Producers

Lying on the main road in Villers-Marmery heading towards Verzy, this small, family-owned estate has been impeccably managed by Arnaud Margaine (pictured) since 1989. The "A" in A. Margaine doesn't stand for Arnaud, as one might think, but for André, Margaine's grandfather. Margaine’s great-grandfather, Gaston Margaine, was already bottling estate wines in the 1920s, but these were often still white wines, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that André increased champagne production. Bernard, Margaine's father, expanded the estate in the 1970s, and in 1977 he joined the Club Trésors de Champagne, known at the time as the Club des Viticulteurs Champenois.

Since taking over the estate, Arnaud Margaine has focused heavily on improving quality in the vineyards, eliminating chemical herbicides and increasing the amount of cover crop in the vines. Today about 70 percent of his 6.5 hectares of vineyards are planted with various cover crops, with the aim of eventually reaching 100 percent. While Margaine hasn’t noted a tremendous difference yet in the quality of the wines, he believes that this will emerge in time, as he notices roots descending deeper into the soil and vine leaves appearing greener overall. Average vine-age is relatively old at this estate, about 32 years.

Margaine has a large press-house for an estate of this size, as he also presses grapes at harvest for other houses, including Bollinger, Louis Roederer and Lanson. In the cellar, nothing is done according to any recipe or formula, and policies such as reserve wines, malolactic or blending of parcels often change from vintage to vintage depending on what Margaine feels is best for quality and balance. He is increasingly blocking the malolactic in a larger proportion of his wines, however. "I'm becoming more and more convinced about the style of non-malo wines," he says. "It's not just the acidity, but the fruit as well. With the malo you lose a little of that fresh fruitiness."

Since 1999, Margaine has been cautiously working a little in barrel, using three- to four-year old barriques that he purchases from Louis Jadot in Burgundy. About 20 percent of the harvest is now fermented in oak, although these wines aren’t destined for any particular cuvée, but chosen for blending according to taste. “A maximum of 20 to 30 percent [of barrel-fermented wine] is a good complement for my blends,” says Margaine. “I don’t want to go any higher.” He also uses oak barrels to store the wine for his liqueur d’expédition, as he thinks this gives more character to the dosage, which he prefers. “I’m not looking for neutrality,” he says.

Margaine keeps an unusually high quantity of reserve wines for a grower-estate, giving him more flexibility with his non-vintage brut. Prior to 2005, all reserve wines were stored in stainless steel tank, but since then he has chosen to store some in bottle with a very slight mousse, in a fashion similar to Bollinger (who stores its reserves in magnum). “Aromatically the wine stays very fresh and vivacious when stored this way,” explains Margaine, and while this practice requires a lot of manual labor, he feels that the resulting increase in quality is well worthwhile.
 

This small, family-owned champagne house was founded in 1920 by Armand-Raphaël Graser. Originally from Alsace, Graser wasn't so enamored of the trend for Germanic-sounding names in the Champagne region. "He didn't think that the name Graser was very elegant for a champagne house," says his great-grandson Antoine Malassagne (pictured), who together with his sister Anne is responsible for the house today. "So he decided to invent a name. He thought that champagne was a very noble wine, so he came up with the name Lenoble, which sounds nice, and very French."

Today the house owns 18 hectares of vines: 5.5 hectares, mostly planted with pinot noir, lie in Bisseuil; a hectare and a half of meunier is owned in Damery; and the rest is all chardonnay in the grand cru of Chouilly. Vineyard work emphasizes natural treatments, with some parcels cultivated organically. "We seek to adapt to our environment, not dominate it," says Anne Malassagne. Additional grapes, largely meunier, are purchased for the non-vintage brut and brut nature. All of the grapes (including purchased grapes—Lenoble never buys vins clairs) are pressed in one of the house's three traditional Coquard vertical presses, and only the cuvée, or first pressing, is used.

The Malassagnes work a little with oak barrels in the cellar, and today, all of their cuvées have a small proportion of barrel-fermented wines in their blends. An additional advantage of barrels is that they easily allow different parcels to be vinified separately, preserving the multiple identities present in the vineyards. Barrels are 225-liter Alliers oak, always purchased new from François Frères, but they are seasoned with wine for three years before being used for vinification. In addition, most of the reserve wines are stored in barrel, either 225-liter barriques or 5,000-liter foudres. "Reserve wines are indispensable for creating the character of our wines," says Antoine Malassagne. "They give a larger palette to work from, creating more complexity."

Since 2010, though, Malassagne has experimented with storing reserve wine in magnum under cork, in the belief that this preserves greater freshness and vivacity in the wine. These were were first used for the 2014-based non-vintage releases, and to distinguish these wines, Lenoble now labels the non-vintage champagnes under a new "mag" system, where "magxx" indicates the base year (i.e. mag14 means a 2014-based blend). Lenoble's Brut Intense, Chouilly Blanc de Blancs and Dosage Zéro Brut Nature have all been released in the new versions so far, and the Rosé Terroirs will appear in 2020.
 

Fabrice Gass has a day job, working in the cellars at Bollinger, but in his spare time he produces a little wine at his own estate in Damery, selling it under the label Alexandre Filaine. To say that Gass works artisanally is an understatement: his methods are essentially those used a hundred years ago, and visiting his small winery on the rue Poincaré is practically like stepping into a time machine.

Gass owns just one hectare of vines, divided between seven parcels and all farmed organically. He plants all three varieties: while meunier is the predominant grape in this sector of the Vallée de la Marne, it represents a minority in Gass’s vineyards, as he favors pinot noir for its greater ageability.

He presses his grapes in a traditional vertical press, and after a débourbage in old, enameled steel tanks, the must goes into barrels for native-yeast fermentation. His barrels, formerly used at Bollinger, date from 1937, and while they were rejected by the house for being too old, Gass thinks they’re perfect. “I’m not only aging wine in barrel,” he says, “I’m putting grape juice in these barrels to ferment, and they ferment new wine every year. So the older the barrels, the better they are.” It’s not only the barrels that are old, either: Gass does all of his racking and other winery operations by hand, and the tools that he uses are as ancient as his barrels are, making his cellar seem almost like a museum, albeit a fully functioning one.

In keeping with historical tradition, Gass’s wines don’t go through malolactic, and their acidities can be notably high by modern standards. However, he doesn’t see this as a problem, due to his winemaking methods. “The old barrels round out the wine and balance the acidity,” he says. “On paper, a wine with this sort of acidity is supposed to be undrinkable, but my wines are fine.” The wines eventually see a light isinglass fining, but they undergo no filtration, cold-stabilization or any other operation before bottling.
 

With the prohibitive cost of vineyard land in Champagne, grower-producers are often faced with a dilemma when it comes to expanding their business. Some, like Diebolt-Vallois, decide to purchase grapes, not just from anyone, but from trusted family sources—this, of course, necessitates a change in status from RM to NM. Others, such as De Sousa, feel that it's important to retain their RM status, and create instead a separate company (Zoémie de Sousa, in this case) that functions as a négociant.

Penet-Chardonnet is a six-hectare estate in the village of Verzy, and since 2008, it has been in the hands of Alexandre Penet, who has sought to create low-dosage, terroir-expressive champagnes. In 2011, Penet decided to create a négociant label to complement the estate portfolio: he wanted to grow his business and sell more wine, but he didn't want to give up estate-bottling the Penet-Chardonnet range. The creation of a separate company, bottling wines under the label Alexandre Penet, seemed to be an ideal solution. "It enables me to avoid the confusion of grower vs. négociant," says Penet. "It avoids the stigma of NM [for Penet-Chardonnet]."

For the Alexandre Penet label, Penet doesn't buy grapes, but instead, he works together with selected wineries to make base wines according to his specifications, suitable for creating low-dosage, non-malolactic champagnes. His idea is to make wines in a similar style to Penet-Chardonnet, "not necessarily of lower quality, but more accessible," he says. At the moment, he is continuing to expand production of the Alexandre Penet wines, with a goal of 200,000 bottles per year.
 

In 1864, Alfred Gratien simultaneously founded two wine businesses, when he was just 23 years old: one was in Saumur, in the Loire Valley, while the other was this négociant house in Epernay. Ten years later, he acquired a partner in his company, Alfred Jean Meyer, who was originally from Alsace. Meyer took over the company in full upon Gratien’s death in 1885, and today the Loire branch of the company, which still makes a wide range of sparkling wines, is called Gratien & Meyer, while the champagne house is named for its founder. For many years, the company was owned by the Seydoux family, direct descendants of Gratien, but in 2000, a majority share was purchased by Henkell & Co., a German wine and spirits group.

Gratien’s chef de cave is Nicolas Jaeger (pictured), who is, remarkably, the third generation of his family to serve the house in that position. Jaeger’s grandfather began working with the company in 1928, and Jaeger himself entered the company in 1990, working alongside his father Jean-Pierre. He took over as cellarmaster in 2007, upon his father’s retirement.

The winemaking at Alfred Gratien is unabashedly old-fashioned. Only the cuvée, or the first part of the pressing, is used, and none of the wines go through malolactic. All of the base wines, except for a portion of those destined for reserves, are vinified in secondhand barrels, most of which are old, 228-liter barriques purchased from Chablis. The wines stay in barrel for about six months before being blended and bottled: “The idea is not to mark the wines with the wood,” says Jaeger, “but to give them more structure, more finesse and length.”
 

The Ariston family is recorded as having been winegrowers in the village of Brouillet since 1794. Today, Paul-Vincent Ariston (pictured) is the fifth generation of the family to take over the estate, following in the footsteps of his father Remi, who had been at the helm of the domaine since 1964. The estate was previously known as Champagne Ariston Fils, but prior to the millennial celebrations, the Aspasie label was created as a prestige line, named in honor of Remi Ariston’s great-grandmother. Today the Ariston Fils brand is being phased out, and all of the champagnes are carrying the Aspasie label. Aspasie is registered as a négociant-manipulant, but in fact all of the champagne is estate-grown. The reason for registering as an NM was to consolidate the vineyard holdings of the immediate family—in effect, the company buys grapes from each of the individual Ariston family members. In the present day, this type of structure might be registered instead as a société de récoltant (SR), but that designation did not exist at the time that the Ariston family applied for the NM. Thus, regardless of the NM designation, this is true grower champagne, made entirely from the Ariston family’s 12 hectares of vines.

Of these 12 hectares, 11 are in the village of Brouillet itself, while the remaining hectare is in the nearby village of Sarcy. All of their parcels are on slopes of various degrees of steepness, and in the little valley surrounding Brouillet, there are expositions that face both east and west. The soils are rather varied here in the Vallée de l’Ardre, in the far west of the Montagne de Reims, combining some chalk with areas of clay, sand and alluvial deposits. The chalk in this region is very old, dating from the end of the Cretaceous era around 60 million years ago, and is thus much older than the two million-year old chalk found in the areas around Epernay. In addition, there are heavy deposits of fossils in the chalkbeds here, and the Aristons have a wide collection of all sorts of intriguing pieces found in the vineyards, ranging from prehistoric seashells to crocodile vertebrae and shark’s teeth. Most of the Aristons’ chardonnay is grown on chalk and has a distinctive perfume, although Paul-Vincent Ariston attributes this to the terroir, and not to a particular clone. “The character of chardonnay from Brouillet is very round, with a slight muskiness to it,” he says. In contrast, the pinot noir tends to favor alluvial soils, and the meunier is planted largely in chalky clay. Also, Ariston has tiny quantities of pinot blanc, petit meslier and arbanne which he has blended together for an experimental cuvée called Cépages d'Antan—the first harvest was in 2003, and the first commercial release from 2005. Ariston is continuing to focus on improving the quality of his work in the vineyards, and today a quarter of the estate is farmed organically, with the rest certified Haute Valeur Environnementale.

Since 2009, the grapes have been pressed with a modern, 6,000-liter PAI press that has replaced an old, horizontal Vaslin one, and Ariston says that this has resulted in a cleaner, clearer juice. In a similar adjustment, the Aristons replaced their enameled steel tanks in 2007 with new stainless steel ones, partially in response to a continuing change in climate. “In the last ten years, the wines have become riper and rounder,” says Ariston. “Stainless steel preserves more of an incisive structure than the old enameled steel tanks, which tended to make the wines even rounder.” For the last decade, the Aristons have also been working with some barriques, used for a cuvée called Brut de Fût.

This house was established in 1860 by Edmond de Ayala, the son of a Colombian diplomat. The family had roots in Spain, as Edmond de Ayala’s great-grandfather, Don Antonio de Ayala y Vergara, was named Chancellor of New Grenada in 1750 by King Ferdinand VI, setting sail for what was to later become Colombia. Edmond de Ayala’s father, Don Rafael de Ayala y Lozano, was a senior officer in the Colombian army and later the General Consul of Colombia in Paris.

Edmond de Ayala was born in Paris in 1831, and began working at the small champagne firm of d’Albrecht in Aÿ in 1855. In 1860 he married Berthe Gabrielle d’Albrecht, and received as a dowry the family’s château in Aÿ, along with prime vineyard land located in Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, which allowed him to establish a champagne house of his own. His brother, Fernand de Ayala, developed a commercial branch of the house in Great Britain, giving him access to the lucrative British market, and Ayala would eventually become the preferred champagne of King George VI. In 1882, Ayala became one of the founding members of the Syndicat des Grandes Marques, further enhancing its reputation for quality.

The house was completely destroyed in the Champagne riots of 1911, yet remarkably, it was rebuilt and ready to restart production by 1913. In 1922 it was sold to the Lefebvre family, but the recession beginning in 1929 proved to be catastrophic, and the house was sold in 1934 to the British bank Guinness. It was put up for auction in 1937 and purchased by René Chayoux, the son of an Epernay wine merchant. Chayoux was actively involved in various business affairs in the region, and eventually became co-president of the CIVC from 1944 to 1955. He enlisted Jean-Michel Ducellier, director of the CIVC and a former finance director of Charles Heidsieck, to help him run the house, and upon Chayoux’s death in 1969, Ducellier assumed responsibility for the house until his retirement in 1995.

Ayala was sold again in 2000 to the Frey group, and Thierry Budin, a former president of Perrier-Jouët, took over the helm. Five years later, however, Ayala was purchased by the Bollinger Group. Bollinger bought the property and the stocks of wine, but Frey retained the vineyards, forcing the house to rely on purchased grapes. Hervé Augustin was appointed president and general manager of the house, while Nicolas Klym, who had been making wines for the house since 1979, was retained as chef de cave. Under Augustin, the house reinvented its style, focusing heavily on non-dosé champagnes, as well as increasing its use of chardonnay.

Since 2012, the direction of the house has been in the hands of Hadrien Mouflard, and Caroline Latrive (pictured) has taken over as chef de cave, having previously worked alongside Klym since 2006. In addition, Ayala now owns 20 hectares of vines in the Côte des Blancs (Chouilly, Oger) and Vallée de la Marne (Passy-Grigny, Champvoisy), and the house has completed new winery facilities on its property in Aÿ as of 2013.

A passionate advocate of natural winegrowing, Benoît Lahaye took over his family’s estate in 1993 and has been bottling wine under his own label since 1996. He became interested in natural viticulture early on, and inspired by Patrick Meyer in Alsace, Lahaye completely stopped using systemic herbicides in 1994. By 1996 he had begun to work organically, in addition to using cover crops in the vineyards and experimenting with biodynamic treatments; the estate was fully converted to organic viticulture in 2003, and certified organic in 2007. Lahaye has noticed a pronounced difference in his wines since the transition to organic farming. “It’s not really a question of being better,” he says, “but my wines attain higher levels of ripeness now, while retaining the same level of acidity.” In 2004 and 2005, he began working all of his vineyards biodynamically, and since 2010, the estate has been certified as biodynamic by Biodyvin.

Lahaye owns 4.8 hectares, largely planted with pinot noir—88 percent, to be exact. Three hectares lie in Bouzy, one hectare just over the border in Ambonnay, to the east, and another 60 ares in Tauxières, to the west. In addition, a 20-are parcel of 50-year old chardonnay vines is planted in Voipreux, in the southern Côte des Blancs, and since this is so far away from Bouzy, these vines are worked by Pierre Larmandier. Cover crops are planted in all of the parcels to encourage competition and prevent erosion, and Lahaye has observed that since he’s started using cover crops, a larger number and variety of plants have begun to grow in the vineyards, creating a healthier biodiversity.

In 2010, Lahaye began working two hectares of the domaine by horse, as this compacts the soil less than plowing by tractor. His goal is to eventually work the entire estate by horse, but if this isn't possible, he'll rotate parcels each year so that the effects are distributed across his vineyard area.

In the cellar the work is as minimal as possible. Lahaye has slowly been increasing the percentage of his wines vinified in 205-liter barriques, and as of the 2012 harvest, all base wines are fermented in barrel. All of the wines in barrel are fermented with natural yeasts, although wines that were made in stainless steel or enamel tanks were sometimes fermented with cultured yeasts, as Lahaye notes that indigenous yeast fermentation is more risky in tank, particularly in the inert, reductive environment of stainless steel. He has also experimented with terracotta amphorae, although he hasn't been satisfied, as he finds that the wines quickly lose freshness compared with those in barrel. Since 1996, he has been working with non-malo wines, and today, the malolactic may be done or not, depending on the individual wine and the conditions of the vintage. In general, he prefers to blend both malo and non-malo lots: “Malolactic wines have more immediate complexity,” he says, “but with non-malo wines the complexity comes out with time." Since 2008 he has also been experimenting with making wines entirely without the addition of sulfur, bottling a sans soufre cuvée called Violaine.

As a final touch, Lahaye puts his vintage wines under either cork or capsule for their second fermentations, depending on the character of the year. In more structured vintages such as 2004, 2007 or 2008, he will use cork, as it gives the wines a little more richness and breadth. However, in ripe, expansive years, like 2005, 2009 or 2010, he prefers to use capsule, as he says "the wines are already corpulent enough."
 

One of Champagne’s most prominent rising stars, Raphaël Bérêche (pictured) has been working alongside his father Jean-Pierre at their nine-hectare estate of Bérêche et Fils since 2004, and today he is putting an increasingly personal stamp on this thoughtfully-run domaine.

The Bérêche estate owns vines in several different sectors of Champagne, with the three primary areas being the immediate vicinity around Ludes and Craon de Ludes, the gravelly terroir of Ormes in the Petite Montagne, and the area around Mareuil-le-Port, on the left bank of the Vallée de la Marne. A small parcel is also found in Trépail, in the eastern Montagne de Reims. Most recently, the estate has acquired its first grand cru vineyard in 2012, a tiny, 15-are parcel in the village of Mailly.

The estate's vineyards are planted with roughly equal parts of the three varieties, and viticulture is decidedly natural, in the contemporary sense—Bérêche completely stopped using chemical herbicides in 2004 and has planted cover crops in all of the vineyards, and since 2007 a portion of the vineyard has been converted to biodynamics.

Sharp-eyed observers will note that beginning in 2013, Bérêche has changed its status from RM (récoltant-manipulant) to NM (négociant-manipulant). This was done for two reasons: the first is to augment the production of the Brut Réserve by about 15 to 20 percent, selecting grapes from three trusted growers in the villages of Ludes, Maily and Rilly-la-Montagne. These grapes will be used exclusively for the Brut Réserve, and the rest of Bérêche's wines remain entirely estate-grown. The second reason is the creation of a négociant range called Crus Sélectionnés, released under the label Raphaël et Vincent Bérêche. These are wines selected from various sources across the Champagne region, designed to illustrate and reflect their respective terroirs, with the first series of wines released in 2014.

At Bérêche, vinification tends towards the traditional: parcels are vinified separately, with natural yeasts used for smaller tanks and selected yeasts for larger ones. The family has slowly been increasing the percentage of oak used in the cellar, and today, about three-quarters of the production is vinified in barrel. The malolactic is systematically avoided, and the wines are bottled around May, without filtration and with a natural cold-settling, achieved by opening all of the cellar’s windows and waiting for three days. Disgorging is still done entirely by hand, and unlike many growers who are embracing the idea of concentrated must for the dosage, Bérêche adamantly prefers a traditional liqueur.

Recently the Bérêches have begun to work much more with cork for the second fermentation, believing that for their style of wine, it results in more character and complexity. Raphaël’s father was always a firm believer in cork, but it requires a lot of extra work—now that Raphaël and his brother Vincent are working with him at the estate, it’s easier to accomplish. Today, a quarter of the production is bottled with cork instead of capsule, spread over five different cuvées: Les Beaux Regards, Vallée de la Marne Rive Gauche, Le Cran, Reflet d'Antan and the Campania Remensis rosé.
 

This famous house was founded as Renaudin-Bollinger & Cie. in 1829, by partners Jacques Bollinger and Paul-Joseph Renaudin. Its history can be traced back even further, however, as Bollinger and Renaudin had a third partner, the Comte de Villermont, whose family had settled in the village of Cuis in 1650. In 1750, the de Villermont family purchased the estate in Aÿ that still houses the Bollinger offices today, at 16, rue Jules Lobet, and records show that the family owned vines and was already producing sparkling wines in the 18th century. The Bollinger and de Villermont families would later become further entwined, as Jacques Bollinger eventually married Louise-Charlotte de Villermont, the daughter of the Comte de Villermont, in 1837.

Bollinger stores its reserve wines in magnum bottles, an extremely labor-intensive process that few houses are willing to undertake, and certainly no others on this scale. Between 70,000 and 80,000 magnums of wine are put aside each year, and there is a total stock of about 500,000 magnums in the reserve cellar, comprising perhaps ten different villages and ten different vintages. The wine is bottled with a touch of yeast and sugar to give it just a little sparkle (1.5 bars of pressure), as a means to keep it fresher for a longer period of time, and all of the magnums are bottled with natural cork.
 

Brice is a relatively new champagne house, founded by Jean-Paul Brice in 1994. However, he descends from a family that has lived in the village of Bouzy since the 17th century, and while his grandfather specialized exclusively in the production of red wine, the family has been making champagne since just after the Second World War. Jean-Paul Brice was formerly part of the trio of winemakers behind Barancourt, together with Pierre Martin and Raynald Tritant, and when Barancourt was sold to Vranken, Brice set up his own company, taking with him Michel Joly, his cellarmaster of 30 years. Today the house is in the hands of his sons Jean-René and Remi, who have been with the house since 2004. As of 2019, they have hired Christophe Constant, formerly of J.-L. Vergnon in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, as consulting winemaker, and he will be overseeing both the winemaking and viticulture here.

The house owns nearly 12 hectares of vines: 8 hectares are in Bouzy, planted mostly with pinot noir save for one hectare of chardonnay; 1.5 hectares are in Chigny-lès-Roses, split between pinot noir and meunier; and 2.5 hectares of pinot noir are in Loches-sur-Ource, in the Aube’s Côte des Bar. In addition, grapes are purchased from various sectors, including Trépail, Chouilly and villages in the Aube. Brice’s vines in Bouzy are particularly interesting as they’re concentrated in just 16 parcels, making them relatively large in size for Champagne, and they’re largely in the best terroirs, located in the favored portion of the mid-slope. These have been cultivated organically for several years, and the goal in 2019 is to farm organically across the entire estate.

