The consistency required in a non vintage brut creates limitations that Jacquesson want to avoid by producing the best possible wines in any given year. Since this results in wine of a different personality each year, identification of the separate cuvées is essential.

Cuvée n° 731 was produced by assemblage based on the 2003 harvest and thus succeeds Cuvée n° 730, which was based on the 2002 harvest. The assemblage contains 52% Chardonnay, 31% Pinot Meunier and 17% Pinot Noir. It comes entirely from the Premiers and Grands Crus villages in the Grande de la Vallée de la Marne and the Côte des Blancs where our vineyard holdings are located and in which we follow traditionalistic viticultural practices, without any herbicide.

2003 will remain long in the memory because of its catastrophic weather pattern: hard winter frost reaching -15° C, destroying some vines; severe spring frosts going as low as 8° C to 10° C below zero, annihilating almost half of the potential crop between 8th and 11th April; hailstorms in June and, of course, the extreme heat of July and August, scorching many grapes. Picking began on 25th August, the earliest date on record, and finished on 4th September. The yields were extremely low, barely 40% of a normal harvest, the musts had an average of 11 degrees of potential alcohol and the acidity was below average, at 6gr/l.

As usual, the wine was vinified on its lees in casks with bâtonnage and without any filtration at all. The wines are rich and very aromatic, and we decided to complete the blend with 25% of reserve wines from the 2002 harvest, because of its outstanding balance, 15% from the 2001 harvest, for its finesse, and 1% from the 2000 harvest. Bottling produced only 150,620 bottles, 2,004 magnums and 150 jeroboams.