of contrasting character, three climates, three temperaments, each resulting in different interpretations of the same Cuvée.

2013 is remembered as the ultimate expression of a late-harvest vintage, a throwback to the great decades of the 1980s and 1990s. A cooler year with a typical Champagne character, it led to the slow ripening necessary to produce wines of remarkable precision.

2014 was shaped by persistent humidity, which demanded constant vigilance. Harvested in the rain, the more delicate grapes produced wines that evolved more rapidly, with a subtly diluted substance, yet endowed with immediate grace.

2015 finally and gently reveals its sunny warmth, almost unexpected for an Amour de Deutz. A vintage of maturity, it explores a new, broader and fleshier register, while gradually revealing freshness and elegance (surprising echoes of the 2013 vintage) as the tasting unfolds.

From one vintage to the next, the tasting becomes a sensory journey, celebrating the diversity of expressions while revealing the invisible thread, the personal signature, that runs through these wines beyond time and climate.

After a nobly rainy winter, the vines reawakened in the spring, bathed in Champagne’s abundant sunlight.

April was remarkably warm, prompting a fast bud break and vigorous vegetative growth.

From May to mid-August, the heat intensified, accompanied by a pronounced drought, placing the vines under water and nitrogen stress. This slowed the development of the clusters, but brought about a gradual, even ripening of the grapes. Rain at the end of August brought welcome relief, allowing the grapes to plump up and recover their natural shine, while preserving the concentration built up over the summer.

The harvest took place under bright, sunny conditions, with vines and grapes in excellent health.
The Chardonnay grapes – especially those destined for Amour de Deutz – were left to ripen a little longer to ensure that they reached perfect maturity before being picked. Careful attention was paid to each plot of vines, as differences in ripeness from one vineyard to the next required precisely timed harvesting to ensure each bunch reached optimal ripeness.

2015 gave us a sunny, well-structured vintage, with generous fruit balanced by a preserved freshness.

But behind the abundance lay a real challenge. Often described as a vintage of contrasts, 2015 produced wines of generous character, angular structure and undisguised ardour. Patience, sensitivity and a very light touch were required to channel their sunny exuberance.

It was in this delicate tension, this constant play between power and the quest for finesse, that the winemaking expertise behind Amour de Deutz 2015 really came into its own. It had to take this raw, powerful energy and shape it with infinite delicacy.

This vintage is a brilliant example of Deutz’s savoir-faire: the ability to reconcile vigour and subtlety, to balance sunny vitality with precision, and ultimately to achieve the utmost purity.

For the magic to take place, the Champagne Deutz selects only grapes of exceptional quality, resulting in a Blanc de Blancs of remarkable stature.

The 2015 vintage blend is therefore the result of an especially meticulous selection of the finest Chardonnay Grands Crus – Avize, Oger, Mesnil-sur- Oger and Chouilly – along with the Premiers Crus of Vertus, Villeneuve-Renneville and Villers-Marmery, and it showcases their remarkable purity and depth.
Avize (46%), an iconic cru in the heart of the Côte des Blancs, is known for its chalky soils that break through to the surface. It produces wines with a bright minerality and remarkable precision, defining their underlying build and pure, crystalline tension.

Thanks to their linearity, its Chardonnays help to build the structure and form the backbone of this superb blend.

Oger (15%) lends the cuvée generosity and aromatic richness. Its expressive Chardonnays soften the tension of Avize with an elegant and judicious roundness. The minerality and the sunny character of this Grand Cru endow the blend with remarkable depth.

The chalky soils of Mesnil-sur-Oger (8%) produce a wine of vibrant tension. Its Chardonnays enhance the verticality of the cuvée, with a saline finish that adds an unmistakable elegance.
Chouilly (6%) brings its elegant radiance and graceful fruit, while Vertus and Villeneuve-Renneville (13%) add a lively, well-honed freshness.

As a finishing touch, Villers-Marmery (5%), the white pearl of the Montagne de Reims, brings vibrant energy and aromatic depth to complete the overall balance of the cuvée. Its expressive power creates a brilliant resonance that gracefully underscores the cuvée’s refined elegance.

This exceptional fruit has given rise to a blend of remarkable sensibility: seven Grands and Premiers Crus, brought together for the first time, each offering its nuances to create the purest emotion.