The wines from Bouzy are largely fermented in oak barrels, while the rest are in tank, and all are vinified without malolactic. “We avoid the malolactic in order to preserve the freshness of the wine and to preserve the fruit of the harvest,” says Jean-René Brice. He is also of the opinion that wines without malolactic are better at bringing out the typicity of each terroir.

The Michel family has been growing vines in the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay since 1847. Bruno Michel’s father, José Michel, owned a highly regarded champagne estate of his own, but Bruno (pictured), who sadly passed away in 2019, opted to take over an estate from another branch of the family, called J.-B. Michel. He created the Bruno Michel label in 1985, and in 1998 began converting the estate to organic viticulture, attaining certification from Ecocert in 2004.

Today, the Michel estate owns 12 hectares of vines, all certified organic, and spread over 35 parcels around the villages of Moussy and Pierry. As befits the terroir of the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay, meunier features prominently in Michel’s vineyards, accounting for 40 percent of the total surface area. Chardonnay is equally as important, however, making up another 50 percent, while the remaining ten percent is planted with pinot noir. All of Michel’s parcels are planted with cover crops, and in addition to making their own organic compost, they use various tisanes and plant preparations to aid the health of their vines.

In the cellars, fermentation is carried out either in stainless-steel tanks or in secondhand barriques. Michel has had oak barrels for quite a while, but on my last visit he noted that he is using them less and less today: “I find that it obscures the terroir a little,” he told me.

Born in Reims in 1953, Bruno Paillard (pictured) comes from an old Champenois family that traces its history of winegrowing in the region back to 1704. Paillard himself began working as a courtier, or an intermediary broker between grape growers and champagne producers, in 1975. This gave him valuable contacts and experience that he would put to use when he founded his own Champagne house in 1981, at just 27 years of age.

Considering the exclusive nature of the Champagne business at the time, founding a new house was no small feat. Since then, Paillard has gained international renown for his wines, and while his own Champagne house remains relatively small in size, Paillard is also the chairman and C.E.O. of Lanson-BCC, one of the region's largest groups.

Initially, Champagne Bruno Paillard functioned exclusively as a négociant, but in 1994, the house acquired its first vineyards, with the purchase of three hectares in Oger. Today, it owns 32 hectares spread over 15 different villages, providing 35 to 40 percent of its needs; in all, grapes are sourced from 35 different villages throughout the region. All of Paillard's vineyards are cultivated organically, with some parcels in biodynamics. Paillard is not interested in pursuing official certification, but believes that organic farming is important for two reasons: first, it results in greater minerality in the wines; and second, it provides better security against trace amounts of chemicals in the wines. "It costs us about one-third more than it would if we used herbicides and such, but I think it's worth it," says Paillard. "It's not only in terms of philosophy, but also what you can taste."

In the past, the house's grapes were pressed in a traditional Coquard press, but the 2011 harvest saw the introduction of a new, 8,000-kilogram pneumatic press in Paillard's facilities in Reims. Only the cuvée, or the first portion of the pressing, is retained for making the house's wines, and all crus are vinified and aged separately. While most of the fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks, about 20 percent of Paillard's wines are fermented in barrel. There are about 400 barrels in the cellar, all purchased secondhand and used for up to eight or ten years.

Once in the cellars, the wines are aged for a relatively long period of time on their lees, and in addition, Paillard also takes great pains to hold the wine for a period of time after disgorgement, in order to allow the wines to recover from the procedure and to better integrate and harmonize their components. Bruno Paillard is a firm believer in listing disgorgement dates on the label, and indeed, he was the first champagne producer to do so, beginning this practice in 1983. Curiously, Paillard attaches little importance to the base years of his multi-vintage cuvées—for him, it's the evolution of the wine that's important. A disgorgement date allows the consumer to know what state of evolution the wine is in: a recently disgorged wine will retain fresher aromas, while a bottle that has been disgorged for some time will show flavors that are increasingly honeyed or toasted. As evidenced by "vertical" tastings, Paillard's non-vintage Première Cuvée develops well with post-disgorgement age, and the house's policy of providing transparent information regarding disgorgement is highly laudable.
 

This small, family-run estate in Damery was founded in 1942, when Raymond Caillez married Andrée Lemaire. They grew their business over the following decades, and in 1976, they handed the reins to their son Henri, whose wife Annie comes from a winegrowing family in the neighboring village of Cumières. While Henri and Annie are still very much present at the estate, the day-to-day operations are now in the hands of their daughter Virginie (pictured) and her husband, Laurent Vanpoperinghe.

Of the estate’s seven hectares of vines, more than four are located in Damery, and another significant portion of their holdings lies in Cumières. The rest of the vines are located in four other nearby villages in the Vallée de la Marne, and as befits the terroir here, meunier accounts for about half of the estate’s total plantings, with chardonnay and pinot noir each making up 25 percent. However, Virginie Vanpoperinghe notes that their meunier always yields less than the other varieties, and quantity-wise, there are usually about equal proportions of each variety at harvest.

The grapes are pressed in a pneumatic membrane press, and rather than dividing the pressings into the 2,050-liter cuvée and 500-liter taille as the majority of producers do, the Caillezs retain only the first two pressings for the cuvée. This means that it ends up being about 1,700 to 1,800 liters, with the rest of the juice going into the taille, which they feel results in better quality for both components. The juice is settled for 18 to 24 hours in enameled-steel tanks—as the wines are neither fined nor filtered, the Caillezs try to get the juice as clear as possible before fermentation.

The fermentation itself takes place in thermoregulated stainless-steel tanks, and the malolactic rarely takes place. "We don’t encourage it," says Vanpoperinghe. "If it happens, it happens, but usually the bacteria isn’t present." Some barrels are used, primarily for the vintage wine, which is both fermented and aged in wood, and also for the rosé. In addition, barrels are used for the production of both fine (brandy made from wine) and marc (brandy or eau de vie made from pomace), which the Caillezs distill themselves.

The Cattier family has tended vines in the village of Chigny-lès-Roses since 1763, and the house has been producing champagne since 1918. It was developed and expanded by Jean Cattier in the mid-20th century, most notably by the acquisition in 1951 of the Clos du Moulin, allowing Cattier to create one of Champagne’s most celebrated single-vineyard wines. Today, the house is in the hands of Jean’s son, Jean-Jacques Cattier (pictured).

The house owns 31 hectares of vines, all in the central Montagne de Reims in the immediate vicinity of Chigny-les-Roses: besides Chigny, there are holdings in Ludes, Rilly-la-Montagne and Taissy. Cattier is committed to environmentally sustainable viticulture, and the house belongs to a group called Ampelos, who certifies and controls sustainable vineyard practices and whose members also include Vilmart & Cie., René Geoffroy and Robert Charlemagne. To supplement their own vineyard holdings, Cattier also purchases grapes from other areas in the Champagne region.
 

Fabien Cazé is the tenth generation of his family to cultivate vines in Champagne, and while the Cazé family has been bottling champagne through the local cooperative since 1953, Fabien himself began making estate-bottled champagnes under his own label in 2013. Today he cultivates 2.56 hectares of vines in the villages of Châtillon, Vandières and Reuil, all on the Rive Droite, or the northern bank, of the Vallée de la Marne. About two-thirds of his vineyard area is planted with meunier, with the rest chardonnay except for one parcel of pinot noir in Vandières.

Cazé’s vineyards have been certified organic since 2016, and he places heavy emphasis on mechanical labor in the vines, eschewing large tractors in favor of smaller chenillards—lightweight, caterpillar-tracked vehicles that don’t compact the soil as much. After harvesting, he presses the grapes in a Coquard PAI press that he shares with his wife at her winery, Champagne Bouquet, whose facilities are located just next to their house on the road leaving Châtillon-sur-Marne (and just in front of the lieu-dit La Fontinette, which Cazé’s friend Flavien Nowack bottles as a single-vineyard champagne). Cazé favors a long, slow pressing, which he says “extracts tannins but also more minerality,” and while he used to ferment a portion of his wine in tank, he now vinifies his entire production in secondhand oak barrels of various sizes, exclusively with indigenous yeasts.

Recently he has purchased an old, vaulted cave in Venteuil, near Reuil, to ferment and age his wines. Here on the rue des Crayères there are 26 of these vaults dug directly into the chalk, all dating from the nineteenth century (Cazé’s is from 1843), and today they’ve largely been abandoned and have fallen into disrepair: while there’s currently no electricity or running water on site, the cold, damp chalk creates a perfect environment for making and storing his champagnes. Due to the cool temperatures here, fermentation tends to be long and slow, and malolactic may or may not occur. The wines go through a natural cold settling before being bottled without fining or filtration.

Florens-Louis Heidsieck founded Heidsieck & Co. in 1785, and he brought three nephews with him into the business. Christian Heidsieck would go on to found the company that later became Piper-Heidsieck, while Henri-Louis Walbaum would found Walbaum, Heidsieck & Co., later known as Heidsieck Co. & Monopole. A third nephew, Charles-Henri Heidsieck, had a son named Charles-Camille, who founded the firm of Charles Heidsieck in 1851.

Charles-Camille Heidsieck was an indefatigable promoter of champagne, making his first trip to New York as early as 1852. He rapidly gained success in the American market, earning the nickname of “Champagne Charlie”, and he traveled widely in the United States, making annual trips there to promote his wines. Among his adventures in the United States was an ill-fated trip to New Orleans during the American Civil War, where he was accused of being a spy and thrown into prison for several months. Charles-Camille Heidsieck passed away in 1893, and the house was managed by his descendants until 1976, when it merged with Champagne Henriot. In 1985, it was purchased by Rémy Martin, now called Rémy-Cointreau.

Under Rémy-Cointreau, Charles Heidsieck went through a dramatic transformation, thanks in large part to former chef de cave Daniel Thibault. Rémy-Cointreau allowed Thibault to reinvent Heidsieck’s non-vintage brut as a complex champagne with a large percentage of reserve wines, investing time and money in his vision of the ideal brut sans année. In order to build up the necessary stocks of reserves to do this, they had to reduce the total volume of sales, repositioning Charles Heidsieck as a more prestigious, up-market brand.

Rémy-Cointreau acquired the house of Piper-Heidsieck in 1988, and since then the two houses have shared a close relationship. Today, they not only share the same chef de cave, but also the same winemaking facilities in Reims. In addition, Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck are now combined under one company, P&C Heidsieck, and 47 hectares of vines are shared between the two, which of course accounts for only a small fraction of their total needs. Daniel Thibault passed away in 2002, and his assistant Régis Camus, who had worked with Thibault since 1994, took his place as chef de cave for both houses.

In July of 2011, Rémy-Cointreau sold both houses to the French luxury group EPI (Société Européenne de Participations Industrielles), owned by the Descours family. Cécile Bonnefond was named CEO of both houses, and in April of 2012, Thierry Roset was appointed as chef de cave of Charles Heidsieck, with Camus remaining as the overall head of winemaking for P&C Heidsieck. However, Roset sadly passed away in October of 2014, at just 54 years of age. In May of 2015, Cyril Brun (pictured) took over as chef de cave, and shortly after, Damien Lafaurie replaced Bonnefond as president of both Charles and Piper-Heidsieck. Stephen Leroux is now the general director of Charles Heidsieck, and Régis Camus has largely retired, now focusing his efforts solely on Rare Champagne.

The first document showing vinegrowing activity by the Taillet family in the village of Merfy dates from 1683. Merfy, in the Massif de St-Thierry northwest of Reims, is not the most heralded cru today, yet it has been renowned for its wines since the Middle Ages: it was mentioned in the ninth century by Pardulus, Bishop of Laon, in a letter to the Archbishop Hincmar, and in fact the vineyard that he references, Chemin de Reims, is still cultivated by Chartogne-Taillet today. In 1775, Sir Edward Barry wrote that “among the River Wines the Auvillers and Epernay are most esteemed, and among the Mountain Wines the Selery and St. Thyery.” As the most famous cru of the Massif, Merfy would have been virtually synonymous with the name St-Thierry, and for it to be mentioned alongside Sillery in those times was high praise indeed.

Today Chartogne-Taillet is the only récoltant-manipulant in the village. The Chartogne family arrived in Merfy in 1870, and in 1920 Marie Chartogne married Étienne Taillet, creating the Chartogne-Taillet estate. Philippe Chartogne and his wife Élisabeth took over the estate in 1978, and since 2006, their son Alexandre has been in charge of the cellars and the vineyards. Remarkably, the Taillet family has kept a written diary of vinegrowing and winemaking records dating back to Fiacre Taillet, who was born in 1700. You can read these if you pay a visit to the estate today, and both Philippe and Alexandre have carried on the family tradition in the form of commentary on harvests, weather conditions, yields and other viticultural data.

Alexandre Chartogne worked a stage with Anselme Selosse, who has heavily influenced his ideas on viticulture. Today, all of Chartogne’s parcels are plowed where possible, and numerous cover crops are grown between the rows of vines. Above all, the viticulture is focused on preserving and expressing the distinct characters of Merfy’s various terroirs. “What is unusual about Merfy is that we have clay and sand over chalk,” says Alexandre, “so the vines are living in two different environments. It’s important that the roots go deep into the ground in order to extract real minerality, and sometimes our roots go down more than 20 meters.” Each parcel is vinified separately, and fermentation is largely in secondhand barriques today, although Chartogne has also used concrete eggs for some time.
 

The rolling hills of the Aube seem to hide all sorts of little treasures. In the sleepy village of Meurville, just to the southwest of the town of Bar-sur-Aube, Christian Etienne makes fruity, full-bodied champagnes that are quietly beginning to gain a wider following around the world.

Etienne’s family has owned vines for generations, but in the past they sold their grapes rather than making wine. After completing his wine studies in Beaune, Etienne returned to the family property in 1978 and began to bottle wines under his own label. Over the years he gradually added to his initial two hectares of vines, and today he farms ten hectares, scattered over 40 parcels in Meurville and the surrounding villages. About three-quarters of his vineyard area is planted with pinot noir, as is to be expected in the Aube region, but Etienne is slowly increasing his plantings of chardonnay, which he thinks can also suit the terroir here. While his viticulture is conventional, he avoids the use of systemic herbicides.

In the cellar, the grapes are pressed in one of two 4000-kilogram Bucher membrane presses—Etienne used to have a traditional Coquard vertical press, but switched to the modern presses because of the difficult work involved with the Coquard. Only the cuvée is used, with the taille sold to the négoce, and all of the wines go through malolactic. In 1999, Etienne began experimenting with oak, purchasing some used barriques that were three to four years old. He’s continued to buy more barrels, always between three and five years old, and today all of his cuvées contain a percentage of barrel-fermented wine.

Christophe Mignon is the fifth generation of his family to grow vines in the Vallée de la Marne, and the family has been making wine for a long time as well—in fact, Mignon’s great-grandmother once won a medal for her red wine from Le Breuil.

Today, Mignon farms a little more than six hectares of vines, divided almost equally between the villages of Festigny and Le Breuil. He has 30 parcels in all, lying largely on clay and limestone soils, and despite being located on the left bank of the Marne River, 90 percent of his vineyard land faces south, offering a high degree of ripeness. As expected for this terroir, meunier represents the majority of Mignon’s plantings, accounting for no less than 90 percent of his vineyard area, while the remainder is equally split between chardonnay and pinot noir.

Mignon is deeply committed to viticulture, believing that the quality of his viticulture directly correlates with the quality of his wines. The vast majority of his work falls under what might be termed “natural”, yet like several other dedicated viticulturists in Champagne, such as Anselme Selosse and Pascal Agrapart, Mignon refuses to adhere to any standardized systems. “I am not organic,” he says. “I am not certified, nor do I want to be. I admire those who are, and it works for them, but it’s not my philosophy.” By the same token, he refuses to call himself biodynamic, even though he relies heavily on many of its practices: “Biodynamics has done a lot for the health of my vines,” he says. “It’s very useful, but I think there is still more.” The farthest that he will go in defining his system of viticulture is, simply: “I do what I say and I say what I do.”

What he does is, inevitably, intelligently judged, labor-intensive and grounded in a carefully reasoned philosophy. He has worked according to the lunar calendar for nearly twenty years, in both the vineyards and the cellar, and with biodynamic preparations for nearly fifteen. He also makes extensive use of homeopathic and phytotherapeutic tinctures and preparations from plants such as ortie (stinging nettle) and prêle (horsetail): these are aimed at balancing the biological health and environment of the vine, allowing it to better resist disease on its own. This becomes particularly important in the case of mildew, for example, where it allows him to reduce the use of copper sulfate, which, despite being condoned by practitioners of organic viticulture, has the unfortunate side effect of introducing a toxic heavy metal into the soil. He grows cover crops in all of his vineyards, and since about 2004 or so, all of his parcels have been regularly plowed.

In the cellar, Mignon has two pneumatic presses, one 2,000 kilograms in size and the other 4,000 kilograms, which allow him to press all of his parcels separately. These are also vinified separately in enameled-steel tanks, half with indigenous yeasts and half with Quartz, the biodynamically certified yeasts cultivated by Fleury. Mignon has a strong preference for enameled steel over stainless: “Stainless is too neutral,” he says, “and it has a tendency to be overly reductive.” The malolactic may be encouraged or not, depending on the particular year, and the wines undergo a natural cold-stabilization by opening the windows and doors in the winter. The wines are not filtered, and bottling occurs on an appropriate lunar day in May or June, after the vines have flowered. Sulfur is typically low as a rule, with no more than 30 milligrams per liter in any wine.

In addition to his own label, Mignon vinifies about 15,000 bottles of champagne a year under the Eugène Prudhomme brand. These also come exclusively from his own vineyards, and while they are based largely on meunier, they can also include pinot noir and chardonnay in their blends.
 

The Corbon family has been growing vines in Avize for four generations, but it wasn’t until 1971 that Claude Corbon began bottling his own wine, shortly after taking over the estate. Corbon retired in 2006, and since then his daughter Agnès (pictured) has taken over the reins. The family owns six hectares of vines, two of which are in Avize, with the rest in the Vallée de la Marne, in the villages of Vandières, Verneuil, Vincelles and Trélou-sur-Marne. However, the Corbons sell a good portion of their grapes to the négoce, and total champagne production is only around 15,000 bottles per year.

Fermentation is done either in stainless steel or in lined cement vats. “Straight after fermenting, I don’t see much of a difference,” says Agnès Corbon, “but when we keep wine for a long time in cement, it gives it a particular taste that doesn’t work for me.” Since 2004, the Corbons have been experimenting with lees stirring in various proportions, bottling different lots with different treatments to see how each develops. “In 2007 it definitely made a big difference,” says Corbon. “The wines were a bit lacking in structure, so bâtonnage really helped out with that.” It’s not the only change they’ve made recently: beginning with the 2008 vintage, the Brut d’Autrefois will undergo its second fermentation on cork rather than capsule, which is a logical progression in light of that wine’s decidedly retro character. Ever since he began making wine in the early ’70s, Claude Corbon has never fined or filtered his wines, and Agnès sees no reason to amend this practice today.
 

While Jérôme Coessens (pictured) has only been making wine at his Aube estate since 2006, his family has been growing vines in the village of Ville-sur-Arce for five generations. In fact, from 1972 to 1999, his father also bottled a little champagne, although his primary business was selling grapes to the négoce. Jérôme took over the estate in 2000 and continued to sell grapes while working as the vineyard manager for a large Champagne group. In 2006 he bottled the first champagnes under his own label, Champagne Coessens.

The company's offices are in the village of Fouchères, although all of Coessens's 6.5 hectares of vineyard land are in Ville-sur-Arce, divided among four different parcels. The largest of these is a 3.36-hectare monopole called Largillier, a south- and southeast-facing slope that lies on classic Kimmeridgian soils of calcareous clay with a high limestone content, "exactly the same as the grands crus of Chablis," says Coessens. Unlike the Chablis vineyards, however, Largillier is planted exclusively with pinot noir. This is the only one of Coessens vineyards that he uses to make champagne, as he feels that this parcel is emblematic of the family: the rest of his grapes are sold, as are the younger vines from Largillier itself.

Coessens's viticulture is environmentally conscious without being dogmatic, and all vineyards are planted with cover crops, with some tilled as needed. Coessens constructed a presshouse and cellar in Ville-sur-Arce in 2008, and the grapes are pressed in an 8,000-kilogram Coquard PAI: the large facility allows him to press grapes for other growers and négociants during the harvest as well. All of the wines go through malolactic, and all but one are fermented entirely in stainless steel tanks.
 

Although his family has been growing vines for four generations, David Léclapart established his small domaine in 1998, after previously working at Leclerc-Briant in Epernay and attending an agriculture school in Beaujeu. He had developed a deep interest in biodynamic viticulture, and when his father passed away in 1996 and his mother asked him to take over the family vines, he agreed to do so only on the condition that he would be able to farm them biodynamically. The beginnings were slightly rocky—he sold his first couple of harvests to the négoce for financial reasons, and his first attempt at bottling, in 1998, was refused by the INAO and had to be sent to the distillery. In 1999, however, he succeeded in making small quantities of three different cuvées that immediately attracted the attention of champagne connoisseurs worldwide.

Léclapart’s three hectares of vines are all in Trépail, spread over 22 parcels, and since the 2000 vintage the estate has been certified biodynamic by both Ecocert and Demeter. He admits that biodynamic viticulture isn’t easy in Champagne. “The weather is difficult,” he says, “especially in regards to mildew. There’s always a big risk of losing the crop.” At the same time, he believes that the quality attained in the vineyards leads directly to quality in the bottle, and he is an ardent believer in the benefits of biodynamic farming.

Léclapart uses no reserve wines, and therefore all of his champagnes are always from a single year, stated on the back label. Chaptalization is rare, having been performed only in 2001 and 2007, and the primary fermentation is always with indigenous yeasts. While the Amateur and half of the Artiste are made in enameled steel tanks, the rest of the wines are vinified in used oak barrels, purchased from Domaine Leflaive in Burgundy, and the malolactic is completed for all of the cuvées, in order to stabilize the wines and to minimize the use of sulfur. The wines are left on their fine lees until the following August or September, just before the next year’s harvest, and they are bottled without fining, filtration or cold-stabilization. All of Léclapart’s wines are released without dosage, which he feels is possible only because of careful work in the vineyards. “It depends a lot on how you cultivate your vines,” he says. “If you don’t achieve the right maturity, it’s difficult to make a good non-dosé.”

Although the De Meric brand dates back to the 1950s, it gained notoriety in the last decade for being owned by an American businessman, Daniel Ginsburg. The house was created in 1959 as Christian Besserat Père et Fils, after Besserat had sold the house of Besserat de Bellefon to Pernod-Ricard, and it was later named De Meric after the family name of Christian Besserat’s mother. In the 1990s it was sold to the Frey group, and as with all of their properties, they retained the vineyards when they sold it on to Daniel Ginsburg in 1997. Ginsburg ran the house until 2006, when it was sold to Reynald and Virginie Leclaire of the Leclaire-Gaspard estate in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ.

As the Frey group kept De Meric’s eight hectares of vineyards in Aÿ, Ginsburg made the wine entirely from purchased grapes, generally including pinot noir from Aÿ, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and Mutigny, and chardonnay from Avize, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Cramant. Ginsburg is a friend and admirer of René Collard in Reuil (now retired), and was heavily influenced by Collard’s methods, including natural viticulture and vinification in oak. Roughly 60 percent of De Meric’s wines were made in either barrique or oak foudre, without malolactic, cold-stabilization or sterile filtration. In addition, only the cuvée, or first pressing, was used, with the taille (the second pressing) systematically sold off.

Since 2006, Leclaire’s aim is to make De Meric a récoltant-manipulant, and the wines are now being made exclusively from Leclaire’s own vines, with the exception of five percent of pinot noir purchased in Aÿ (the maximum permissible as an RM). Leclaire continues to vinify the De Meric wines in both barrel and foudre, both to preserve the identity of the brand and to distinguish these from the Leclaire-Gaspard wines, which are made entirely in stainless steel. The quantity of production has been severely reduced: under Ginsburg, the house made approximately 60,000 bottles of champagne a year, while Leclaire now makes between 15,000 and 20,000 bottles.

The unusual history of Champagne De Sousa & Fils begins with one Manuel De Sousa, a Portuguese soldier from Braga, who came to France to fight in the Allied army during the First World War. Upon returning home to Portugal after the war’s end, he found the economic situation less than ideal, and eventually decided to return to France with his wife and newborn son, settling down in, of all places, Avize. Sadly, he passed away at the young age of 29, from a sudden brain tumor. The family stayed in Avize, however, and Manuel’s son Antoine later married Zoémie Bonville, the daughter of an old winegrowing family in the village. This gave rise to the De Sousa & Fils estate, and since 1986, Antoine’s son Erick De Sousa (pictured) has been at the helm.

Of De Sousa’s nearly 9.5 hectares of vines, 6.77 hectares are planted with chardonnay, mostly in the grand cru villages of Avize, Oger, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Chouilly, with a little in the premier cru of Grauves as well. Some pinot noir vines are located in Essoyes, in the Aube, and De Sousa also has tiny parcels of old-vine pinot noir in Aÿ (27 ares) and Ambonnay (21 ares). A half-hectare of meunier is found in Mardeuil, in the Vallée de la Marne near Epernay. Old vines are treasured and carefully preserved: the average age of the estate’s vines is over 45 years, and 70 percent of the vines are over 25 years old.

De Sousa places a strong emphasis on natural work in the vines, and has been working with biodynamics since 1999. Today, all of his vineyards in the grand cru villages of the Côte des Blancs are cultivated biodynamically (the others being too far away to work effectively). In addition, he has been plowing some of his vineyards by horse since 2009, in an effort to reduce compaction of the soil and to develop a greater proliferation of microorganisms, which are ultimately responsible for transmitting mineral character through the vines and into the wine. Today, two hectares of his oldest vines in Avize and Oger are plowed by horse, with the intention to expand this in the future, and De Sousa also intends to release a separate cuvée from these vines in the coming years.

In the cellar, most of the vinification takes place in enameled steel tanks, although since 1992, De Sousa has worked with oak barriques for selected parcels of vines over 50 years of age, used for the Cuvée des Caudalies. Beginning with the 1995 vintage, the Cuvée des Caudalies has been vinified entirely in wood, with perhaps ten to 15 percent of new oak each year. Fermentation is increasingly being performed with indigenous yeasts, and the malolactic is generally always carried out. De Sousa prefers a rich, ample style of wine, and to further facilitate this richness, a poignetage is performed during the lees aging in bottle, whereby each bottle is picked up and shaken in order to put the lees in suspension. This is normally done once for the non-vintage Tradition and the brut rosé, and twice for the grand cru champagnes.

In 2004, De Sousa started a négociant operation under a separate label, Zoémie De Sousa. Three hectares of vines are worked by De Sousa, although they are not owned, and the winemaking follows the same philosophies as those for the De Sousa wines, with vinification both in tank and in barrel. The production of Zoémie de Sousa is now about 30,000 bottles a year, spread over six different cuvées.
 

A relatively large estate in the Marne Valley, Dehours is increasingly becoming better known among champagne aficionados as a source of mouthfilling, boldly-flavored and terroir-expressive wines. Today the estate is in the hands of Jérôme Dehours (pictured), who farms 14 hectares of vines, spread over 42 parcels in the villages of Cerseuil, Mareuil-le-Port, Troissy and Oeuilly.

The estate was founded by Jérôme's grandfather, Ludovic, in 1930. Jérôme's father, Robert, eventually took over the reins, but unfortunately he passed away when Jérôme was young, and a group of financial partners took control of the business. In 1996, Dehours was able to take the estate back into family hands, and while this meant that he had to build it up again from scratch, it also allowed him complete freedom to push the estate in whatever direction he desired.

Since then, his philosophy has been to focus heavily on sustainable viticulture, with an increasing emphasis being placed on expressing the character of individual terroirs. Cover crops are planted where appropriate, and many parcels are plowed, particularly in the case of young vines, in order to encourage their roots to descend deeper. As befits this sector of the Marne Valley, meunier makes up the majority of the estate's plantings, at 60 percent: "For me, meunier is the identity of the domaine," says Dehours. Another 30 percent is planted with chardonnay, while pinot noir makes up the remaining ten percent.

Along the left, or southern bank of the Marne River, many of the vineyards face north, which Dehours believes is ultimately beneficial for meunier. "South is not the ideal exposition for me," he says. "There's a little too much sun. It's good for pinot noir, but for meunier it becomes a little heavy." However, one feature of this area near the town of Mareuil-le-Port is the intersection of two valleys, the Marne and the Flagot, which creates the possibility of expositions in virtually any direction.

The estate's extensive vineyard holdings allow Dehours to select from a large palette of wines, selling off any juice that doesn't interest him—in fact, up to half of each harvest is sold to the négoce. (Note that while the estate is registered as a négociant-manipulant, no grapes are purchased, and all of the wines are entirely estate-grown.) In addition, he has three traditional Coquard vertical presses in his cellar, giving him a lot of flexibility at harvest-time to manage smaller quantities of grapes and press individual parcels separately.

Dehours vinifies his non-vintage cuvées in tank, but barrels have been used for the top wines since 1999. "I think that the vinification in barrel gives a particular character to the mousse," he says. "The mousse is always very fine, and always a little more pronounced." In the past, the malolactic was generally avoided for most wines, including those fermented in barrel, but since 2011, all wines have gone through a full malo: "I think that malo was happening in the bottle anyway," says Dehours, "and besides, I'd rather decrease my levels of sulfur."<br/><br/>

Although Dehours ferments a portion of his harvest with indigenous yeasts, he hasn't been entirely convinced by the results so far, and isn't sure that it's worth the risk. "The results are often different," he says, "but not always in a good way." Still, he continues to experiment each year. As a rule, the wines are left on their fine lees for an extended period of time before bottling in the summer, as they contain what Dehours calls "precursors of aroma", nourishing the wines and giving them greater character.
 

This well-known Le Mesnil house actually has its origins in Reims, where it was founded by François Delamotte in 1760. Even as early as the 18th century, however, Delamotte made the decision to focus on Côte des Blancs chardonnay, and around the turn of the century François’s son, Alexandre Delamotte, moved the house to Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, in order to be closer to its sources of grapes. In 1828, Nicolas-Louis Delamotte, Alexandre’s brother, took the reins of the house, but he died in 1837 without leaving any heirs, and the house came into the hands of a minority partner in the business, Jean-Baptiste Lanson.

This well-known house in the village of Aÿ was founded as a négociant business in 1838 by two Prussian immigrants, William Deutz and Pierre-Hubert Geldermann. They quickly established a strong market for their champagnes, primarily in England, Germany and Russia, and their sons, René Deutz and Alfred Geldermann, continued this trend. In 1906, the house passed into the hands of René Lallier, son-in-law of René Deutz, and Charles Van Cassel, son-in-law of Alfred Geldermann. Unfortunately, the house, and the region of Champagne as a whole, was soon hit by a series of crises: the Champagne riots of April 1911, which destroyed the Deutz headquarters as well as much of its stock of champagne; the First World War; the Great Depression of the 1930s; and shortly after, the German occupation of Champagne during World War II. Needless to say, these events took a toll on the business—from annual sales of 600,000 bottles at the turn of the century, the house's production had dropped to a mere 80,000 by 1931. However, the house was able to rebound even through the war years, and by the end of the Second World War, production was up to 200,000 bottles a year.

René Lallier's son Jean had taken over the company in 1938, and throughout his tenure he continued to grow the house's sales, as well as expanding its vineyards and modernizing its winemaking facilities. He would head the house until 1972, when his son André took the role of managing director. The fortunes of the house seemed bright, and André Lallier-Deutz even invested in wine ventures outside of Champagne, purchasing Delas Frères in the Rhône Valley in 1977 and pursuing sparkling wine projects in California and New Zealand in the 1980s. However, following the Champagne crisis of the early 1990s, the house sought outside investment, and in 1993 a majority interest was sold to Champagne Louis Roederer.

Deutz has blossomed in the years since, as Roederer's philosophy is to provide a necessary financial stability yet allow Deutz to maintain full autonomy and an independent identity. Deutz is certainly not any sort of second label for Roederer, and in fact, as both houses point out, they could even be viewed as competitors today. André Lallier-Deutz continued to manage the house for several years after the sale, and upon his retirement in 1996, Fabrice Rosset, a long-time executive under Jean-Claude Rouzaud at Louis Roederer, took over the reins as managing director. The Deutz family is still represented, however, as André's son, Jean-Marc Lallier, is the house's export director. In charge of the cellars today is chef de cave Michel Davesne.

The house owns 42 hectares of vines, which account for just over 20 percent of its needs. Once the grapes are pressed, only the cuvée, or the first portion of the pressing, is used, and all of the wines are fermented in stainless steel tanks. Deutz has two levels of cellars that are built into the hillside of Aÿ behind the company's headquarters on rue Jeanson, offering the capacity to store up to eight million bottles of champagne. Equally important, however, is that this provides space for a large number of small fermentation tanks, each between 100 and 125 hectoliters in size, which allows for individual parcels to be vinified separately.

While Deutz's base wines almost always go through malolactic, the house doesn't necessarily have a strict policy. "From time to time it doesn't happen, and we don't force it to happen," says Jean-Marc Lallier. He points out, though, that the malolactic fits the Deutz style due to their philosophy of reserve wines—in order to maintain the freshness and liveliness that characterizes the house style, reserve wines are kept in concrete tanks for a maximum of only four years. Lallier notes that this contrasts the Roederer style: "[Roederer's] reserve wines are old, so to keep the balance they need a lot of acidity," he says. "Our reserve wines are young, so we don't need an overly strong acidity to keep the balance."
 

One of the most iconic and highly respected growers in the Côte des Blancs, Jacques Diebolt has been making champagne in the village of Cramant since 1959. While Diebolt’s grandfather had been making estate-bottled champagne since the beginning of the 20th century, the estate in its present form dates from 1960, when Jacques Diebolt married Nadia Vallois, incorporating a portion of the Vallois family’s holdings into the Diebolt estate.

One reason for the extraordinary character and quality of Diebolt’s wines is undoubtedly the magnificent collection of vineyards located in some of the most favored sectors of Cramant, as well as additional holdings in Chouilly, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Cuis and Epernay. These vineyards include some parcels planted in the 1950s, which Diebolt uses for his top cuvées. In the cellar, Diebolt gives credit to his maternal grandfather for teaching him how to make wine. Originally from Alsace, M. Crépaux was a former cavalry officer, and “an extremely rigid man,” as Diebolt puts it. Crépaux’s production was small, but according to Diebolt he was a meticulous and exacting winemaker, and much of Diebolt’s work seeks to emulate that standard. Since taking over in 1959, Diebolt has installed some enameled steel and stainless steel tanks, but today he’s working more with old foudres and even old barriques, as his grandfather did. Diebolt is assisted at the estate by his wife and their two children, Arnaud and Isabelle.
 

Perhaps the most famous champagne in the world, Dom Pérignon was launched by Moët & Chandon as a prestige cuvée in 1936, with the 1921 being the first vintage to be released. In fact, there had been a previous, private release of a 1926 for one of Moët’s English clients, Simon Brothers & Co, but this was solely intended to be a private commission of 300 bottles for Simon Brothers’s centenary celebrations in 1935. Due to the publicity and demand that this one-off cuvée had generated, Moët offered the 1921 vintage the following year under a newly-created brand, named for the legendary cellarmaster of the abbey in Hautvillers.

The inaugural 1921 Dom Pérignon was an identical wine to Moët’s 1921 vintage champagne, due to the fact that this cuvée hadn’t even been conceived of until 1936. However, it was released in an old-fashioned replica of an 18th-century bottle, and this same distinctive shape is still used today. After the 1921, the follow-up releases of 1928, 1929 and 1934 were also Moët vintage wines, transferred to the special bottles via transversage, and the 1943 was the first Dom Pérignon to actually be fermented inside its own bottle. 

Today, Dom Pérignon is a separate brand within the LVMH portfolio, possessing a distinct identity that is kept separate from that of Moët & Chandon. Richard Geoffroy (pictured) is Dom Pérignon’s chef de cave and has been with the house since 1990: for anyone who has ever met him, it’s immediately obvious that he is highly intelligent, thoughtful and discriminating, and must surely be counted among the finest winemakers in Champagne.

In general, Dom Pérignon is always made from the same core group of vineyards, located in nine villages: Chouilly, Cramant, Avize and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger for the chardonnay, and Aÿ, Bouzy, Mailly, Verzenay and Hautvillers for the pinot noir. Although Moët & Chandon does not disclose the exact amount of vineyard land that they own, it’s no secret that they are by far the largest landowners in Champagne, and that gives Geoffroy access to a vast and enviable palette of wines to work with. “If, in a given vintage, I need something else outside of these nine villages—a trump card to complete the blend—I can get it,” he says.

A typical Dom Pérignon blend will include slightly more chardonnay than pinot noir, although the exact blend will depend on the character of the vintage, and it’s even possible that certain vintages will contain a majority of pinot noir. “Just seeing the varietal makeup tells me a lot about the year,” says Geoffroy. “If I see 60 percent pinot noir, it means that this was not a normal vintage.”

Stylistically, Dom Pérignon is a highly individual wine. “The name Dom Pérignon is often synonymous with champagne,” notes Geoffroy, “and often, people expect it to be a classical, traditional champagne. But it is not.” He describes Dom Pérignon as possessing “a duality of youth and maturity, complexity and balance, rigor and seduction. As soon as you see one side, the other appears again.”

“To me, there are three major elements of style in Dom Pérignon,” he says. “First, we want to deliver intensity. However, there is a major confusion between intensity and power. Power is rubbish. We are not interested in power. For us, intensity needs to come from precision. It’s about harmony and completeness. Everything has to be relevant, everything in the right place.” He points out that balance and harmony are much more critical than more overt or obvious traits. “In a decathlon, you can win the whole thing without winning any of the ten events,” he says.

“Number two would be aromatics,” continues Geoffroy. “If I were speaking technically, I would say that the general character of Dom Pérignon is not oxidative, it is reductive.” The two result in different sets of aromas, he says, and he feels that reductive winemaking is more complementary to the long yeast aging that champagne undergoes, as this aging is itself reductive in nature. “Dom Pérignon in reduction causes yeast aging to amplify the characters, whereas oxidative winemaking works in a different direction than the yeast aging,” he notes. The process of autolysis can go on for decades, “far longer than you would think,” says Geoffroy, and reductive winemaking serves to bring out its full character. “Oxidative winemaking is more about aldehydes than autolysis.”

“Third,” he says, “the style of Dom Pérignon is about mouthfeel. The tactile dimension of the wine is key. Many people mention this about Dom Pérignon, the way it touches and caresses the palate. There’s always something weightless, since it’s not oxidative, and there is a seamless quality to it.”

In 1959, a rosé version of Dom Pérignon was made for the first time, but in extremely small quantities. Only 306 bottles ever left the cellars, served by the Shah of Iran in 1971 at the celebrations of the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. The first commercially available vintage of Dom Pérignon Rosé was the 1962, released in 1970. It's a blended rosé, made with red wine from Aÿ and Bouzy—“maybe more Aÿ than Bouzy nowadays,” says Geoffroy—but it is not the same base blend that is used for the blanc. “Dom Pérignon Rosé is not the pink version of the wine,” he says. “We tend to have fewer components in the rosé blend, but the balance is the same. Chardonnay contributes a lot to the balance—it can be 60 percent pinot noir, but chardonnay has a large role to play.” 

Dom Pérignon’s Oenothèque series was introduced in 2000, as a way to provide older vintages to the market in impeccable condition. While these bottles are kept in the house’s cellars and disgorged much later than the regular release, it is not Geoffroy’s goal to promote the Oenothèque as a recently-disgorged version of Dom Pérignon, and all Oenothèque vintages are aged for at least an additional year after disgorgement. “I’m not a fanatic of super-late disgorgement,” he says. “I want to give the wines enough time on the cork. Yeast aging and post-disgorgement aging bring different things to the wine, and frankly, I want both. The yeast aging is going to bring an element of complexity and of texture, and it will bring more to the finish. Post-disgorgement aging gives all of these other characters a boost. It expands them in a unique way.”

Beginning in 2014, though, the Oenothèque program has evolved into a system that Geoffroy refers to as "plenitudes": stages of evolution that exhibit certain characteristics. Once a wine has evolved beyond the first plenitude, or the first stage of its life, it enters a second, referred to as P2 on the label—"I'm looking for a peak of energy, intensity, precision," says Geoffroy. "I'm looking for it to be weightless, lifted, paradoxical." Further aging brings it to a third plenitude, or P3: "For P3, I want it to be integrated in character, sublime, comple, even more lifted, as if the peak of energy of P2 were carried even further," says Geoffroy. "You need energy to bring it back to the core—time equals energy."
 

This small, boutique négociant is a relative newcomer on the champagne scene, but its talented winemaker, Davy Dosnon (pictured), is firmly rooted in wine culture: his ancestors came to the Aube in the late 18th century, just after the French Revolution, and his family has been making wine since about 1904 or 1905. Dosnon himself studied viticulture and winemaking, working at the champagne houses of Serge Mathieu and Moutard Père et Fils as well as at Rossignol-Trapet in Burgundy. He eventually inherited some vineyards from his grandfather in his hometown of Avirey-Lingey, in the Aube’s Barséquanais, and in 2005 he was joined by Simon-Charles Lepage, who while also being a native of Avirey-Lingey, had previously been living in Paris acquiring a doctorate in criminal law. The two decided to put their minds together to create a new champagne house, intended to express the terroirs of their native region.

Initially called Dosnon & Lepage, the house released its first wines in 2007. Based on the 2004 harvest, these quickly caught the attention of champagne connoisseurs both in France and abroad, and subsequent releases proved to be equally as compelling. Lepage eventually left the house, and as of the summer of 2014, the brand has been renamed Dosnon. Davy Dosnon continues to own the company and make its wines, and he has now taken on a new partner, Nicolas Laugerotte, to handle the commercial side of the business.

Dosnon owns two hectares of vines in Avirey-Lingey and purchases fruit from about five additional hectares in the surrounding area, making for a total production of around 50,000 bottles a year. All of his wines are fermented entirely in barriques purchased secondhand from an estate in Puligny-Montrachet, which gives them a warm, slightly smoky richness. The wines are neither fined nor filtered, and they are often fermented with indigenous yeasts, which Dosnon thinks has resulted in greater character and complexity. Beyond this, everything is done according to the needs of the moment, with “no dogma” to force his actions. The vines are worked organically, but with the possibility for treating against catastrophe; malolactic is done or not done depending on the character of the particular wine; bâtonnage is performed or not, according to similar sensibilities. Even his philosophy of wood is open to debate—so far all of the wines have been in barrel, but he says that if he encounters one that won’t support vinification in oak, it will go into stainless steel tank.
 

Yannick Doyard (pictured) is an 11th-generation winegrower, with a family history of viticulture that can be documented back to 1677. The present estate in Vertus was established by Doyard’s grandfather, Maurice Doyard, shortly after the First World War. Maurice Doyard began estate-bottling champagne in 1927, also serving as director of the Syndicat Général des Vignerons de la Champagne, and in 1941 he became a founding co-president of the CIVC (Comité Interprofessionel des Vins de Champagne), along with Robert-Jean de Vogüé of Moët & Chandon.

Yannick Doyard began making wine in 1979, taking over the family estate two years later at only 20 years of age, following the death of his father. Since 2006 he had been assisted by his son Charles, who was in the process of taking over the reins from his father. Sadly, Charles passed away suddenly in 2017, robbing the estate and the region of a talented and promising young winemaker.

Doyard’s ten hectares of vines include holdings in Vertus, Oger, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Avize, Cramant and Aÿ. He has stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides since the early 1990s, and for the past two years he has been farming biodynamically, although he is “not dogmatic” about it. “There are some very good things about biodynamics,” he says, “and some others that require consideration.” Average vine age is a respectable 40 years, and unusually for the Côte des Blancs, nearly all of the chardonnay is trained on the cordon du Royat, to keep yields lower.

Each of Doyard’s wines is meticulously crafted, made exclusively from his top-quality grapes. While many growers make the same statement, Doyard proves his commitment to quality by selling off 50 percent of his harvest or more, keeping only those grapes that pass his rigorous standards of selection.

In the cellar, he scrupulously vinifies each of his parcels separately, and the winemaking follows the same natural sensibilities as the viticulture. “I want to intervene as little as possible,” says Doyard. “You cannot improve upon what nature gives you.” He has recently installed a Coquard PAI press, widely considered to be the finest champagne press available, and only the cuvée, the first portion of the juice, is used, with the taille, or second portion, sold to the négoce. In fact, Doyard distinguishes each category even more narrowly: within the cuvée there are three serres, or individual pressings, and for his vintage wines, Doyard uses only the first two, believing that they are of significantly higher quality than the third. The wines are never acidified, and are chaptalized only in the most extreme cases, such as in 2001. About half of the wines are fermented and aged in barrel, left to rest on their fine lees without bâtonnage: “I don’t want too much concentration,” says Doyard. “I know it’s fashionable, but sometimes too much is too much.” Since 2007, he has stopped using cold-stabilization, preferring instead to simply leave the wines in the coldest portion of his cellar to allow them to precipitate naturally.

A hallmark of Doyard’s wines is that they are bottled at a lower pressure than usual, at between four and a half to five atmospheres of pressure rather than six (or, in more technical terms, using 19 to 21 grams of sugar for the liqueur de tirage rather than the standard 24). “I don’t want the bubbles to attack you on the palate,” he says. “They should be harmonious and integrated [with the other components].” This is also a nod to tradition, as he says that in the past, when champagne was fermented under cork rather than crown-cap, the pressure was consistently lower than it is today, and he seeks to emulate that spirit.
 