Amour de Deutz is vinified with the utmost respect for the fruit and the terroir, in a process designed to preserve the brightness and finesse of the Chardonnay grapes. Each cru ferments at a low temperature (15°C) in stainless steel vats, a method chosen to conserve the aromatic purity and freshness of the wines. Vinified separately, each cru can therefore express its own identity, nuances and character.
Under the attentive eye and inspired hand of the oenology team, these vins clairs become numerous individual fragments to be carefully pieced together. For Amour de Deutz 2015, more than twenty blending trials were carried out with exceptional precision and sensitivity to achieve the most harmonious expression.

This is where Deutz’s true savoir-faire takes place: recognising the soul of each of the seven crus and bringing them together in a passionate oenological creation, guided entirely by the champagne’s primary vocation – to offer pure drinking pleasure.

Time is also an essential ingredient in the Amour de Deutz blend, playing a crucial role in every stage of its creation.

It all starts in the vineyards, where the Deutz team carefully observes the seasonal cycle and, alongside its trusted partner winegrowers, follows the development of the grapes right up until harvest time, when each plot is picked at

Then there is the time involved in the ageing process. These wines of noble origin are allowed their bright aromas and body before blending.

After the secondary fermentation in bottle, Amour de Deutz then rests for more than nine years in the silence of Deutz’s historic chalk cellars in Aÿ, 30 metres below ground. Here, the cellars are referred to as berceaux (cradles), suggesting a cocoon of eternal youth. It is here that time is allowed to work its magic, drawing out the depth and nuances inherent in each vintage.

“Amour de Deutz 2015 awakens with delicacy, unfolds into aromatic complexity of rare elegance, and lingers in a caressing length – a rush of enduring love.”

Bright with a pale gold hue. The finesse of the bubbles evokes the flawless precision of a diamond.

The first nose is seductively delicate and floral, with hawthorn, acacia and orange blossom coming together in a bouquet of great elegance. As the wine opens, refined, sunny notes start to emerge – yellow fruit and candied citrus intertwined with subtle hints of brioche and honey. A light toasted note rounds off this bright, nuanced harmony, a gentle echo of time itself.

Clean-cut and well-honed on entry, the wine reveals a lovely bright tension that highlights the fresh character of the vintage. Citrus fruits – blood orange and mandarin – mingle with yellow peach, creating a fruit expression marked by exceptional purity. As the tasting unfolds, the palate stretches out with grace: aromas deepen and layer progressively, creating a lingering, beautifully balanced length, set off by a subtle salinity that extends the wine’s elegance.

Precise yet voluptuous, this radiant wine embodies the beauty of time mastered and the emotion of a moment suspended in time.

Food & Champagne Pairing

Crab prepared in three ways, with herring caviar & lemon-infused mustard

The precision of Amour de Deutz finds an elegant foil in a crab prepared in three different textures. The creamy element accompanies the voluptuousness, while a hint of saffron in the tartare brings an aromatic warmth, resonating with the wine’s sunny, candied citrus overtones. The lightly seared claws and subtle smoky hint of herring caviar create an elegant interplay with the toasted finesse of the champagne.

This is a harmonious, generous and vibrant pairing that showcases the vintage’s innate elegance.

At the heart of every blend lies a quest for excellence, devoted to drinking pleasure and expressed through elegance, balance and voluptuousness.

Under the direction of Caroline Latrive, Deutz cultivates a well-managed creative freedom, balancing boldness with rigour in pursuit of its mission: to bring out and showcase the finest Champagne terroirs through elegant, finely honed wines crafted for pure enjoyment.

True to the spirit of the Champagne region, Deutz makes decisive winemaking choices guided by terroir, vintage and inspiration, fully asserting its winemaking savoir-faire.

For Deutz, Champagne is less about demonstration and more about pure emotion.

With Amour de Deutz 2015, Champagne Deutz opens a new chapter in a story that continues to unfold, driven by a quest for emotion and a determination to demonstrate the elegance of Champagne’s greatest terroirs. With an expression very different from the previous vintage, this champagne opens up a new horizon, that of a Champagne region that is constantly redefining itself, where each vintage offers new perspectives and feeds the inspiration of our Cellar Master.

The Amour de Deutz 2015 therefore invites us to look to the future, to the expressions yet to come in the story of this iconic champagne. It invites reflection and paves the way for future creations, in which time, creative freedom and the unique character of the terroirs will remain Deutz’s guiding principles.

With its radiant length and extraordinary depth, the 2015 vintage shows exceptional cellaring potential and is one of the most luminous expressions of Amour de Deutz.