This well-known house was founded in 1808 in the village of Urville, in the Bar-sur-Aubois, but their grapes were initially sold to major houses in the Marne such as Piper-Heidsieck and Moët & Chandon, and it wasn’t until the early 20th century that Drappier began to bottle champagne. At this time, the Aube was largely planted with gamay, and Georges Drappier was the first in his region to widely plant pinot noir, earning the nickname “Père Pinot”. Georges son André expanded the champagne business in the mid-20th century, launching the house’s Carte d’Or cuvée in 1952, and the house would gain renown in the following decade for being the preferred champagne of Charles de Gaulle. Since 1979, André’s son Michel (pictured) has been at the helm of the house, representing the seventh generation of his family to grow vines in Urville.

Drappier owns 53 hectares of grapes in Urville and three of the surrounding communes in the Bar-sur-Aubois, and 70 percent of the house’s vineyards are planted with pinot noir. An additional 40 hectares are rented, including a small portion of vines in the Marne, and Drappier supplements these with additional purchases of grapes. A strong focus is placed on natural viticulture, and the house’s vines, as well as a portion of the rented parcels, are treated with organic composts made in-house, as well as organically-certified fertilizers. The only concession made is in the treatment of mildew, where some synthetic products may be used if necessary: “If I have to choose, I would rather have a healthy vine than an unhealthy but completely organic one,” says Michel Drappier.

In the cellar, fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks, and an array of tanks of many different sizes allows for various parcels to be vinified separately. “We adapt the vinification to the parcel, not the reverse,” says Drappier. A portion of the wines for the Grande Sendrée and the vintage cuvée are aged in 5,000-liter foudres made of fine-grained, Tronçais oak, and can spend between six and 18 months in wood, depending on the individual wine. These are only aged in wood, not fermented: "We tried fermenting in foudre in 2002," says Drappier, "but I think it extracts too much oakiness." In addition, wooden casks made of more porous Limousin oak are used to age the liqueur d’expédition that the house uses for dosage. Unusually, Drappier uses very old wines for the liqueur—after aging in oak, they are put into large, glass demijohns for further aging, and can stay in these for up to 25 years.

A great deal of attention is placed here on reducing the amount of sulfur used, and since 2000, Drappier has been experimenting with making a champagne entirely without added sulfur, from harvest all the way through bottling. While the first few trials were unsuccessful, he eventually achieved satisfactory results, and the first Brut Nature Sans Soufre was released in 2007. “We don’t want to make all of our wines without sulfur,” says Drappier, “but at the same time, this experiment has helped us to lower the level of sulfur across the range, and to better understand how it affects the wine.” Today, the levels of sulfur are unusually low even in the rest of the range, with about 20 milligrams of total sulfur and five free.

In Urville, Drappier has beautiful old cellars that date back to the 12th century, which used to belong to the abbey of Clairvaux in the Middle Ages. However, these cellars are not very deep, due to the high water table in the area, and although there are brand-new cellars that have been dug into the hillside behind the winery, the main cellars for aging are actually located in Reims. Drappier also has the unusual distinction of being the only house in Champagne to do the prise de mousse, or second fermentation, in all bottle formats, starting from the 375-ml half-bottle and going up not only to Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters, or 20 bottles), as some houses do, but even beyond, all the way up to Melchizedek (30 liters, or 40 bottles).
 

Edmond Barnaut began producing estate-bottled champagne in 1874, the same year of his marriage to Appoline Godmé-Barancourt, daughter of a Bouzy winegrowing family. Today, Barnaut’s descendant Philippe Secondé is the fifth generation of the family to produce wine at this Bouzy estate.

Of the estate’s 15 hectares of vines, 12.5 are in the village of Bouzy, with the other 2.5 in the Marne Valley near Château-Thierry. The grapes from the Marne can be used for a champagne called Cuvée Edmond, but all of the rest of Barnaut’s champagnes are pure Bouzy grand cru. All of the wines are vinified in stainless steel, including the reds, and the wines typically go through a full malolactic.

Francis Egly is at the helm of this renowned grower estate in Ambonnay, where he makes powerful, terroir-expressive champagnes, based largely on pinot noir. While the Egly family has a long history of grape-growing in the village, the production of estate-bottled champagne is something relatively new. Egly’s grandfather, Charles, had begun bottling some wine in the 1950s, but only in miniscule quantities: one or two thousand bottles a year that were essentially for family and friends. By the 1970s, Egly’s father Michel had begun bottling around 15,000 to 20,000 bottles a year, but most of the family’s grapes were still being sold to the négoce. It wasn’t until Francis Egly (pictured) took over the estate in 1982 that the family began to bottle the entirety of its harvest.

Today, Egly owns 12 hectares of vines, eight of which are in Ambonnay, with the rest in Bouzy and Verzenay, in the northern Montagne de Reims, and in Vrigny, farther to the west in the Petite Montagne. While the two hectares in Vrigny are all meunier, used to make the cuvée called Les Vignes de Vrigny, the rest of the estate’s holdings are planted with roughly 70 percent pinot noir and 30 percent chardonnay.

For Egly, great wine is made in the vineyards, and his viticulture is intended to maximize the potential of his vines, emphasizing old vine-age, low yields and ripe grapes. “You must first make a good wine before you can make a good champagne,” he says. “Making bubbles is a technical process. It’s easy. The most difficult thing is to make good wine.” While some growers are apprehensive about making champagne from grapes that are overly ripe, Egly believes that ripeness is a critical element in making good wine, and he has no issues with harvesting at 12 or even 13 degrees of potential natural alcohol, which is extraordinarily high for Champagne. “We try to do everything we can to get the grapes as ripe as possible,” he says. “Many people here in Champagne are worried about high ripeness and loss of acidity, but in the past, the best vintages are always the ones with a high degree of maturity.”

In 2006, Egly completed a new expansion to his cellar, which allows him to combine all winemaking operations in one place. Pressing takes place on the ground floor, while underneath there are two additional levels, the first for vinification and the second for storage. In the past, he used a traditional vertical press, but as of the 2008 harvest he has acquired two PAI presses, which he says has significantly improved the quality of his musts.

Egly has been a longtime advocate of oak barrels, purchased from his friend Dominique Laurent in Burgundy, and today he works with about 200 barriques, enough to handle roughly half of his production. Egly credits vinification in wood with not only providing more structure and more aging potential, but also bringing out more of the character of the terroir, and in addition, he notes that working with small barrels allows him to vinify different parcels separately. The wines are fermented with indigenous yeasts, and depending on the individual wine, they spend eight to ten months in barrel: “not more,” says Egly, “because then they become too marked by the wood.”

Regarding the malolactic, Egly has no strict system, and the wines may or may not go through malo depending on the particular conditions of the vintage. In the 2009 vintage, for example, he will not allow malo in any of the wines, whereas in 2008, with that vintage’s rigid acidity, he put a portion of the wines through malo. The wines are bottled late, typically in July: “This permits the wine to naturally clarify,” he says, “avoiding the need for fining or filtration.”

Once the wines are bottled, they are aged for a relatively long time on their lees: the Brut Tradition and Vignes de Vrigny are aged for a minimum of three years in the cellar, and the rest of the cuvées even longer. “A long aging period in the cellar ensures a longer potential of further aging [after release],” says Egly. “If the cellar aging is two years or less, the wine begins to mature very rapidly afterwards. Three years is the minimum needed to give the wine the ability to age well.” As part of his recent renovations, Egly has installed temperature control in all portions of his cellar to ensure an ideal environment, allowing him to reduce the use of sulfur and to age the wines for an optimum period of time.
 

Villers-aux-Noeuds lies in a rather isolated area just south of the city of Reims, on the other side of the N51 from the heart of the Montagne de Reims yet not quite as far west as the main slopes of the Petite Montagne. Like many of the nearby villages it benefited in the past from its proximity to the city, and by the end of the 19th century the village boasted 200 hectares of vines. Today that number has been reduced to a mere 25 hectares, and population expansion has brought the city even closer—the view from Emmanuel Brochet’s vineyard of Le Mont Benoit offers not only the verdant hillsides and yellow fieldscapes typical of the Champenois countryside, but also the massive, industrial bulk of the E. Leclerc supermarket complex looming several kilometers in the distance.

Despite its premier cru status (90 percent on the échelle des crus), it’s likely that this village would be consigned to obscurity if it weren’t for Brochet. While his family has owned vines for generations, they rented them out rather than tending the vineyards themselves, and Brochet (pictured) only began working a portion of his family’s holdings in 1997, bottling his first wine in 2002.

Today he farms 2.5 hectares of vines, all located in a single parcel within the lieu-dit of Le Mont Benoit, which lies on Cretaceous-era chalk under about 40 centimeters of chalky-clay topsoil. The parcel is planted with all three major varieties (in the proportion of 37 percent meunier, 30 percent chardonnay and 23 percent pinot noir), and the oldest vines date from 1962, although about half the parcel was replanted in 1986, following the devastating frosts of the year before, and some portions were planted in 2003 and 2006.

Brochet is committed to working his vines organically: he stopped using herbicides and insecticides in 2002, and by 2005 he stopped using all synthetic treatments. In 2008 he began the process of organic conversion, certified by Ecocert. While he doesn’t believe that organic viticulture will always necessarily result in better wine, he does it out of respect for the land. “The way I came to organic farming was not through any sort of militant philosophy, but through the pleasure of wine,” he says. “If you take pleasure in what you do, and if your environment gives you pleasure, your work will be better. It’s a question of harmony.” At the same time, he does believe that organic farming has improved the overall quality of his wines. "I find more minerality in the wines," he says, "and a richer expression. The wines are more complex, with more aroma, and the minerality is longer on the palate."

Yields are kept low, “but not too low,” says Brochet. “Yields that are too low create an unbalanced wine, one that lacks freshness.” The grapes are always picked at over ten degrees of natural potential alcohol, and the musts are never chaptalized, as Brochet doesn’t like the way that chaptalization changes the aromas of the wine. Although he previously pressed his grapes at a friend’s cellar in Ludes, in 2006 he acquired a 2000-kilogram vertical press, half the size of a standard traditional press, which allows him to separate as many different lots as possible according to variety, vine age and location within the vineyard. Only a portion of the cuvée is kept, with the taille either being sold to the négoce or used to make ratafia, and special attention is paid to the coeur de cuvée, or the heart of the first pressing, which Brochet says produces a more harmonious wine.

Since 2005, all of Brochet's fermentations have been in barrel. He seeks to get the juice fermenting as quickly as possible, within 24 to 30 hours after the grapes have been picked—from the press, the juice goes into tanks for a short débourbage before being put directly into barrel for fermentation. While he initially wanted to use indigenous yeasts, he found that they produced too much variation, and instead, he decided to use the biodynamic Quartz yeasts cultivated by Fleury. A big part of the problem, he says, was that he had only been in his cellar for a short time—the building is a converted farmhouse, with no history of wine production, and so the environment wasn't stable enough yet for native yeasts. Since 2013, though, he has been able to ferment exclusively with indigenous yeasts, and he has even been successful at selecting native yeasts from his estate to use for the prise de mousse.

Brochet's wines rest on their fermentation lees until their first racking in January, then they are left on the fine lees until bottling in July, without fining or filtering. The wines destined for the non-vintage Le Mont Benoit mostly go through malolactic, depending on the particular year, while portions of the coeur de cuvée from old vines of chardonnay and meunier have their malos blocked, and are reserved for vintage wines.
 

Éric Rodez is the eighth generation of his family to grow vines in Champagne, and he has been making wine at his family’s estate in Ambonnay since 1984. Prior to taking over, he worked both in Champagne and elsewhere, including a three-year stint in Burgundy that he says “permitted me to encounter another logic,” one that was more artisanal in spirit and closer to the land. 

Today, viticulture is very much at the heart of Rodez’s philosophy. His six hectares of vines lie entirely in the grand cru of Ambonnay, and he is almost obsessive about maintaining the character of individual plots—from his 36 parcels of vines, he usually vinifies 60 different wines, separated according to both parcel and vine-age. In 1989, he began to focus on improving the health of the soil in his vineyards, believing this to be crucial to the production of a truly great wine. Eliminating both weedkillers and chemical fertilizers, he began planting various cover crops and tilling the soil between the rows, and soon afterwards, became interested in biodynamic viticulture.  “It’s more difficult to make a grand vin in the vineyards,” he says. “It’s much easier to try to do it by blending in the winery.” Needless to say, however, the latter never produces the same results.

Rodez is critical of conventional viticulture, calling it “a logic of comfort” in its reliance on chemicals and its aesthetic of industrialization. At the same time, he’s not completely enthusiastic about organic farming, saying that it doesn’t do enough to preserve a sustainable ecosystem for the future. “I am not at all anti-organic,” he says. “But if tomorrow all of Champagne became certified organic, we would have toxic levels of copper in the soil. It would be pollution, just of a different sort.” For Rodez, the only true long-term solution is biodynamics, as it accounts for the overall health of an ecosystem, allowing it to develop a self-sustainable balance and harmony.

He notes in addition that it isn’t enough to focus only on the reduction of chemical products. “The issue is not only to choose what’s best for the vines,” says Rodez, “but also to think about how to cause the least amount of damage.” He cites cover crops as an example: “I plant crops between the rows and think to myself, ‘This is fantastic!’ But no, it’s not fantastic, because now I’m using so much more petrol, as I have to pass through the vines so often with the tractor. So you have to think about these things as well.” Among the ways that Rodez is now trying to decrease his overall carbon footprint is to combine vineyard operations, doing multiple tasks at one time to reduce his consumption of fuel.

While Rodez places a great deal of emphasis on work in the vineyards, it’s most likely his work in the cellar that sets him apart from many other grower estates. His time in Burgundy taught him how to work with oak barrels, and once back home in Champagne, working in the cellars at Krug taught him how to apply this knowledge to the making of champagne. Today, 80 percent of his vinification is in wood, which he says changes the texture of a wine, giving it another dimension.

As of 2014, his son Mickael has joined him at the estate, taking charge of the vineyards and working alongside his father in the cellars.
 

While Etienne Calsac’s family has owned vines in Champagne for several generations, they didn’t make wine, instead renting their vineyards to négociant houses. Calsac (pictured) took over his family’s estate in 2010, at just 26 years old, and proceeded to set up a winemaking facility on the outskirts of Avize. Since then he has steadily been gaining a reputation for his contemporary, terroir-expressive champagnes, which presently give every indication of becoming even more exciting in the future.

Calsac owns 2.8 hectares of vines, all of which are planted with chardonnay. “When I started, I purchased a little pinot noir to give more structure to my wines, because I didn’t have any reserves,” he says. “But chardonnay is really the identity of the domaine.”

While Calsac’s winery is in Avize, most of his vineyards actually lie elsewhere. His sole parcel in Avize is the tiny, 16-are (0.16-hectare, or 0.4-acre) Clos des Maladries, located in the village behind his grandfather’s house. The entrance to this plot is so small that tractors can’t pass through, and so it has always been worked by horse, which Calsac continues to do today. “It’s a very chalky terroir,” he says, “with optimal maturity. It’s truly a clos, really isolated [from other vineyards].” The vines currently date from the 1970s, and as of 2013 he has begun bottling this as a single-vineyard champagne.

The rest of Calsac’s vineyards are split between Grauves (1.17 hectares) and Bisseuil (1.5 hectares). Grauves, on the opposite side of the large hill of Avize, is historically considered to be in the Côte des Blancs (although due to its drastic differences in terroir, I categorize it in this guide as the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay). Here he has one hectare in the lieu-dit of Les Martinières, a northwest-facing parcel on clay soils that was planted by his grandfather, while two other parcels are located on steeper slopes on the hillside. “Martinières is in the coolest section of Grauves,” says Calsac, “producing wines with a lot of freshness and acidity. Even though I plow the soil and put a lot of effort in the vineyard, you’ll never get the same minerality here as in Avize. But it has its own character and complexity.” His vines here average thirty years of age, with the oldest being fifty years old, and due to the cool terroir, he harvests here a full week after Avize, on average.

In Bisseuil, Calsac’s 1.5 hectares are all located within a single lieu-dit, Les Rocheforts. This parcel faces east, and lies on intensely chalky soils. “The chalky bedrock is only 30 centimeters down,” says Calsac, “so while the wine is riper and rounder than in Grauves, it’s still very taut at the same time. The parcel is well-exposed to the sun, and it’s also very windy here, so the grapes are always healthy.”

In the vineyards, Calsac works his vines as organically as possible, without being dogmatic about it. He has received the Haute Valeur Environnementale certification as well as the Champagne-specific and slightly more rigorous Viticulture Durable, and in vintages such as 2014 he worked entirely organically. He notes that having his vines concentrated in just a few areas is an advantage when it comes to working responsibly: “All of my vineyards are worked the same, since I’m lucky to have such large parcels,” he says. In the cellar he ferments his wines in a mixture of stainless steel tanks and oak barrels, although the latter is in the minority.

Calsac is a member of the group Des Pieds et des Vins, who holds an annual tasting during the week of Le Printemps des Champagnes.
 

This well-known Aube house was founded by Robert Fleury in 1929, although his father Emile had been growing grapes in the Bar-sur-Seine region since 1895, and in fact, had been the first to plant grafted vines here after the arrival of phylloxera. Robert Fleury began making champagne as a récoltant-manipulant, and continued to do so for nearly forty years. In 1962, his son Jean-Pierre took over the estate, and quickly became interested in more conscientious methods of farming: in 1970, he began to use exclusively organic fertilizers, and he abandoned synthetic herbicides in favor of mechanical methods of weed control. In 1989, he began cultivating three hectares biodynamically, becoming the first grower in Champagne to explore biodynamics, and by 1992, he had converted the entire estate to biodynamic viticulture. Since 2009, Jean-Pierre has been assisted at the estate by his son Jean-Sébastien (pictured), who adheres to the same principles of natural viticulture as his father does.

The Fleurys farm 15 hectares of vines in and around the village of Courteron. Pinot noir accounts for 85 percent of their total surface area, while another ten percent is chardonnay; the remaining portion is divided between pinot blanc and pinot gris. In addition, they purchase grapes from eight additional hectares of vines owned by friends and neighbors, and all of these parcels are also farmed biodynamically.

After being pressed in a traditional Coquard vertical press, the wines can be fermented in either barrels or enameled-steel tanks, and reserve wines are often stored in casks or in large oak foudres. Malolactic is typically carried out, although it can be blocked in certain vintage cuvées. Since 1996, Jean-Pierre Fleury has been using exclusively indigenous yeasts for the primary fermentation, and in fact, he has isolated a strain of biodynamic yeasts that he now markets commercially, called Vitilevure Quartz.
 

Thierry Forget is the fourth generation of his family to head this grower estate in the village of Ludes, having taken over from his father Edmond in 1991. As with many growers, estate-bottling has been a relatively recent occurrence here: Forget’s great-grandfather sold all of his grapes, while his grandfather Paul, who excavated the family’s cellars in the late 1940s, bottled about 30 percent of his harvest under the label Forget-Bérèche, selling off the rest. Edmond Forget married Denise Chemin and created the Forget-Chemin label in the late 1960s, and eventually increased his proportion of estate-bottled champagne to about 70 percent of the total harvest. Today, Thierry Forget sells just one hectare’s worth of grapes, reserving the rest of his vineyard area for the estate’s production.

Forget’s 12.5 hectares of vines are divided between 60 parcels, located not only in Ludes and the nearby communes of Mailly-Champagne, Verzenay and Taissy, but also in Treslon and Faverolles et Coerny in the Vallée de l’Ardre, Pévy in the Massif de St-Thierry and Verneuil, Vandières and Port-à-Binson in the Vallée de la Marne. While the distances involved might seem to create complications for a small grower-estate, Forget cites two advantages of having vines in so many different areas: first, it restricts the damage from localized hailstorms and other vagaries of climate; and second, it allows him to better optimize his picking at harvest, since different sectors ripen at different times.

Meunier makes up the majority of Forget’s plantings, at nearly 70 percent, but he sells a portion of this to the négoce each year. Pinot noir accounts for 17 percent, and chardonnay for 14 percent of the total vineyard area. Forget focuses heavily on viticulture, and credits the Club Trésors de Champagne, which the estate has been a member of since 1973, with being particularly helpful in the exchange of ideas and techniques related to vineyard work. "The goal of the Club is to have everyone share their ideas and discuss them together," he says. Vineyard work is lutte raisonnée, plowing between rows where appropriate and eschewing pesticides and chemical fertilizers. While Forget seeks to work as organically as possible, he is not interested in pursuing certification, as he reserves the right to treat synthetically as a last resort, particularly against mildew, if he feels that that is indeed the best course of action for the vines. "Organic farming and biodynamics are very interesting to me, but I am too scientifically-oriented to be bound to them," he says.

In the cellar, the grapes are pressed with a pneumatic press, and fermentation is in thermoregulated, stainless-steel tanks. "I don’t use any wood," says Forget, "because I want a vessel that doesn’t impart anything external to the wine." However, he is open to experimentation, and he may do trials with oak in the future, "just to see," he says. The malolactic is always carried out for all of the wines.

Forget relies heavily on reserve wines for his non-vintage brut, and in fact, his Carte Blanche typically contains a majority of reserve wine, with as little as 30 percent of it coming from the most recent harvest. Forget stores his reserve wines in enameled-steel tanks, and he keeps reserves from every harvest, currently including all years back to 2000. In addition, he keeps some of his non-vintage blend in tank, in both filtered and unfiltered versions, for use as reserves.

Since May of 2008, Forget has used Mytik Diamant corks for his entire range, citing not only the absence of cork taint as an advantage, but also a greater regularity in terms of oxidation from one bottle to the next.

In early 2010, the Raymond Boulard estate was divided between Francis Boulard and his two siblings: with his portion of the vines, Francis established his own company, together with his daughter, Delphine Richard-Boulard (pictured). For the past eight years they have continued to work in the same farmhouse near Cauroy-les-Hermonville where Francis had been making the Raymond Boulard wines since 1974, although compared with the previous estate, their production is drastically reduced. As of the end of 2017, Francis Boulard has officially retired, and Delphine is fully in charge. In 2018, she moved the estate to the village of Faverolles-et-Coëmy, about 20 kilometers to the southwest: this move was instigated in part by a severe fire in 2016 that destroyed much of the cuverie in Cauroy, but it also puts her in closer proximity to her vines in the Vallée de la Marne, which account for nearly half of the estate’s vineyards.

Boulard now owns 2.8 hectares of vines: 1.6 hectares are in the village of Cormicy, the northernmost wine-producing village in the Champagne appellation, while another 1.2 hectares are in the village of La Neuville-aux-Larris in the Vallée de la Marne, where the Boulard family is originally from, as well as in the neighboring villages of Cuchery and Belval-sous-Châtillon. Most of the vineyards contain old vines, either planted by Francis in the 1970s or else earlier, by Francis’s father or Delphine’s grandfather on her mother’s side. Boulard began farming organically in 2007, with 1.5 hectares certified in that year, and as of 2015 the entire estate is certified organic. In addition, Francis Boulard began working with biodynamics in 2001, notably in the Cormicy vineyard of L’Heurtebise, which is used to make the cuvée called Les Rachais. As of 2017, the entire estate is in conversion to biodynamics under Biodyvin.

Boulard’s wines are harvested ripe, typically over 11 degrees of natural potential alcohol, and pressed in a 2000-kilogram pneumatic press. At Raymond Boulard, Francis vinified half of the harvest in wood, but since 2009 the Boulards have vinified their entire production in either barriques, demi-muids or large foudres, all with indigenous yeasts. Unusually, Boulard even uses native yeasts for the second fermentation—in the past this was done with must from the new vintage in place of a traditional liqueur de tirage, but today a laboratory assists Boulard in extracting a culture from her own vineyards.

All of Boulard’s wines go through malolactic, which allows her to use less sulfur, and the dosage is always MCR (moût concentré rectifié, or concentrated and rectified grape must). Francis Boulard favored non-dosé champagne, which he had been making since 1996, and he typically offered most of his cuvées in both extra brut and non-dosé versions. Today, however, Delphine releases only a single version of each cuvée, which is either extra brut or brut nature depending on the individual wine.
 

While the Bonvilles have been winegrowers since the 18th century, this estate traces its direct origins back to 1926, when Franck Bonville, who was working in the cellars of Veuve Clicquot, took possession of some parcels of vineyards in Avize. It wasn’t until 1959 that he started to sell wine under his own label, although he had purchased some cellars in 1947, the same ones that the family still uses today. Franck built the estate up to about 12 hectares; his son Gilles, who took over the estate in 1970, completely renovated the winery and expanded the estate to its current size of 18 hectares, mostly in the grand cru villages of Avize and Oger, but also including a few parcels in Cramant and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Since 1996 the estate has been in the hands of Gilles’s son Olivier (pictured).

All of Bonville’s wines undergo both primary fermentation and malolactic in temperature-controlled, stainless steel tanks. “Our goal is to get grapes as healthy as possible, to respect the work in the vines and to express the terroir of Avize and Oger,” says Olivier Bonville. “The freshness, minerality, finesse and structure of chardonnay are all expressed best in stainless steel.” Except for the Cuvée Les Belles Voyes, which sees additional élevage in 225-liter barriques, all of the wines are blended and bottled in late spring, and all are blends of the various grand cru villages—there is no vinification parcellaire here. “In the end, our selection is a function of maturity,” says Bonville, “not a function of terroir."

Bonville keeps large stocks of reserve wine that play a key role in the estate’s style. “Reserve wines have a sort of primordial importance for us,” he says. “We keep a lot of wine in reserve, and it allows us to have a lot of flexibility.” All of the cuvées employ reserves to some degree, apart from the millésime, and the non-vintage blanc de blancs can contain as much as 60 percent reserve wine, an unusually high proportion in Champagne.
 

Franck Pascal has been making estate-bottled champagne since 1994, and since then, he has quickly become one of Champagne’s rising stars. Located in the village of Baslieux-sur-Châtillon on the northern side of the Vallée de la Marne, Pascal farms 3.5 hectares of vines spread over seven neighboring communes. This area of the Marne is dominated by clay, and while there are other elements present ranging from limestone to flint to sand, there is little chalk here. It’s an ideal environment for meunier, which accounts today for about 60 percent of Pascal’s plantings.

The estate’s origins date back to Franck’s grandparents, who began cultivating vines in 1958, selling their grapes and eventually joining a local cooperative. Franck himself had studied to become an engineer, but decided to take over the family estate in 1994, following the death of his younger brother. After two years of viticultural school, he began to make wine full-time, and was introduced to the concept of biodynamics through contacts in Alsace. He soon became a passionate defender of natural viticulture: “When I was in the army I studied biological warfare,” he says. “I saw the effects that chemicals could have on the human body, and when I looked at our vines, I thought, ‘Why are we putting so many chemicals in our vineyards?’” He began working with organic and biodynamic farming in 1997, and since 2001 has cultivated the entire estate according to biodynamic methods.

All of Pascal’s wines are fermented and aged in tank, with indigenous yeasts where possible, and all go through malolactic. He has experimented with wood, but doesn’t think it’s ideal for wines from clay soils. “Wood makes these wines too round and heavy,” he says. He’s open, however, to using barriques in specific vintages if the acidity is extremely high: for example, in 2001 he made a blanc de blancs called Cuvée Alexis, which was both fermented and aged in barrel. Bottling is late, usually in August, and the wines are not fined, filtered or cold-stabilized.

If you read French, Pascal writes an informative blog in which you can read his commentary on natural viticulture and various activities in the vineyards, among other things.
 

The name Sillery was once the most renowned in all of Champagne, due to the fame of the Brularts, the Marquesses of Sillery between 1621 and the French Revolution. By the 17th century Sillery had become, along with Aÿ, the most heralded cru in Champagne, and in the 18th century the Sillery wine of the Brulart family was among the most acclaimed in all of Europe. Such was the reputation of Sillery that even after the last Marquis of Sillery was guillotined in 1793 and the vineyards sold, the name Sillery was synonymous up to Edwardian times with the finest wines of Champagne, and the words “Sillery Mousseux” can be seen on many old, 19th-century labels, regardless of whether the wine was actually derived from that village or not.

Today, however, it is virtually impossible to find a Sillery wine, unless you pay a visit to François Secondé. With six hectares of vines, mostly in Sillery, Secondé is the only récoltant-manipulant to still produce pure Sillery champagnes. The wines are often picked very late, with a high degree of natural ripeness, and are largely fermented in stainless steel. However, Secondé uses barriques for a small percentage of both pinot noir and chardonnay, putting the wine into barrel just before the end of fermentation and aging it in wood for five to six months.

With villages such as Crouttes-sur-Marne, Nanteuil-sur-Marne and Charly, the far west of the Vallée de la Marne is not one of Champagne’s most famous regions. However, Françoise Bedel is producing some exceptional wines here, and is rapidly gaining a cult following both in France and abroad for her highly individual, biodynamically-grown champagnes.

Bedel arrived at biodynamics through a long and roundabout path. It began in 1982, when she took her son Vincent to see a couple who practiced homeopathic medicine, hoping that they could help him with some health problems. Although it was never specifically mentioned, she credits this initial encounter to setting her on the road to biodynamic viticulture, as she says that it helped to introduce her to an alternative way of thinking. At this time, she was already having philosophical difficulties with the way that she and others around her were cultivating their vineyards: “The spirituality was missing in my work,” she says. “I knew I wanted to do more, but I didn’t know what.” It wasn’t until 1996, however, that she met a number of biodynamic winegrowers, including Jean-Pierre Fleury in the Aube, and inspired by these encounters, she began to work more organically, eliminating chemical pesticides and weedkillers, working with cover crops and tilling the soil. Two years later, in 1998, she began experimenting with two hectares in biodynamics, and in 1999 the entire estate was converted to biodynamic viticulture under certification by Ecocert.

Bedel has noticed a dramatic change in the wines under biodynamic farming. “There’s a certain rectilinear character, a structure in the wines now,” she says. “There’s a more intimate feeling in the flavors that connects the wine and the taster, and the wines are more profound in expression.” She cites the expression of terroir as the primary reason for working with biodynamics, and notes that the roots now descend deeper into the ground, extracting more character of the terroir.

As is typical for the area, these wines rely heavily on meunier, and 79 percent of Bedel’s vines are planted with that variety, with another 14 percent chardonnay and the rest pinot noir. Vinification takes place either in barrel or in enameled steel tanks, and the wines are also strongly influenced by their long lees aging: even the non-vintage Cuvée Origin’elle is aged for six years, and all of the wines show a markedly leesy character.
 

Frédéric Savart (pictured) was born into a family of vignerons, but his real dream was to be a professional footballer. He even signed a youth contract with Stade de Reims, playing as an attacking midfielder, but after meeting the woman who was to become his wife, he refused a potential transfer to another club, and decided to return home to work with his father, Daniel.

The family estate was founded by Daniel's father, René Savart, who purchased his first vines in 1947. Daniel himself took over the winemaking in the 1970s, although production remained extremely small until the mid-1980s, when he significantly expanded the family's vineyard holdings. Since 2005, Frédéric has been at the helm of the estate, although Daniel continues to be very much present, cheerfully greeting visitors and happy to share a glass of wine.

Today, the Savarts farm four hectares of vines, three in Ecueil and one in the neighboring village of Villiers-aux-Noeuds. Nearly all of it is pinot noir, with just a half-hectare of chardonnay: "Historically, Ecueil is a pinot noir terroir," says Frédéric Savart. His philosophy in the vineyards is to prevent disease as much as possible, rather than treat it—towards this end, he prefers a holistic approach, creating an environment within which the plant is better equipped to resist malady on its own. The soils in this area can vary: many parcels in Ecueil are notably sandy, although there's more clay on the mid-slope, and a few areas that are relatively chalky. The soils of Villiers-aux-Noeuds are generally chalkier than those of Ecueil, and Savart's vineyards here are particularly prized for their sélection massale of the renowned pinot fin d'Ecueil, planted here by Daniel and René.

Most of Savart's wines are fermented in stainless steel, although he is increasing the use of barriques, which he has been working with since 2004. Malolactic may be carried out or not, depending on the individual wine and the particularities of the vintage. The dosage, which is generally low, is always MCR: "It's more neutral," says Savart, "and also, it's better than using a liqueur that's poorly made or poorly stored."

As of late 2016, the wines have been labeled under the name Frédéric Savart (whereas formerly it was just Savart), and the new company is also a négociant-manipulant, allowing Savart to purchase small quantities of grapes from selected growers in other villages where he doesn’t own vines.
 

Although the Chiquet family has been growing vines since 1746, the history of Chiquet’s champagne production dates from 1919, when Gaston Chiquet and his brother Fernand began bottling wine under the label Chiquet Frères. Gaston left the company in 1935 to start his own label; Chiquet Frères changed its name to Chiquet Père et Fils, and thirty years later that branch of the family would eventually buy the house of Jacquesson. Gaston Chiquet, meanwhile, continued to expand his vineyard holdings and produce estate-bottled champagne, eventually passing the estate on to his son Claude. Today the estate is in the hand of Claude Chiquet’s two sons: Antoine, who has been at the estate since 1982, and Nicolas (pictured), who began in 1991.

The vineyards are composed of roughly 40 percent chardonnay, 40 percent meunier and 20 percent pinot noir, largely in the villages of Aÿ, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Dizy and Hautvillers, in the Grande Vallée de la Marne. Although the Chiquets own vines in other areas such as the Vallée de l’Ardre and the Vallée de l’Aisne, these grapes go into lower-tier cuvées called Carte Blanche and Insolent, and from the Tradition on up, the wines are composed entirely of premier and grand cru grapes. Incidentally, Nicolas Chiquet notes that they always seem to harvest a slightly lower quantity of grapes than their neighbors. He attributes this to old vines, old soils and the lack of high-production clones, as almost all of the Chiquet vineyards are still sélection massale.

There is no wood used in the cellar, as the Chiquets feel that the wines already have a lot of body and character in this area, and barrels would make the wine too heavy. “We are not making wines as winemakers,” says Nicolas Chiquet. “We are adapting our methods to the land.” In fact, Claude Chiquet had already decreased the barrel program here in the 1950s in favor of concrete and glass-lined tanks, as he sought to impart more finesse into his wines and make them less weighty. Malolactic is always allowed to occur in order to decrease the harshness of malic acidity, as well as to allow for the use of less dosage at disgorgement, and in fact, dosage is carefully thought out here: dosage has been steadily decreasing in recent times, not because of fashion, but because of the greater maturity of the grapes due to increasingly warmer weather.
 

This highly respected estate traces its roots in Aÿ back to 1696, when Nicolas Le Cacheur married Françoise Remy. At the beginning of the 20th century, Emile Michel-Le Cacheur, a seventh-generation descendant of Nicolas, continued to carry on the family tradition of vinegrowing in Aÿ, and in 1921 his daughter Marie married Charles Gatinois. In 1980, Gatinois’s granddaughter Marie-Paule and her husband Pierre Cheval took the helm of the estate, and over the next thirty years, they expanded production and established the modern reputation of the house. Since 2010, their son Louis Cheval-Gatinois (pictured) has taken over, representing the 12th generation of the family to grow vines in the region.

The Gatinois estate owns 7.2 hectares of vines, all in the grand cru of Aÿ, and planted almost entirely with pinot noir. Of these vineyards, about five hectares are used for the production of estate-bottled champagne, with the rest sold to the négoce. Due to the family’s long presence in the village, the Gatinois holdings, which are spread over 27 parcels, include some of Aÿ’s most favored sites, such as Vauregnier, Valnon, Chaufour and Chatillon.

Gatinois’s wines are handled as little as possible in the cellar. There is no fining, no filtering and no cold stabilization. The wines always go through a natural malolactic fermentation, and while wooden barrels are used to make the red wine, oak is never used for the champagnes. The disgorgement is carried out à la volée, without freezing the neck of the bottle, and dosage is kept low, at around six grams per liter for all wines except for the demi-sec, which at 15 grams per liter is still unusually low for the style.
 

This tiny, impeccably-run estate in Cumières is known only to a select few connoisseurs of champagne. You could drive through the village a hundred times without knowing it was there, and in fact, aside from a well-worn, barely legible placard with the words “Champagne Georges Laval” written in about three millimeter-high script just above the doorbell, there is no marking whatsoever to indicate its presence. Behind these simple, unassuming wooden doors, however, lies one of Champagne’s great treasures.

While the Laval family has been growing vines for four generations, Georges Laval began producing estate-bottled champagne in 1971. His son Vincent (pictured) joined the estate after finishing his studies in 1991, and has been in charge of the cellars since 1996. Laval’s vineyard holdings comprise just 2.5 hectares, including a half-hectare of meunier in Chambrecy, in the Vallée de l’Ardre in the western Montagne de Reims. The other two hectares are all in the premier cru village of Cumières, spread over seven parcels. Average vine age is over 30 years, and the oldest vines of the estate are over 70 years of age.

The Lavals have been practicing organic viticulture since 1971, certified by Ecocert. “It’s a little more difficult to work organically than conventionally,” says Vincent Laval, “but it can be done, of course, and afterwards you have a better conscience.” He notes that having larger parcels of vines makes it easier to work organically, with less pollution from neighbors, and over the years the Lavals have traded parcels of land whenever possible in order to assemble larger blocks of vines. Organic compost is used, and cover crops are planted in all of the plots, with regular tilling to oxygenate the soil and encourage the roots to descend deeper.

In the cellar, the grapes are pressed in a traditional Coquard vertical press that holds a mere 2,000 kilograms—the minimum size allowed in Champagne—in order to ensure maximum quality and control over individual parcels. Laval’s wines are harvested ripe and almost never chaptalized, and fermentation takes place in barrel, with indigenous yeasts. The wines are bottled late, usually about ten months after the harvest, and they are neither fined, filtered nor cold-stabilized. While Laval is not against the use of sulfur, he does try to limit its use as much as possible: sulfur is added at the harvest and then throughout the course of vinification only if strictly necessary. The result is an unusually low level of total sulfur in the finished champagnes, usually below 20 milligrams per liter.
 

This young estate was founded in 2000, by Xavier Gonet and Julie Médeville. Gonet comes from a family of winegrowers long established in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and his sister is Chantale Gonet, who now runs Champagne Philippe Gonet. Xavier Gonet married Julie Médeville, whose family owns Château Gilette and Château Les Justices in Sauternes, as well as Château Respide-Médeville in Graves, and together they established this small grower estate in the village of Bisseuil, in the Grande Vallée de la Marne.

Today they own ten hectares of vines, all in grand cru and premier cru villages. Five hectares are in Bisseuil, and these are evenly split between pinot noir and chardonnay. “It’s a type of soil where each can thrive,” says Gonet. “In some years chardonnay is better, and in other years pinot, but they’re both good.” Another two hectares are in the Côte des Blancs, in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oger, and the estate’s remaining vines are located in Ambonnay, Trépail and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ.

Gonet and Médeville have set up their cellars in a newly-constructed facility just off of the main road in Bisseuil. “We don’t have chalk cellars from the 19th century,” says Gonet wryly. “My family has plenty of those in Le Mesnil, but I said I only wanted the vines.” The grapes are pressed using a pneumatic press (“the best to avoid oxidation,” says Gonet), and a portion of the wines are made in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks, while the rest are vinified in barriques of at least three years of age. None of the wines go through malolactic, and the bâtonnage is strictly avoided as well.

Founded in Aÿ in 1584, Gosset is the oldest wine-producing house in Champagne, although back in the 16th century they were of course making still wines rather than sparkling. Remarkably, the house was in the hands of the Gosset family for 16 generations: the first historical mention of the Gosset family is of Jean Gosset, Seigneur d’Aÿ, in 1531. In 1584, Jean’s grandson, Pierre Gosset, was appointed mayor of Aÿ, and at this time it is documented that he owned vineyards and produced wines, and also that his wines were sold in both Paris and Brussels. Pierre’s descendants continued to produce wine and expand the business all the way up until December of 1993, when Antoine Gosset sold the house to the Cointreau family, owners of the Cognac house Pierre Frapin. Béatrice Cointreau managed Gosset until 2007, when her brother Jean-Pierre Cointreau took over, and throughout this time the wines have continued to be made by chef de cave Jean-Pierre Mareigner (pictured), who has been with Gosset for the past 25 years. In the fall of 2009, Gosset moved across the river to the old Malakoff cellars in Epernay, after being in the village of Aÿ for over 400 years. The house still retains its cellars in Aÿ, but all of the winemaking is now done in the new facilities.

Gosset owns only a small amount of vines today, purchasing for the vast majority of its needs, and the house always sources grapes from the same 45 villages each year, with each village vinified and stored separately in the cellar to preserve its identity of character. Only the cuvée, or first pressing, is used, and one of the signatures of the Gosset style is that with the exception of the non-vintage Excellence, none of the wines go through malolactic. In selected cases, certain wines might be aged in old wooden barrels for a few months, but this is used very sparingly, and fermentation is never carried out in wood. The wines are aged on their lees for a reasonably long period of time: usually four years for the Grande Réserve and Grand Rosé, and longer for the vintage wines, with the exact duration depending on the vintage and the individual wine. Aside from the Excellence, all of the riddling is done by hand, due to the peculiar and distinctive shape of Gosset’s bottle, based on an 18th-century design.

This grower-estate in Aÿ was created in the 1930s by Gabriel Gosset and his wife Andrée Brabant. Gosset’s brother André was the director of the négociant house that bears the family name, but Gabriel chose to strike out on his own, producing estate-bottled champagnes from his portion of the family’s vines. Today the estate is in the hands of Gabriel Gosset’s grandsons, Michel and Christian Gosset—Michel oversees the viticulture and winemaking, while Christian (pictured) manages the business.

The estate owns nearly ten hectares of vines, over half of which are in the grand cru village of Aÿ. Another 3.5 hectares are spread between the premiers crus of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Dizy and Avenay Val d’Or, while a half-hectare of chardonnay is owned in the Chouilly grand cru, in the Côte des Blancs. Viticulture plays an important role in Gosset-Brabant’s champagnes, and the vines tend to be worked with natural sensibilities: cover crops are planted in the vineyards where possible, and only organic manures are used. In addition, the vines are generally pruned shorter than usual to encourage greater concentration of flavors. In the winery, the grapes are pressed with a traditional Coquard vertical press, and both fermentation and malolactic are done in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks.

A fifth-generation winegrower, Richard Fouquet (pictured right) has been making the wines at this Cramant estate since 1996. His great-great-grandfather founded the estate in 1885, and his maternal grandmother was instrumental in shaping the property as it exists today: after losing her husband at just 33 years of age, she took charge of the business herself, eventually doubling the size of the estate’s vineyards. Upon her retirement in 1985, the family’s vines were rented out until Fouquet took over a decade later.

Today, Richard and his wife Karine (pictured left) own eight hectares, half of which is chardonnay in Cramant, Chouilly and Oiry, and the other half meunier in Mardeuil and Verneuil. Only two hectares are used to make estate champagnes, however, with the rest of the grapes sold to Laurent-Perrier. Fouquet has sought to gradually improve his work in the vines, eliminating herbicides and increasing cover crops, with regular plowing, and today the vineyard work is largely organic, although Fouquet has no interest in certification.

In the cellars, he vinifies each of his parcels separately, and apart from a small portion of wine in the vintage blends, all fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks. The vintage wine is made without malolactic, and since the 2013 blends Fouquet has blocked the malo in his non-vintage Prisme as well, “due to the changing climate."

Guillaume Sergent’s family has been growing vines in the area around Vrigny since at least the mid-nineteenth century, and his parents made wines at the local cooperative, selling their champagnes under the label Roger Sergent. Guillaume, who is a trained oenologist, took over the family estate in 2008, dividing it with his brother (who sells his two hectares of grapes to Moët & Chandon), and while he has continued to sell grapes to the co-op for economic reasons, he created his own brand in 2011.

Sergent farms a total of just 1.86 hectares, spread over eight parcels in the villages of Vrigny and Coulommes. In this area, the soils are notably sandy: the lower slopes of Vrigny, where Egly-Ouriet’s meunier vines are, lie mostly on limestone and chalk, but the higher slopes near the forest are built on deep sand, and this is where most of Sergent’s vineyards are located. His estate is planted with roughly 40 percent chardonnay, 40 percent meunier and 20 percent pinot noir, with the pinot noir and meunier all in sélection massale.

Sergent’s views on viticulture are decidedly contemporary, without being dogmatic. “I’m not organic, I’m not biodynamic, I’m not raisonnée,” he says. “I just try to work the vines as best as I can, with respect for the plant and respect for the soil.” He follows the lunar calendar for many vineyard operations, and most of his parcels are planted with natural cover crops, for maximum biodiversity—he tried selecting cover crops in the past, but was dissatisfied with the results.

As he has no facilities or cellars of his own, Sergent continues to press his grapes at the Vrigny cooperative, although this doesn’t mean that he makes co-op wines: while the grapes that he sells to the co-op are mixed in with those of other producers, he presses the grapes for his own production separately, using one of the co-op’s pneumatic presses. The wine is fermented largely in 500-liter demi-muids that are four to six years of age, which, after some experiments, Sergent prefers to 228-liter barriques. “In the 500-liter barrels, the wine is fresher and more upright, with more pronounced minerality,” he says.

Unlike the majority of champagne producers who work with oak today, Sergent keeps his wine in wood for “as little time as possible,” in order to avoid any trace of flavor from the wood. He stresses that he uses wood exclusively for fermentation, and not for aging: “Élévage in barrel is for Burgundians, not Champenois,” he says. “I think that in this terroir, my wine is a little swallowed up if there’s too much wood. It’s easily overwhelmed.” Following the primary fermentation, which is always with indigenous yeasts, the wines go through malolactic before being bottled in January, without any filtering, fining or cold-stabilization. Sulfur, too, tends to be relatively low, as Sergent typically sulfurs only once, just before bottling. A final characteristic of Sergent’s champagnes is that they are lower in pressure than most, which he finds to result in a better harmony: his initial cuvées were around 5.5 bars of pressure, but the current ones are notably low at around 4.5 bars, and he’s looking to reduce this even more.

This highly regarded estate in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger was created in 1892 by Gustav Charlemagne, who like many others at the time tended other agricultural products in addition to vines, selling his grapes to the négoce. His son Louis began to produce estate-bottled champagnes in the mid-1930s, and Louis’s son Guy Charlemagne expanded the business and the vineyard holdings when he took over in 1953. Since 1988, Guy’s son Philippe (pictured) has been at the helm of the estate.

The Charlemagnes own 15 hectares of vines, much of which lies in the grand cru villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oger. Six hectares are in the Côte de Sézanne, and a little land is found in Cuis and Mancy, and also in Glannes, near Vitry-le-François. Careful observers will note that Champagne Guy Charlemagne is an SR (société de récoltant) rather than an RM (récoltant-manipulant). This is because Guy Charlemagne (the man) owns some vines, as does Philippe Charlemagne, and both of them “sell” their grapes, in effect, to Champagne Guy Charlemagne (the company). It remains estate-bottled, grower champagne, but it’s simply a different business structure.

The majority of the wines undergo both alcoholic fermentation and malolactic in stainless steel tanks, although Philippe Charlemagne uses some 225-liter oak barriques for his prestige cuvée, Mesnillésime. The barrels come from an estate in Meursault, and are usually purchased at two or three years of age, with the oldest now being around 18 years old. The proportion of wood varies according to the vintage, but is generally less than 50 percent, and Charlemagne is decreasing the percentage as time goes on. “The wood affects the minerality of Le Mesnil a little,” he says. “I prefer to retain the purity of the terroir, without too much influence of wood.” In addition, the wood-fermented wines do not go through malolactic, and while the tank-fermented wines for the Mesnillésime typically complete their malos, Charlemagne has begun to block some of them in recent years, in order to keep the percentage of non-malolactic wine high while reducing the proportion of barrel-fermented wine.

This estate is related to both Larmandier-Bernier, in Vertus, and Pierre Gimonnet, in Cuis, as well as to Waris-Larmandier in Avize. Guy Larmandier’s brother, Philippe, was the father of Pierre Larmandier, proprietor of Larmandier-Bernier. Guy’s sister, Françoise Larmandier, married Michel Gimonnet, father of Olivier and Didier Gimonnet, who run the estate of Pierre Gimonnet today. Currently the Guy Larmandier estate is in the hands of Guy’s son, François. François’s sister, Marie-Hélène, is married to Vincent Waris, and together they formed the estate of Waris-Larmandier, although Marie-Hélène divides her time between the two estates.

Larmandier’s cuvées are separated by terroir: from the vines in Vertus, Larmandier produces a non-vintage brut, packaged in a white label and composed of 90 percent chardonnay and 10 percent pinot noir. This also serves as the base for the brut rosé, made with the addition of red wine from Vertus. The Cuvée Perlée, on the other hand, is a blanc de blancs from the grand cru of Chouilly made with a slightly lower pressure, a style that was an old specialty of Larmandier Père et Fils, the label of the Larmandier family before they splintered off into various other estates. (Pierre Gimonnet also carries on this tradition with their Gastronome.) 

Two Larmandier cuvées are produced from the grand cru of Cramant. The first is a non-vintage, usually blended from two harvests, and it’s made both as a brut and an extra brut. The Cuvée Prestige is the house’s vintage wine, representing a special selection from their best parcels of Cramant. 

Larmandier is also one of the few producers to make a red Vertus Coteaux Champenois, which can be delicious. In the past, Vertus was planted with far more red grapes than white, and this wine honors that history.

Louis Billiot had a press in Ambonnay in the beginning of the 20th century, pressing grapes for Mumm and Moët & Chandon, but he also bottled a little wine of his own. His grandson Henri was the one responsible for the creation of the estate that lies in the center of the village today: Henri, being the eldest of five siblings, took the family’s holdings in Ambonnay and began producing estate-bottled champagne exclusively from grand cru vines. Henri’s son Serge took over the winemaking in 1954, and in the years to follow he would expand the range of wines and establish the current reputation of the estate. Serge officially retired in 2011, and today the estate is in the hands of his daughter Laetitia (pictured).

Billiot’s five hectares of vines are all in Ambonnay, spread over 18 parcels. Even more impressive is that all but one of their parcels are on the mid-slope, in the most favored portion of the vineyard area, expressing the classical character of this famous village. “The wines of Ambonnay are very vinous, with a lot of strength,” says Laetitia Billiot, “but they are also very fine, with delicacy and finesse. They stay fresh for a long time.” All of the wines are fermented in enameled steel tanks, which Billiot prefers to stainless steel, and the wines are neither fined nor filtered. In addition, they do not go through malolactic: “We have 100-percent grand cru vines, which always give a high degree of maturity,” says Serge, “so we don’t need the malo.”

The Giraud family traces its ancestry through that of the Hémarts, who have roots in Aÿ dating back to the 17th century, and the house considers François Hémart, who lived from 1625 to 1705, to be the founder of the estate. In the beginning of the 20th century, Madeleine Hémart married Léon Giraud, who restored winegrowing at the estate after the phylloxera crisis. Their son, Henri Giraud, expanded the family’s vineyard holdings in Aÿ after the Second World War, and today the house is in the hands of Henri’s son Claude (pictured), who is assisted by his daughter Emmanuelle.

The house’s nine hectares of vines are all in the grand cru village of Aÿ, planted with 70 percent pinot noir and 30 percent chardonnay. Additional fruit is purchased, yet all of the grapes are pressed at Giraud’s facilities—the house does not buy any juice. After pressing in one of the house’s two pneumatic presses, the musts are given a cold-settling at 10°C prior to fermentation, which Giraud says results in better clarification and better development of aroma. The wines are fermented either in stainless steel tanks or in oak barrels, depending on which cuvée they are destined for, and all of the wines go through a full malolactic.

While Giraud uses oak from different areas in France, he has worked hard to revive the tradition of using wood from local Argonne forests. He began this project in 1989, working with the cooper Camille Gauthier, and soon became convinced of the suitability of Argonne oak. “We tried [wood from] several different forests,” he says, “and there was no question that the Argonne wood was the best for champagne, the one that most complemented its character.” This is partially because it seemed to emphasize the liveliness and vigor essential to making good champagne. “When we first started working with Argonne wood,” says Giraud, “we found that the wine was actually fresher and livelier when vinified in this wood compared to the wines vinified in tank. This is not at all what we expected.”

In the 1990 vintage, Giraud created the Cuvée Fût de Chêne to showcase the results of his work with Argonne oak, and today he vinifies another cuvée in Argonne wood as well, the Code Noir. Recently, he and Gauthier have taken their efforts one step further, seeking to provide documentable traceability for their sources of wood—beginning with the 2010 vintage, Giraud is using the first certified, entirely traceable barrels from specific areas in the Argonne, beginning with the forests of Châtrice and Beaulieu.

The Goutorbe family has been producing estate-bottled champagne in Aÿ since the late 1940s, but even before that they were already established as pépiniéristes, nurserymen for propagating vine cuttings. Emile Goutorbe established the nursery business just after the First World War, while he was the vineyard manager for Perrier-Jouët, and the success of this business eventually allowed him to purchase some parcels of vines in the area. His son Henri created the Goutorbe label, bottling and selling some champagne while continuing the nursery business.

In 1970, Henri’s son René took over the estate, expanding the vineyard holdings and enlarging and modernizing the winery. Today the Goutorbes own 25 hectares, a considerable quantity for a champagne grower, planted with 70 percent pinot noir, 27 percent chardonnay and three percent meunier. The jewel of Goutorbe’s vineyard holdings is their six hectares of Aÿ grand cru, although they also own vines in several other villages, including Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Bisseuil, Avenay Val d’Or and Hautvillers.

All parcels are vinified separately, to allow for maximum flexibility in blending. The wines are all fermented in stainless steel, and in Goutorbe’s deep cellars, no thermo-regulation is required. Malolactic is performed for all of the wines, and blending and bottling generally take place in March, before the season of heavy pépiniériste work. In addition, Goutorbe is one of the few houses that make mathusalems with the second fermentation in bottle—naturally there aren’t a lot of these produced, but they are interesting nevertheless.

René Goutorbe is assisted at the estate by his wife Nicole, along with their son Etienne (pictured). The family also runs the Castel Jeanson hotel just down the street from the estate in Aÿ, which is a recommended place to stay if you happen to be visiting the region.

Victor Mandois first began making champagne in Epernay in 1860, although the Mandois family can trace its winegrowing roots back to Victor’s great-great-grandfather, Jean Mandois, who purchased vines in Epernay as long ago as 1735. The cellars were moved to Pierry in 1905, and in the mid-20th century Henri Mandois expanded the house and further developed its distribution and sales. Today Henri’s grandson, Claude Mandois, is in charge of the family business.

The house owns 35 hectares of vines that provide for 70 percent of their needs, and purchased fruit is used only for the brut sans année, with the rest of the wines sourced exclusively from estate-owned grapes. A large majority (70 percent) of the house’s vineyards are planted with chardonnay, most notably in the villages of Chouilly, Vertus and Pierry, and the remainder is equally divided between pinot noir and meunier.

The jewel of the house’s vineyard holdings is the Clos Mandois, a 1.5-hectare parcel of meunier vines planted in 1963, located just behind the winery in Pierry. The Clos has its own unique team of workers that tend to it, working the soil without the use of chemical fertilizers or herbicides, and the house began vinifying this parcel separately in 2000, although the first few vintages were never commercialized. The first official release of the Clos Mandois will be the 2004 vintage, which will be unveiled at Vinexpo 2009.

Vinification takes place largely in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks, although some barrels are used for the Cuvée Victor, and the liqueur d’expédition is also stored in 600-liter wooden demi-muids. An unusual characteristic of Mandois’s wines is that all large formats undergo their second fermentation in the bottle, without any transversage, even up to Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters). This requires a lot more work and care in the cellar, but Mandois feels that the resulting increase in quality is well worth the effort.

Champagne Henriot celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2008, commemorating the founding of the house in 1808 by Apolline Henriot. While the Henriot family has roots in the Champagne region dating back to the 17th century, it wasn’t until Apolline Henriot created the label Veuve Henriot Ainé that the family’s wines were marketed commercially. In the years that followed, the house would successfully establish a strong presence throughout Europe, eventually including the granting of royal warrants from Prince Fredrick of Holland and François-Joseph II, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. The house has remained in the hands of the Henriot family throughout its history, and its modern-day reputation was largely created by the efforts of Joseph Henriot, who took over the house in 1962. From 1999, Joseph's son Stanislas was in charge of the company, but he resigned in 2010, and today Gilles de Larouzière is president, while Guillaume Cocude is general director. Alice Tetienne has been chef de cave since late 2019, taking over from Laurent Fresnet, who had been the house's chef de cave since 2006.

Henriot has always had close ties to the house of Charles Heidsieck: Ernest Henriot, grandson of Apolline, helped Charles-Camille Heidsieck found his eponymous Champagne house, and over 100 years later, in 1976, Joseph Henriot purchased Charles Heidsieck, selling it again in 1985 to Rémy Cointreau. Also in 1985, Joseph Henriot entered into a merger with Veuve Clicquot, trading his 125 hectares of vineyard land for 11 percent of Clicquot’s stock, which made him Veuve Clicquot’s largest minority shareholder, as well as its new chairman. He left Clicquot in 1994, taking the family house with him but not its vineyards, and the two houses continue to share a cellar in Reims.

Today Henriot owns 36 hectares of vines in the Côte des Blancs and the Montagne de Reims, cultivated without the use of chemical herbicides or fertilizers. These vineyards account for about one-quarter of the house’s needs, with the rest secured through long-term contracts. Henriot vinifies all of its individual vineyards and parcels separately in small, stainless steel tanks, creating an admirably complex array of base wines to choose from for blending.

Henriot is one of several champagne houses in Reims to own crayères, or chalk pits, quarried 2,000 years ago by the Romans. When they were rediscovered in the 18th century, these beautiful, pyramid-shaped shafts, which number in the hundreds in the southeastern sector of Reims, were connected to one another through additional excavation, and their constant 12 degree temperature (54 degrees Farenheit) and 98 percent humidity are ideal for the storing and aging of champagne. Unlike with other houses such as Ruinart or Pommery, Henriot’s splendid crayères are not open to the public, but are used exclusively for the production of champagne.
 

Hugues Godmé is the fifth generation of his family to tend vines in Verzenay, and his grandfather was bottling estate-grown champagnes as early as 1930. Prior to 2015, he ran his family’s estate of Godmé Père & Fils together with his sister Sabine, yet they split ways due to philosophical differences, and today Hugues bottles champagne under his own label, farming 7.5 hectares spread across 40 different parcels in the villages of Verzenay, Verzy, Villers-Marmery and Villedommange.

Godmé places a firm emphasis on viticulture, believing that high-quality grapes are the key to making good wine: “When I see how the grapes are grown,” he says, “I know how the wine is going to taste.” He has long been employing organic methods, planting various types of cover crops between his rows and plowing them regularly, and he also uses a number of plant-based tisanes and essential oils in the vines. He believes that these methods have produced tangible results: for example, he has noticed that his vines consistently ripen a little later than those of his neighbors, yet they continue to gain in sugar well after the others have stopped. In addition, his grapes have become more concentrated in acidity as well as sugar. “At the same degree [of potential alcohol], my grapes always have one gram more of acidity than my neighbors’ do,” says Godmé. He attributes this to the plowing of the soil, which forces the roots to go deeper, creating a more stable and more mineral-rich environment for the vines. He has been practicing biodynamics since 2006, and has been certified organic since 2013 and certified biodynamic since 2014.

Godmé’s wines are fermented either in enameled-steel tanks or in oak barrels, and parcels are vinified separately or in small groups, combining small plots with similar terroirs. Depending on the particular wine, the malolactic may or may not occur: Godmé notes that with the changing climate, malolactic is becoming less and less desirable, and today, none of his reserve wines go through malo. The wines are bottled without filtration, and since 2009, dosage has been entirely with MCR, which Godmé believes to result in a greater purity and clarity of flavor. “After using MCR,” he says, “it’s difficult to go back to liqueur.”

Georges Huré and his wife Jeanne began bottling champagne at their estate in Ludes as early as 1960, but it was their son Raoul, together with his brothers Marc and Jean-Marie, who founded the current business in 1970, starting with just two hectares of vines. Since 2008, Raoul’s son François (pictured) has been at the helm of the estate, following studies in Burgundy and practical experience at a number of wineries around the world, including Domaine de Montille in Burgundy, Domaine Ferraton and M. Chapoutier in the Rhône, Coldstream Hills Winery in Australia, and Pegasus Bay Winery in New Zealand. His brother Pierre, who has also worked for other wineries such as Domaine Barge in Côte Rôtie and Seresin Estate in New Zealand, returned to the family estate in 2013, and now manages the vineyards.

The Huré family owns ten hectares of vines, four of which are in Ludes. Another three hectares are in Brouillet and Serzy et Prin in the Vallée de l’Ardre to the northwest, with some meunier in Villedommange and a hectare of chardonnay in Vavray-le-Grand, near Vitry. Across the estate, the plantings are roughly 40 percent pinot noir, 40 percent meunier and 20 percent chardonnay, and the Hurés also purchase an additional 1.5 hectares of chardonnay in Rilly-la-Montagne. Vineyard work is largely organic, with natural cover crops and organic compost, and the Hurés maintain control over farming and picking of the contracted parcels as well.

Pressing takes place in a Coquard PAI, purchased in 2014 to replace the family’s traditional vertical press. All parcels are vinified separately and kept apart until the final blending, with an increasing number of parcels fermented in oak barrels of various sizes, from 228-liter barriques to 600-liter demi-muids. Since 2009 a portion of the reserve wine has been stored in 4,500-liter foudres as well. No bâtonnage is used for any of the wines in barrel, and none of the barrel-fermented wines go through malolactic: Huré, in fact, has been decreasing the use of malolactic over the last decade, and today a minority portion of the production goes through malo.

There have been Dumangins growing vines in Champagne since the 17th century, and the family has been bottling wines since the 1890s, when Hippolyte Dumangin founded the house. Its current location in Chigny-lès-Roses dates from 1988, when Jacky Dumangin, Hippolyte’s great-grandson, built the winery in an old schoolhouse building on the main road of the village. Jacky has officially retired as of 2008, and his son Gilles, who has been with the house since 2000, has taken over the reins.

In true French fashion, Dumangin’s vineyard holdings are complicated to explain. Essentially, Gilles Dumangin (pictured) owns about one hectare and rents an additional 1.5 hectares of land. He also controls the business entity that owns 3.19 hectares of family land, and these grapes are sold to the company Champagne J. Dumangin Fils. Additional purchases are made from outside of the family, and almost all of the grapes are sourced in the area of the Montagne de Reims immediately around Chigny, in order to preserve the identity of character found in this region: today Dumangin has sources in Chigny itself, as well as in the nearby villages of Ludes, Taissy, Cormontreuil, Rilly-la-Montagne and Montbré. The construction of a new winery has allowed Dumangin to vinify all parcels separately, largely in enameled steel vats. “Stainless steel is very good and easy to clean,” he says, “but I like to work with enameled steel. You can’t clean them as well, but you keep a history of the fermenting yeasts, a history of the wines.”

As with a growing number of champagne producers, Dumangin has switched to Mytik Diamant corks rather than traditional champagne corks, and he says that in addition to eliminating cork taint, they have also contributed to keeping the wine fresher for a longer period of time. “Personally, I like my wines young and fruity, with a lot of freshness,” he says, “and the wine stays very fresh with Mytik.” 

Jean-Louis Vergnon began producing estate-bottled champagnes in 1985, although the estate has been in existence since 1950, and the family’s roots in the area go back for five generations. In 2002, Christophe Constant was put in charge of the cellars, and under his direction the estate was transformed into one of the finest producers in the village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Constant left in 2017, and today the house is managed by Didier Vergnon, with Julien Goût responsible for the winemaking.

The J.-L. Vergnon estate owns a little over five hectares of vineyards, all planted with chardonnay and spread over the villages of Le Mesnil, Oger, Avize, Vertus and Villeneuve. A firm emphasis is placed on harvesting ripe grapes, up to 11 degrees of natural potential alcohol or more, with chaptalization avoided. Also, this riper fruit allows the avoidance of malolactic, which would otherwise be typically advisable with the intense acidity of chardonnay from the southern Côte des Blancs, and it permits him to reduce the level of dosage. “Some people say that in Le Mesnil, with no malo, if you don’t dose these young wines with ten or 11 grams of sugar they’re undrinkable,” Constant told me. “But it’s not true—you just have to harvest ripe grapes.”

The wines are mostly fermented in stainless steel tanks, and bottling is relatively late, following six months of aging on the fine lees. While the cellar is not yet equipped for vinifying a great number of parcels separately, Constant began experimenting with barrels from a local Champenois cooper in 2004, and since then the estate has gradually increased the use of wood in the cellar. Up until now, these have largely been 300-liter casks, although 400-liter barrels are now being used as well.
 

Henri Sélèque planted his first vines in Pierry in 1965, and while he initially sold his grapes to the village cooperative, he began to bottle his own champagne in 1969. He was joined in 1974 by his two sons, Richard and Jean, and by 1976 the family had installed a press and cuvérie to facilitate production at the estate. Richard and Jean continued to work together, making wines under the Sélèque label, and in 2008, Richard’s son Jean-Marc (pictured) began to work at the estate as well. Recently, however, the family has split the Sélèque estate, and with his portion of the vineyards, Jean-Marc has created a new company, J.-M. Sélèque..

Jean-Marc Sélèque’s vineyards extend over 7.5 hectares in seven different villages: most of the parcels lie in Pierry and Moussy, while others are found in Epernay, Mardeuil, Dizy, Boursault and Vertus. Chardonnay accounts for about 4.5 hectares, while the rest is mostly meunier, with only half a hectare of pinot noir. All of the estate’s vineyards in Pierry, Moussy and Epernay are now farmed biodynamically, as is a 70-are parcel in Mardeuil called Basses-Rondes. The rest are too far away for Sélèque to consistently work them in biodynamics, but even so, they’re treated mostly organically—the sole synthetic treatment is for mildew when necessary, as Sélèque believes that these synthetic materials are less harmful to the soil than an excess of copper. All except for the steepest parcels are regularly plowed, most by tractor but a few by horse.

Up until now, Sélèque has been using his family’s facilities in Pierry, but he is in the process of constructing a new presshouse and winery that will be operational by the 2015 vintage. He vinifies most of his wines in stainless steel, with about 30 percent of the production made in either large oak foudres or 300-liter barriques, which Sélèque and his father have been working with since 2004. A liqueur d’expédition of cane sugar is used for the non-vintage brut, while the rest of the wines are dosed with MCR (concentrated and rectified must), and while Richard has used Mytik stoppers since 2005, Jean-Marc has recently switched back to traditional cork. “At three months,” he says, “the Mytik is better, more neutral. But at six months or one year, the cork is far superior.”

Montgueux is a relatively new terroir in Champagne, planted only since the 1960s. In the decades that followed, however, its plush, bold chardonnay rapidly gained a devoted following among Champagne’s winemakers, most notably the late Daniel Thibault of Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck. Today, 80 percent of Montgueux’s grapes still go to négociants in the Marne, but there are several grower estates in the village that are gaining in prominence, and none more so than Jacques Lassaigne.

Jacques Lassaigne was one of the growers involved in the original plantings of Montgueux, initially selling most of his grapes. He began making small quantities of wine in 1970, although this was vin nature, or still wine, and his first champagnes were from 1980. In 1999 his son Emmanuel took over the property and sought to increase the amount of estate-bottled champagne, with the aim of expressing the distinctive character of Montgueux’s terroir. Emmanuel (pictured) created a label called Alexandre L to sell some bottles that his father had previously produced for sale to private clients, but once Emmanuel’s own champagnes were ready for sale in 2002, he discontinued the Alexandre L brand and began labeling everything as Jacques Lassaigne. Since 2002, as well, Emmanuel has been solely responsible for the winery, and has turned it into the finest in the village.

Lassaigne’s 3.5 hectares of vines are all on the eastern end of the imposing Montgueux slope, and are all between 25 and 45 years old. These parcels are unusually isolated due to their location, making it easier for him to work his vines without pollution from neighbors, and in fact, only one of his vineyards shares a border with others. While Lassaigne is one of the leading viticulturalists in Champagne, he rejects any certification or standardized systems, and a number of his techniques are atypical for the region. Since 2008 he has left a permanent cover of grass in his vineyards, creating heavy competition with the vines, and has added nothing to his soils—no fertilizers or composts, organic or otherwise. He notes that Montgueux is a warm terroir but windy as well, and he credits this as a factor in the absence of rot, oidium and other maladies in his vines.

In order to source grapes from the more typical, south-facing vineyards in the heart of the village, he is registered as a négociant-manipulant, and now purchases about 2.5 hectares of additional grapes every year to supplement his own produce, choosing particular old-vine parcels where he has control over viticultural methods and dates of harvest. All of the grapes are pressed in Lassaigne’s traditional Coquard vertical press—he does not buy any juice. While there is a little sulfur added at pressing, no sulfur is used throughout the rest of the vinification, nor at disgorgement.

Each parcel is carefully kept separate in the cellar, and even different pressings from the same parcel are vinified separately. Lassaigne has been steadily increasing his use of secondhand barrels since beginning to work with wood in 2004, yet most of the vinification is done in stainless steel. Fermentation takes place with indigenous yeasts, and the wines are lightly fined before bottling but not filtered. In addition, all of Lassaigne’s champagnes are bottled at five bars of pressure rather than the usual six. “I find a better balance,” he says. “The effervescence integrates better into the other elements.” Disgorgement is done by hand, without freezing the bottle necks first.
 

No champagne grower is as renowned or as influential as Anselme Selosse. Whether directly or indirectly, he has inspired an entire generation of young winegrowers in the region, and among consumers, his champagnes have become some of the most sought-after wines in the world. As with many wines that seek to push their boundaries, Selosse’s champagnes are not without controversy—some believe them to be at the pinnacle of what can be achieved in the region, while others find them incomprehensible. Regardless, it’s undeniable that these are highly original champagnes, and wines of intense personality.

Anselme’s father, Jacques, didn’t come from a family of winegrowers. He wanted to be a baker, in fact, but in 1947 he moved to Avize and acquired some vines. While he initially sold his grapes to the négoce, he began to bottle estate-grown champagnes in 1964. In 1974, Anselme returned to the family estate after studying viticulture and oenology in Beaune, and it was he who eventually established its current reputation, exploring a highly individual and iconoclastic path with a relentless sense of inquisitiveness and self-reflection. Today, Selosse’s 7.5 hectares of vines are spread over 47 parcels, all of which are vinified separately. Nearly four hectares are in Avize, allowing him to make three monocru Avize champagnes; the rest are in Cramant, Oger and Le Mesnil in the Côte des Blancs, Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ in the Grande Vallée and Ambonnay in the Montagne de Reims.

Viticulture is certainly a cornerstone of Selosse’s philosophy, yet as with anything else that he does, his methods are not easily categorized. While he is revered by practitioners of organic and biodynamic viticulture, he refuses to adhere to either of those systems, and he is open to using non-organic treatments if he feels that they represent the best option for his vines. “I prefer using these to using an excessive amount of copper,” he says. His viticultural philosophies are rooted in a deep respect for nature, as well as a holistic belief in maintaining a harmoniously balanced ecosphere, but he rejects any systems that he perceives as being dogmatic.

As an example, Selosse is often mentioned in connection with biodynamics, yet he himself is firmly against the biodynamic movement. He did experiment with biodynamics for five years, beginning in 1996, but he stopped in 2001 in order to continue along his own path. Today he calls the biodynamic movement a sect, and in typical Selosse wordplay, says, “The word sect is at the root of sécateur (pruning shears): it cuts off and isolates itself from others.” For Selosse, biodynamics is no different from any other system, as standardized systems tend to produce standardized ideas, ultimately rendering them sterile. “I work with the sun and the moon,” he says, and that is as systematic as he is willing to be.

Above all, his vineyard work aims to cultivate a healthy overall environment for his plants to thrive in. “A terroir is a biotope, an ecosystem that supports a population of individuals,” he says. “All of this must exist in equilibrium. A more poetic definition would be a harmonious society.” The word society implies a multiplicity of inhabitants, and Selosse views the monoculture of modern vine-growing as being intrinsically unhealthy and unviable, citing instead the multi-faceted and interdependent biodiversity of a forest as his model. “Nothing is dominant, everything is in need of the other.”

While viticulture is fundamental to his work, it is not the end in itself. “It is not only viticulture for me,” he says. “After that, I make wine.” For him, bringing up a wine is not unlike bringing up a human being: “It’s a question of education, of socialization,” he says. “I have these individuals, and they’re a little savage.” Selosse sees vinification as a means of civilizing the wine, helping it to express itself in a language that we as humans can understand. At the same time, he is seeking to guide his wines rather than impose himself upon them. “Before I do anything,” he says, “I ask myself, does this wine need something to be done to it? If not, then I leave it alone.”

Fermentation is carried out with indigenous yeasts, and takes place in barrels, which are always purchased new from coopers in Burgundy and Cognac, although the percentage of new oak in a total blend is always very small. There are generally a few acacia barrels in the cellar as well: “They impart a feeling of freshness to the wines,” he says. “In a year like 1989 or 2003, they are useful.” Malolactic may or may not happen, and he does nothing to encourage it one way or the other. “I have no regard as to the malo,” he says.

The wines stay on their fine lees until bottling, which takes place sometime between May and July, depending on the year, and Selosse typically avoids bâtonnage unless the wines are particularly reduced. Sulfur is usually added only at harvest: “At the beginning, the skins are susceptible to oxidation,” he says. “Afterwards there is natural protection [from the lees].” At the same time, he is not dogmatic about his sulfur program. “I don’t have a recipe for sulfur,” he says. “If at the harvest the grapes are not perfectly healthy, they may require more. But a dose of sulfur that’s too high is like an overbearing mother.”

For the fermentation in bottle, Selosse uses indigenous yeasts as well, which he cultivates by freezing a portion of his grape musts, and the wines are typically kept on their lees for five to ten years, depending on the cuvée. Since 1991, he has used MCR (moût concentré rectifié, or concentrated and rectified grape must) for dosage, and while the dosage levels are generally very low, he does trials with each wine to find its appropriate balance, and he’s not at all reluctant to raise the dosage level if he feels that it’s warranted.

Selosse’s cellars have historically been located in the center of Avize, but in 2008 he purchased the old Avize château that formerly housed Champagne Bricout, on the road towards Cramant. The 200-year-old cellars here are built on four levels, offering him ample space and allowing him to work entirely by gravity, and he has now migrated his winemaking operations to the new location. Besides the cellar, he has constructed a hotel and restaurant in the château, called Les Avisés, which opened in the summer of 2011.
 

Founded in 1798, Jacquesson established itself as one of the most important Champagne firms of the 19th century, achieving annual sales of one million bottles by 1867. However, the company went into decline following Adolphe Jacquesson’s death in 1875, and in 1920 it was purchased by a wine broker named Léon de Tassigny, who moved its headquarters to Reims from the original cellars in Châlons-sur-Marne (today known as Châlons-en-Champagne). When the house was purchased in 1974 by the Chiquet family, it was moved to the village of Dizy, where it remains today. Under the hand of Jean Chiquet, Jacquesson developed a portfolio of wines of exceptional quality, establishing a reputation as one of Champagne’s finest houses. In 1988, the house passed into the hands of Jean’s two sons, Laurent and Jean-Hervé Chiquet, who embarked on an ambitious program to take the house to an even greater level of quality.

What is perhaps most admirable about the Chiquet brothers’ efforts is that it was already a highly respected Champagne house, widely considered to be one of the greatest in the region, and yet in the belief that they could do even better, they decided to radically revamp their entire production, which is not an insubstantial risk. Beginning with the 2000 vintage, they discontinued their non-vintage Perfection Brut, reinterpreting it as the Cuvée No. 728, so named as it represented the 728th blend created in the history of the house. Every subsequent year sees a new, numbered cuvée released: 729, 730, 731 and so forth. The idea of these numbered cuvées is to emphasize the character of the base vintage, blending it with a small percentage of reserve wines for completeness and harmony yet allowing the vintage character to set the tone for the wine each year. This is in a sense antithetical to the traditional concept of a non-vintage champagne, which is blended to create a consistent style of wine from year to year. “We don’t want to make a consistent blend every year,” Jean-Hervé Chiquet told me, when releasing the 728. “We want to make the best possible blend every year.”

In addition, the Chiquets chose to focus on several specific vineyard sites, placing an emphasis on expressing the terroirs of their most distinctive parcels. The first experiment with this was in the 1995 vintage, when they made 700 bottles of a single-vineyard blanc de blancs from Corne Bautray in Dizy. They followed this up next year with the 1996 Vauzelle Terme in Aÿ, which was 100-percent pinot noir, and were so pleased with the results that they decided to continue this further. “We felt that if these wines were so good,” said Chiquet, “why not produce them on a regular basis?” Corne Bautray was made again in 2000, and in 2002 they made both Corne Bautray and Vauzelle Terme, as well as two other single-vineyard wines: a blanc de blancs from Champ Caïn in Avize and a saignée rosé from Terres Rouges in Dizy (which turned into a champagne blanc in the 2012 vintage).

This is essentially the lineup that the house continues to produce today, together with late-disgorged versions of each wine. In February of 2022, a minority share of the house was purchased by Artémis Domaines, the company founded by François Pinault that also owns Château Latour in Bordeaux, Château Grillet in the Rhône, Eisele Vineyard in the Napa Valley, and other winemaking properties in France and the United States. At the end of 2022, Artemis Domaines assumed complete control of Jacquesson, with Jean Garandeau appointed as general manager. While the Chiquet brothers remained on the board as advisors for one year after the sale, they are now no longer connected with the house.

For the time being, the house continues to operate in a similar manner as it did under the Chiquets, however, and Yann Le Gall has been retained as chef de cave, ensuring a continuity of style. The house owns 28 hectares of vines, in the villages of Dizy, Hautvillers, Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ in the Grand Vallée de la Marne, and Avize and Oiry in the Côte des Blancs. In the past, villages such as Verzenay and Chouilly were important sources for the house, but today they purchase the equivalent of 11 hectares of grapes exclusively from villages in which they also own vines. The vineyard work is focused on organic and environmentally-friendly methods, with the widespread planting of cover crops and a minimum of chemical treatments employed. All of the vineyard parcels are pressed and fermented separately, and while there may be a few small parcels of the same character that are blended together for reasons of scale, in general they are all vinified and aged separately.

Prior to 2008, about 70 percent of the wines were fermented in large oak foudres, but the purchase of additional casks in 2008 increased this to 90 percent, and today all of the fermentation is in wood, which is a fundamental characteristic of the Jacquesson style. The malolactic is always completed, and the wines stay on their lees for four months, with regular stirring; there is only one racking, just before bottling, and the wines are bottled without filtration or cold-stabilization, and usually also without fining.

Founded in 1922, Janisson-Baradon is one of the rare grower estates to be found in the town of Epernay itself. Today it is in the hands of Cyril Janisson (pictured), the fifth generation of his family to head the estate. Cyril has been working at the estate since 1997, and since 2004, his brother Maxence has been in charge of the cellars.

Of Janisson-Baradon’s nine hectares of vines, eight are in Epernay, with the rest divided between chardonnay parcels in Chouilly and meunier in Brimont, in the Massif de St-Thierry. Since 1999, the vineyard holdings have all been planted with cover crops, and no chemical weed-killers or pesticides have been used. Pinot noir forms the majority of the vineyard plantings at 60 percent, while chardonnay makes up 30 percent and meunier 10 percent of the vines. Much of the vinification is done in tank, but the Janissons are also using an increasingly larger quantity of old barrels from Burgundy for fermentation and for the aging of reserve wines. The use of oak plays an important role in forming the character of Janisson-Baradon’s wines, as a percentage of barrel-aged wine is found in all the cuvées, even the non-vintage Brut Sélection, which contains 30 percent of reserve wines stored in oak barrels. Today, cement "eggs" are also used in the cellar, with promising results.

Jean-Luc Lallement, who looks as if he’d be perfectly at home playing rugby, has officially been at the helm of this estate since his father retired in 1999. His family has been growing vines in Verzenay for some time, as Jean-Luc’s great-grandfather already had some parcels of vines here, but it wasn’t until after the Second World War that his grandfather Jean began to produce estate-bottled champagnes. His father Jean-Charles took over the estate in the late 1970s, and Jean-Luc worked at the estate part-time between 1978 and 1982 while attending a local oenological school. After a year of military service in 1984, he returned to the estate and has been involved in the winemaking ever since.

Lallement (pictured here with his wife Alexandra) owns four hectares of vines, 2.8 of which are in Verzenay and the rest just over the border in Verzy. The soil is very calcareous here, with little clay, and Lallement says that the terroirs in both his Verzenay and Verzy parcels are quite similar, with perhaps a little less slope on the Verzy side. In the cellar, fermentation with indigenous yeasts takes place in enameled steel tanks, as does the malolactic, and the wines are neither filtered nor cold-stabilized before bottling.

The finest producer in the village of Oger, this estate was founded in 1864 by the great-great-grandfather of Caroline and Jean-Charles Milan, the current proprietors. Jean Milan, for whom the estate is named today, was their grandfather, and in the past, the estate sold a portion of its grapes, most notably to Pol Roger and Krug, in addition to producing estate-bottled champagne. Jean’s son Henry-Pol (pictured) took over the estate in 1980, expanding the wine production and running the wine business with his wife Liliane until 2006, when they officially retired. Today the cellar is in the hands of Jean-Charles, although Henry-Pol and Liliane continue to be actively involved in the estate.

The Milans own six hectares of vines, all in the grand cru of Oger. While Milan was originally registered as a récoltant-manipulant, the family changed its status to NM in the 2000s in order to expand the production. Vineyard land in Champagne today is extremely expensive, and difficult to obtain in the grand cru villages—thus, an increasingly common practice among grower estates is to purchase grapes from other family members and friends, allowing growth while remaining financially viable as a business. The Milans wanted to maintain the identity of their champagnes as being exclusively Oger grand cru, and therefore began to seek out grapes only from parcels in the village, owned and worked by people that they know and trust. Aside from the purchasing of grapes there is little that has changed: the house remains family-owned and family-run, and the work remains as artisanally oriented as it ever was.

The Moutardier family has been living in the village of Le Breuil, in the Vallée du Surmelin south of the Marne River, since the 18th century. Octave Moutardier was the first member of the family to grow vines, towards the end of the 19th century, and his son Camille began to bottle champagne in 1921. The present-day company was founded by Camille’s son, Jean Moutardier, in 1960, and he shaped the identity of the house by selecting vineyards exclusively in the Vallée du Surmelin, as well as focusing primarily on the meunier grape variety. Jean’s daughter Elisabeth joined the company in 1979, and in 1987, she and her husband, Englishman Jonathan Saxby, took charge of the house, continuing to expand the production and develop the range of champagnes. While Saxby departed in the fall of 2010, Elisabeth is assisted today by her son William.

Champagne Jean Moutardier owns 18 hectares of vines, six of which are in Le Breuil and 12 in the neighboring village of Baulne-en-Brie. Eighty percent of the vineyard is planted with meunier, with the remaining 20 percent equally divided between chardonnay and pinot noir. The house purchases an additional 12 to 15 hectares of grapes, yet all of these are from the three villages immediately surrounding Le Breuil, in order to preserve the distinctive character of the region. In addition to producing their own champagnes, Moutardier also acts as a press center for other winegrowers in the valley, and this is also advantageous in that all of the grapes that they purchase are pressed at the winery, giving them more control over quality. Moutardier has recently installed three 8000-kilogram Coquard pneumatic presses, which have replaced the old 4000-kilogram Vaselin ones, and in conjunction with the house’s two traditional Coquard vertical presses, these enable them to press around 100 hectares’ worth of grapes at harvest time. 

Moutardier is seeking to make fresh, lively wines, contrasting the old-fashioned image of meunier as a rustic, slightly heavy variety. This is partially enabled by earlier and more regular ripening due to a change in the modern-day climate, but in terms of vinification, all of the wines are vinified entirely in thermo-regulated, stainless-steel tanks, undergoing their malolactics in the presence of their lees. While the reserve wines used to be stored in large, wooden casks, they are now kept in stainless steel, which also contributes to a greater finesse and freshness.

The Moutardier style is heavily influenced by the character of the Surmelin valley, which follows a tributary of the Marne River, running roughly northwest to southeast and crossing the border of the Marne and Aisne départements. The soils here are stony and poor, composed of the argilo-calcaire typical of the region, yet the chalky bedrock is unusually close to the surface for the Vallée de la Marne, only 15 to 20 centimeters down in some places. The vineyards are planted largely on south- and southwest-facing slopes, and meunier is, unsurprisingly, the dominant variety here, demonstrating a personality that’s distinctly different from other areas of the Vallée de la Marne.

This Montgueux estate has been producing estate-bottled champagnes for over 30 years, yet even today they sell a large portion of their harvest as grapes, most notably to Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck. As befits Montgueux’s terroir, Velut’s 7.7 hectares of vines are planted predominantly with chardonnay, which makes up 83 percent of the estate’s total surface area; the remaining portion is planted with pinot noir. Today Jean Velut’s son Denis is at the helm of the domaine, and the viticulture is almost entirely organic, utilizing natural composts and eschewing insecticides and chemical fertilizers. The wines are made entirely in stainless steel, and they are aged for an admirably long time on their lees.

There have been Vesselles growing vines in Bouzy for over three hundred years, and today there are several branches of the family making wine in the village. One of the most prominent of these is Jean Vesselle, created when Jean took over his family’s estate of Fulgence Vesselle in 1971. Since 1993, his daughter Delphine Vesselle (pictured) has been in charge, and continues to make the wines today.

Of the estate’s 13 hectares of vines, seven are in the grand cru village of Bouzy, with the rest in Loches, in the Aube’s Barséquanais. Ninety percent of Vesselle’s vineyards are planted with pinot noir, as befits the terroirs of both Bouzy and Loches, with the other ten percent chardonnay. All of the wines go through fermentation and malolactic in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks except for the Petit Clos, which is vinified in barrique, without malo. In 2007, the Vesselles renovated the winery and expanded the cellars, and as part of this project, they have installed solar panels on the roof as a source of renewable energy. In addition, they have developed a water collection system, ingeniously employing their old and long-unused cement fermentation tanks for this task.

Today there are a handful of wines from elite, artisanal grower-estates in Champagne that have attracted a nearly cult-like following. One of the most sought-after of these is the meunier of Jérôme Prévost. Prévost established his La Closerie estate in 1987, when he inherited a parcel of vines from his grandmother, who had previously been renting out her vineyard rather than cultivating it herself. Prévost began to work these vines, selling his grapes to the négoce, but in the 1998 vintage, his friend Anselme Selosse convinced him to start producing his own wine. As Prévost had no cellars of his own, Selosse offered to share a corner of his cellars in Avize: Prévost made all of his wines there until the 2002 vintage, which was vinified in his new cellars in Gueux but later bottled in Avize. Since 2003, all of the production has taken place in Gueux.

Prévost’s two hectares of 40-year old meunier vines are all located within a single vineyard, Les Béguines, located in the village of Gueux. He does have an additional 20 ares in a parcel directly adjacent to Les Béguines, co-planted with meunier, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot blanc, but as these vines are still young, they are currently blended with the meunier. It’s possible, however, that they may be used to produce a different cuvée in the future. The soils in this area, just west of Reims, are a mix of sand and calcareous elements, due to being a seabed around 45 million years ago, and they’re filled with a number of tiny marine fossils leftover from this period. This creates a highly specific terroir that’s distinctively different from other sub-regions of Champagne, and the chalky bedrock that appears prominently in some other areas of the Montagne de Reims is submerged about 20 meters underneath this sedimentary material.

Emphasis is firmly placed on the vineyards rather than the cellar, and the work done according to natural rhythms, without chemical pesticides or herbicides of any sort. “The important thing for me is to harvest ripe grapes,” says Prévost, who doesn’t chaptalize his wines. He adds, however, that he sees ripeness as “less about sugar richness than physiological maturity,” and that the average alcohol level is about 10.5 degrees at harvest. The winemaking is as natural as the vinegrowing: the wines are fermented and aged in 450- to 600-liter barrels, fermentation is always with indigenous yeasts, and the wines are bottled late, usually around July, with a minimum amount of sulfur and without fining, filtering or cold-stabilization. The bottles are all disgorged at once, in October of the year following the bottling.

Generally speaking, Prévost makes only two wines, which, ignoring the aforementioned 20 ares of co-plantation, are always from a single variety (meunier), a single vineyard (Les Béguines) and a single vintage. Both wines are made from the same blend: the blanc is called Les Béguines, which has been produced every year since 1998. In the 2007 vintage, Prévost made a rosé champagne for the first time, blending Les Béguines with a percentage of red wine from a small section of Les Béguines that is affected with court-noué (grapevine fanroll virus), which stunts the flowering and concentrates the juice in the small quantity of grapes that remain. Called Fac-simile, this rosé acquires a dramatically different character with the addition of red wine, making for a fascinating comparison.

In addition to these wines, however, Prévost has allowed himself to experiment a little bit. In the 2000 vintage, he produced a second champagne called “Une fois pour tout”: essentially, this was the same wine as the standard Les Béguines except that it was aged in barrel for an additional year before bottling. The intention was not at all to create a super-cuvée or a wine that was “better” than his existing one, and this was clearly reflected in the fact that he sold Une fois pour tout for just one euro more than the regular bottling. Prévost himself is still slightly amused when a customer proclaims one of these wines to be markedly better than the other, and notes that their difference is not necessarily one of quality, only character. He repeated this experiment in 2003 with a wine called “d’Ailleurs”, and like Une fois pour tout, it was made from a random selection of barrels and bottled one year later than the standard Les Béguines, in July of 2005. The latest edition of this extended élevage champagne is from the 2012 vintage, and is called Climax.
 

José Dhondt (pictured) is a third-generation winegrower, currently at the helm of this small estate on the main road in Oger. Dhondt’s grandfather came to the Champagne region from Belgium in 1924; José himself has been making wine here since 1976, after returning to the family estate in 1973 following his military service.

Dhondt owns five hectares of vines, primarily in Oger but also a little in the neighboring village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and also in Saudoy in the Sézanne, where he grows both chardonnay and pinot noir. His winemaking facility is located on the outskirts of the village, housing a traditional Coquard vertical press along with a full array of temperature-controlled stainless-steel tanks that he uses for fermentation. Malolactic is always carried out, to balance the naturally high acidity of the Côte des Blancs chardonnay

The affable, hospitable José Michel (pictured), who passed away in 2019, was something of a legend among champagne aficionados with an interest in pinot meunier. Located in the village of Moussy, in an area just southwest of Epernay called the Coteaux Sud d'Epernay, Michel made ample, meunier-dominated wines of great character and depth. The Michel family has been growing vines here since 1847, and José Michel's grandfather, Paul, began estate-bottling in 1912. José was the fourth generation of his family to run the estate, making wine here since 1952, and today his grandson Antonin is in charge of the cellars. The estate's ten hectares of vineyards are spread over 30 parcels in seven different villages; about half of the vineyard area is planted with meunier, with the rest mostly chardonnay, together with a small percentage of pinot noir.

Although in the past Michel used to ferment his wines in 600-liter, oak demi-muids, today the wines are largely fermented in stainless steel tanks. In the early 1990s Michel began to experiment a little with barriques, but only for chardonnay, as he felt that meunier already possesses enough intrinsic richness and doesn't need any additional amplification. Most of the upper-end cuvées are now fermented in tank but contain some wine that's aged for a few months in old barrique, and since 1998 some of the blanc de blancs is fermented in barrel as well.
 

Although Châlons-en-Champagne is the historical and administrative capital of the Champagne region, it lies apart from any contemporary vineyard areas. Several houses keep cellars there, yet the only Champagne house of any consequence to be headquartered in the city today is Joseph Perrier. The house was founded in 1825 by Joseph Perrier, the son of a wine merchant and the nephew of Pierre Nicolas-Marie Perrier, who had founded Perrier-Jouët a few years earlier in 1811. Joseph Perrier was an important figure in the area, eventually becoming the mayor of the city, which was named Châlons-sur-Marne at the time. In 1888, after Perrier’s death, the house was sold to his friend Paul Pithois and continued to flourish in the 19th century, becoming an appointed supplier to the Royal Households of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. The house joined the Alain Thienot group in 1988, and today it is directed by Jean-Claude Fourmon (pictured), the great-grandson of Paul Pithois.

The house owns 21 hectares of vines, all in the Vallée de la Marne: 12 lie in Verneuil, and the remaining nine are spread between Cumières, Hautvillers and Damery. These vineyards provide for about 25 percent of the house’s needs, with the rest of the grapes purchased through long-term contracts. Vitry-le-François has been an especially important source of chardonnay for the house, due to its location southeast of Châlons, and the house also purchases grapes in the Montagne de Reims, Côte de Blancs and Vallée de la Marne.

Joseph Perrier’s cellars in Châlons, which extend for three kilometers, are housed in a former chalk quarry, dating from Gallo-Roman times. However, unlike the vertically-excavated crayères in Reims, such as those owned by Ruinart, Taittinger or Charles Heidsieck, the chalk caves of Joseph Perrier are dug horizontally, into the side of a hill. Due to this, they have vaulted ceilings, with rounded arches rather than the tall, pyramid-shaped pits found in Reims, and they are all built on one level, allowing wine to be transported to any portion of the cellars without the use of an elevator.

Joseph Perrier’s chef de cave is Claude Dervin, who is the third generation of his family to be responsible for the cellars here. The house owns a charming château in Cumières, which also contains a presshouse; another facility in Verneuil is used to press the grapes from the holdings there. Fermentation of the wines, along with the malolactic, all take place in stainless steel tanks, and some enameled steel is used for storage of reserve wines. It’s sometimes written that Joseph Perrier stores their reserve wines in 600-liter, oak demi-muids, but Fourmon says that this hasn’t been the case for a long time, and today these demi-muids are used only for the preparation of the liqueur d’expédition.

Undoubtedly one of the most renowned houses in champagne, Krug is considered by many to be the very greatest of them all. It was founded in 1843 by Johann Joseph Krug, a German emigré who had previously worked for Jacquesson, and who had even been a partner in that firm. He decided, however, to strike out on his own, beginning a legacy that has now stretched down through six generations.

Krug owns 20 hectares of vines, ten in the Côte des Blancs and ten in the southern portion of the Montagne de Reims. These vineyards account for roughly a third of the house’s total needs, with the remainder purchased through long-term contracts. Many of Krug’s sources have been supplying them with grapes for decades: for example, Krug has famously been purchasing meunier from the cooperative in Leuvrigny since 1929, and these grapes form an important part of their blend.

All of Krug’s base wines are fermented in 205-liter oak barrels, but it’s important to note that the house uses oak only for fermentation, not aging. “We use oak casks at Krug because we believe they give more character,” says Olivier Krug (pictured), the director of the house. “The wine acquires more substance in the first fermentation through micro-oxygenation.” Eric Lebel, who was Krug’s chef de cave up until 2020, when he was succeeded by Julie Cavil, points out that flexibility is another factor. “An advantage of fermenting in barrel is that we can vinify each and every parcel separately, no matter how small,” says Lebel. As an example, in the 2007 harvest Krug had no fewer than 28 different wines from Ambonnay, each parcel fermented separately and kept isolated until the creation of the final blends.

Concerning the malolactic fermentation, it’s neither encouraged nor prevented here: in the past it was widely believed that Krug’s wines didn’t go through malo, but on a visit to the house many years ago, Rémi Krug told me that they have since found out that the malo sometimes occurs in the reserve tanks, though never in barrel. They don’t see it as important, anyway. “We don’t care,” said Rémi. “Each wine does what it wants, on its own time and in its own way.”

The brilliance of Krug lies above all in its skillful blending. A successful blend originates with high-quality material, and Krug is meticulous about keeping a collection of base wines that is both extremely diverse and of individual personality. “We are not interested in pinot noir or chardonnay or meunier,” says Olivier Krug. “We are interested in wines of origin. We are interested in the Aÿ from Maurice or the Ambonnay grown by Jean-François—we know these parcels, we know these people, and we keep the identities of these wines separate with our fermentation in barrel.” The house is famous for its vast stocks of reserve wines, and a portion of these will be combined each year with a selection of the 200 to 250 different wines from the most recent harvest. “We have around 350 wines to taste, and about six or seven people taste them,” says Krug. “We taste these wines two or three times, so at the end you might have six or seven thousand ratings. So it’s not very scientific.” In the end, the selection can be based on feeling and experience as much as anything else, which is why the palate memory of older members of the group is so valuable. “There are no rules,” he says. “It’s a completely artistic process.”
 

One of the most original estates in Champagne, Aubry Fils is located in the village of Jouy-lès-Reims, in the western sector of the Montagne de Reims. Of the estate’s 15 hectares of vines, 12 lie in Jouy and the nearby villages of Pargny-lès-Reims, Villedommange and Coulommes-la-Montagne, all of which are classified as premier cru; the other three hectares are located elsewhere and are sold off to the négoce.

Proprietors Pierre and Philippe Aubry are twin brothers, although after a few visits it’s easy to tell them apart: Pierre says very little, and always seems to have a lit cigarette; while Philippe (pictured) is garrulous and inquisitive, as interested in what you have to say about the wines as he is in showing them to you. In fact, the Aubrys have a little tasting notebook that they pull out every time they host visitors, and Philippe will ask you to describe all of the flavor associations that you find in the wines and fastidiously write them down.

Vinification is largely in stainless steel tanks, although certain cuvées can see partial aging in wood, especially for chardonnay. In addition, the malolactic is almost always encouraged, as the Aubrys feel that acidity is never lacking in the wines, and they would prefer to have slightly lower acidities and be able to use a very low dosage than have high acidities and be forced to dose the wines more.

Curiously, the Aubry brothers are perhaps best known for their preservation of old, “forgotten” varieties, such as arbanne, petit meslier and fromenteau. The brothers had the idea of resuscitating these varieties back in the late 1980s, when they were contemplating the creation of a special cuvée to celebrate the bicentennial of the estate (the family traces its winegrowing roots in the region back to 1790). They planted their first vines of arbanne and petit meslier in 1989, and by 1994 they were able to create their first cuvée of these varieties, along with the addition of fromenteau (which is none other than pinot gris). “It’s interesting to present something that is completely incomparable,” said Philippe Aubry, as we were tasting his Sablé Blanc de Blancs, made from arbanne and petit meslier blended with chardonnay. “Nowhere else will you find a wine like this—there is no equivalent anywhere.” Today the Aubrys have half a hectare each of arbanne, fromenteau and petit meslier, which they say represents 30 percent of the total plantings of these varieties in all of Champagne. They have become a reference point for these forgotten varieties, and today if a young Champenois vigneron wants to learn about planting one of these unusual grapes, it’s likely that the Aubry brothers are the ones they will talk to.
 

Laherte Frères was founded in 1889 by Jean-Baptiste Laherte, although the Laherte family sold grapes to the local cooperative for many years. Michel Laherte, the father of current proprietors Thierry and Christian Laherte, began to bottle champagne under his own label, and when brothers Thierry and Christian took over the estate, they appropriately changed the name back to Laherte Frères. Since 2002, they have been assisted by Thierry’s son Aurélien (pictured), who represents the seventh generation of his family to grow vines in this area.

Laherte Frères is registered as a négociant-manipulant, but in reality this is true grower champagne, and all of the wines are estate-grown. The NM designation is the result of a bureaucratic formality: each member of the immediate family—Thierry, Christian, Aurélien, his mother Laurence—owns a portion of vines, and the company of Laherte Frères “purchases” the grapes from the family members. If it were registered today it would likely be called an SR (société de récoltant), but that structure did not exist at the time.

The Lahertes own ten hectares of vines, spread over an astonishing 75 parcels in ten different villages. Needless to say, some of these parcels are quite small, and fortunately much of the estate’s holdings lie in areas not too far away, in communes such as Chavot, Courcourt, Moussy, Vaudancourt, Mancy and Epernay. Aurélien Laherte is particularly interested in natural viticulture, and since 2005, five hectares of the estate have been farmed biodynamically. The other five are essentially organic, worked without any chemical pesticides or herbicides, and while Laherte would like to expand his biodynamic treatments to include more parcels, the main difficulty right now is distance, as some plots, such as those in Vertus or Voipreux, for example, are simply too far away from Chavot to effectively manage the intense labor required for biodynamic viticulture.

Many of Laherte’s champagnes demonstrate the distinct character of the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay, the area just to the south and southwest of the town of Epernay that falls between the Côte des Blancs and the Vallée de la Marne. The chalk in this region is noticeably softer and more friable than the hard chalk found in the Côte des Blancs, and here it’s usually covered by 50 centimeters to one meter of clay, often mixed with other elements such as silex, limestone, schist and marl. Combined with the diverse array of different expositions offered by the numerous folds and twists of the rolling slopes here, this creates a distinctive character in the wines that distinguishes them from those of the surrounding areas. “Our pinot noir is finer than that of the Vallée de la Marne because we have some chalk,” says Aurélien Laherte, “and our chardonnay is rounder and fruitier than the Côte des Blancs because we have some clay.” At the same time, this region is far from homogeneous: Laherte identifies 15 different terroirs in the village of Chavot alone, and vinifies each separately in order to preserve its individuality of expression.

Ever inquisitive, the Lahertes are not averse to experimentation in either the vineyards or the cellar. The average vine age here is about 30 years, with the oldest vines over 60 years of age, and as some of these have gradually needed replanting, the Lahertes have replaced them with ungrafted vines, chosen from a sélection massale. They now have close to 500 individual vines on ungrafted rootstock, scattered over several parcels, and as the vines are all quite young, the Lahertes are still waiting to evaluate the results. In addition, they have planted a parcel in Chavot called Les Clos with seven different varieties—pinot noir, meunier, chardonnay, arbanne, petit meslier, pinot blanc and fromenteau (pinot gris)—which are field-blended, farmed biodynamically and vinified in barrel for a cuvée of the same name.

In the cellar, the Lahertes have two traditional Coquard vertical presses. “It’s a little excessive for an estate of our size,” admits Laherte, “but it allows us to press very quickly as the grapes come in. It’s better that we wait for the grapes rather than having the grapes wait for us.” There is no strict recipe for vinification: about 70 percent of the harvest is vinified in barrel, but some wines might be fermented in large, wooden foudres, and some might even be fermented in tank and later transferred to barrel, together with their fine lees. The young vines are often fermented with selected yeasts, while older vines can go through a longer, natural-yeast fermentation. Malolactic may be carried out or not, depending on the individual wine—in general, Aurélien Laherte prefers chardonnay without malolactic and meunier with a full malo, but again, there is no strict recipe.

This house is relatively new, founded by René-James Lallier in 1996, although there have been Lalliers established in Aÿ for five generations. In 2003, Francis Tribaut purchased the company along with its vaulted 18th-century cellars in the center of Aÿ; Tribaut had been Lallier’s consulting oenologist, and today he continues to direct the house and to vinify its wines.

The house owns 12 hectares of vines, eight of which are in Aÿ, with the rest in the Côte des Blancs villages of Cramant, Chouilly and Vertus. These account for roughly a quarter of its needs, and in all, 45 hectares of grand cru vineyards are sourced from various sectors of the Marne.

While the wines used to be made in the cellars in Aÿ, Tribaut has recently built a new winery in Oger, and as of 2011, all of the winemaking is done there. The fermentation takes place in stainless-steel tanks, with indigenous yeasts, and in order to maintain a consistency of style, the malolactic is allowed to occur only in a portion of the wines, with each cuvée blended from both malo and non-malo wines. "The idea is to keep the same feeling of freshness every year," says Tribaut.

There have been Lamiables in Tours-sur-Marne since at least 1650, but their vinegrowing history has been more recent, dating from the middle of the 20th century. The first vines were planted in the vineyard of Les Meslaines, Tours-sur-Marne’s most famous site, in 1950, and in that same year the twin brothers Auguste and Pierre Lamiable began excavating the family’s cellars. They began pressing their own grapes in 1960, and in 1972 Pierre Lamiable’s son, Jean-Pierre (pictured), took the helm of the estate, vinifying the entire production as estate-bottled champagne. Since 2004, Jean-Pierre’s daughter Ophélie has taken over the winemaking, while her older sister Orianne manages the commercial side of the business.

Lamiable’s six hectares of vines are planted with roughly 60 percent pinot noir and 40 percent chardonnay, and they lie almost entirely in the grand cru village of Tours-sur-Marne: 1.25 hectares in the vineyard of La Vigne Goësse and the rest in Les Meslaines, except for a mere 10 ares just across the border in Bouzy’s Les Muids. All of the vines are planted with a sélection massale, which Jean-Pierre Lamiable says can reduce quantity by up to 30 percent but results in much better maturity. The wines are fermented in either stainless steel or enameled steel vats, and the malolactic is systematically carried out: in 1999 and 2000 the vintage wines were made without malolactic, but Ophélie Lamiable wasn’t entirely pleased with the results, so now she always lets the malo occur.

The history of winegrowing in the Lancelot family dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when Jean-Baptiste Lancelot, who was head of viticulture for G.H. Mumm at the time, acquired his first parcels of vines. His son Jean was the first member of the family to produce wine, and he began selling his champagnes shortly after the Second World War. Jean’s son Albert married Brigitte Pienne, the daughter of another Champenois winegrowing family, and in 1967, the Lancelot and Pienne estates were combined to create the domaine as it exists today. The estate is now in the hands of Gilles Lancelot (pictured), son of Albert and Brigitte: Gilles, an oenologist by training, has been working at the estate since 1995, and has been at its helm since 2005.

Lancelot’s vineyards cover slightly over eight hectares in total. Half of these are in the Côte des Blancs, in the villages of Cramant, Avize and Chouilly, while the other half are in Monthelon and Mancy in the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay and Boursault in the Vallée de la Marne. Like many growers, Lancelot follows a path of lutte raisonnée, seeking to limit the use of chemicals as much as possible in the vineyards.

All of the estate’s wines are vinified in stainless steel or enameled tanks. “Oak changes the aromas,” says Gilles Lancelot. “I prefer something light and delicate, something more pure and mineral-focused.” While he has attempted some trials in oak barrels for his liqueur d’expédition, he hasn’t liked that either. The malolactic is allowed for all of the wines, and the wines remain on their fine lees for a relatively long period of time, with bottling typically in May.

In a region where vineyard work is not always given the priority it deserves, Larmandier-Bernier is a model of what can be achieved through conscientious and diligent care in the vines. Pierre Larmandier (pictured) has been at the helm of this estate since 1988, and today he and his wife Sophie farm 16 hectares of vines, spread over 50 different parcels. Thirteen hectares are in Vertus and the surrounding villages of Bergères, Villeneuve and Voipreux, with two hectares planted to pinot noir and the rest chardonnay. The other three hectares are all chardonnay, in the grands crus of Cramant, Chouilly, Avize and Oger. The average vine age is 35 years across the estate, and the oldest vines are nearly 80 years old. 

In 2000, Larmandier began converting the estate to biodynamic farming, and since 2004 the estate has been entirely biodynamic. A cover crop is maintained between the rows, and the soil under the vines is tilled five times a year, in order to promote organic life.

In keeping with the natural philosophy of their wines, the Larmandiers have used exclusively indigenous yeasts for the primary fermentation since 1999, in the belief that the character of the native yeasts is itself an important component of the site’s terroir. The wines can be fermented in stainless steel tank, large oak foudre or 225-liter barriques, depending upon the individual wine. “We’re trying to use more wood,” says Pierre Larmandier, “as the wine can breathe more, unlike in stainless steel.” At the same time, a balance is sought above all, and over the past few years, foudres have increasingly been preferred to barrels: Larmandier says that an ideal goal would be to eventually vinify everything in foudre, keeping the stainless steel tanks for reserve wines. Dosage is kept very low, generally four to five grams per liter for the non-vintage champagnes and fewer than four grams for the vintage-dated ones. “If we could use no dosage at all, we would be very happy,” says Larmandier. This doesn’t mean that the wines are austere. The wines are riper than most champagnes—Larmandier harvests at an average of 11 degrees of potential alcohol, whereas the average for Champagne is about 9.5 degrees—and this depth of fruit provides a natural balance.
 

Founded in 1872, this property on the main road in Le Mesnil enjoys a high reputation around the world for its classic blanc de blancs champagnes, and today Bernard Launois is the seventh generation of his family to head the estate.

Of the estate’s 30 hectares of vines, 20 are in the Côte des Blancs, in the villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger, Cramant and Avize, and the remaining 10 are in Chantemerle and Vindey in the Sézanne. About ten percent of the estate’s vineyard area is pinot noir, used to make the Oeil de Perdrix and Brut Rosé, while the rest of the range is made entirely of chardonnay. Vinification is all in stainless steel, and in Launois’s cool cellars the malolactic usually takes place late, around the month of May, meaning that bottling is customarily in July.

Launois also has a large wine museum on their estate, which houses all manners of wine tools and implements, some hundreds of years old. The collection comes not only from Champagne but from wine regions all over France, including wooden presses from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, old vineyard tools and winemaking paraphernalia of all sorts. If it’s been used somehow in the production of wine in the last few hundred years, chances are you’ll find at least one example on display here. Among the old bottles in the museum is a rounded, 18th-century example with an elegantly narrow neck, and since 2002, Launois has been bottling all of their wines in a new, specially-produced champagne bottle based on this design, unique to the estate.

Sèverine Launois (pictured), Bernard’s daughter, is married to Benoît Marguet of Marguet Père et Fils, and Marguet is also involved in the distribution and marketing of Launois champagnes.

This prestigious house was founded in 1812 by Alphonse Pierlot, a former cooper from Chigny-lès-Roses. He eventually passed it on to his cellarmaster, Eugène Laurent, and upon Laurent’s death in 1887, his widow Mathilde Emilie Perrier took over the house, joining their two surnames to form the company of Veuve Laurent-Perrier & Cie. Her daughter Eugénie Hortense Laurent inherited the house in 1925, but sold it in 1939 to Marie-Louise Lanson de Nonancourt, who was the sister of Victor and Henri Lanson, owners of the Champagne house of the same name. At this time, Laurent-Perrier was struggling, having had to cope with the worldwide economic depression as well as being faced with the imminent war. Marie-Louise de Nonancourt managed the company during the Second World War, and in 1949, her son Bernard took control of the house.

Bernard de Nonancourt had been an Army sergeant during the war, and active in the French Resistance. In fact, his older brother Maurice might have been the one to head the house following the war, but sadly, Maurice was taken prisoner by the Nazis and killed in the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp. Bernard, upon returning from the war, apprenticed at Lanson and Delamotte before taking over Laurent-Perrier, and he immediately began developing the house and establishing the style of wine that it continues to exhibit today.

In the 1950s, for example, de Nonancourt began working with stainless steel tanks in the house’s cellars. Inspired by their use in beer brewing, he saw them as a means of achieving greater freshness and finesse in his wines, as well as allowing for greater consistency and temperature control during fermentation. By 1964, all barrels at the house had been replaced with stainless steel tanks. In addition, de Nonancourt made a conscious effort to rely heavily on chardonnay in his blends, at a time when many other houses favored pinot-dominated champagnes. This, too, was an effort to introduce more freshness and elegance into Laurent-Perrier’s wines, and to produce champagnes more suited to drinking as an aperitif or at the beginning of the meal rather than during dessert.

Under de Nonancourt, the house’s first cellarmaster was Edouard Leclerc, who made the wines until 1975. Alain Terrier was appointed as his successor, presiding over the cellars during a period of tremendous growth for the house. Upon Terrier’s retirement in 2004, Michel Fauconnet (pictured), who has been with Laurent-Perrier since 1973, was appointed chef de cave. Michel Boulaire is the company’s chairman, while Alexandra Pereyre and Stéphanie Meneux, Bernard de Nonancourt’s two daughters, are the directors of the house.

Laurent-Perrier continues to be based in the village of Tours-sur-Marne, where it was founded, and recent years have seen significant expansions in the winery facilities. A new cuverie was constructed in 2009, and in 2012, a new cellar has been set aside exclusively for the production of Grand Siècle, Laurent-Perrier’s prestige cuvée. The house is also the flagship brand of the Laurent-Perrier Group, which includes the champagne houses of Salon, Delamotte and De Castellane.

Patrick Le Brun is at the helm of his family’s grower estate in Avize, located in the center of the village next to De Sousa. The Le Bruns have been growing grapes for four generations, although it wasn’t until 1955, when Patrick’s parents married and formed the Le Brun-Servenay label, that the family began to make their living exclusively from the production of wine.

The Servenay family is from the village of Mancy, in the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay, and while Le Brun’s estate remains in Avize, his press and cuverie are actually in Mancy, and the cellars in Avize are used only for the storage of bottles. This also explains the viticultural makeup of the estate: 80 percent of Le Brun’s eight hectares of vines are in the grands crus of Avize, Cramant and Oger in the Côte des Blancs, while the other 20 percent, planted with equal parts pinot noir and meunier, are found in Mancy and the surrounding villages.

Vinification is entirely in tank, with the exception of a small quantity of red wine vinified in barrel, which is used to make the rosé. One of the hallmarks of Le Brun’s wines is that the malolactic is systematically avoided, in an effort to preserve freshness and vivacity of aroma.

This small, impressively-managed estate was founded in Avize in 1876, by Ernest Alfred Leclaire. While the wines are still made at the family’s facilities in Avize, the estate is now headquartered in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, at the home of Reynald Leclaire and his wife, Virginie Leclaire-Thiéfane. The great-great-grandson of Ernest Alfred, Reynald Leclaire is a courtier, a broker of grapes who acts as an intermediary between growers and négociant houses, and among his clients are such well-known firms as Krug, Bollinger and Lanson. However, the Leclaires also own six hectares of vines, and from a portion of these they make a small amount of champagne that is increasingly becoming better-appreciated around the world.

Of Leclaire’s vineyard holdings, two hectares lie in the grand cru villages of Avize and Cramant, and these are the ones primarily used for the estate-bottled champagnes. There are two additional hectares in the premier cru of Grauves, with the remaining two hectares spread over the villages of Monthelon, Mancy, Chavot and Châtillon-sur-Marne. All of the crus are vinified separately, with both fermentation and malolactic performed in stainless steel tanks.

As of 2006, Leclaire has purchased the De Meric brand, based in Aÿ. The De Meric champagnes are now being made from Leclaire’s vines, and they continue to be made in oak, in contrast to the stainless-steel vinification of the Leclaire-Gaspard wines.

This Epernay house has long been known for producing organic and biodynamic champagnes, thanks originally to the initiatives of to its former owner, Pascal Leclerc-Briant, who was one of the early advocates of organic and biodynamic viticulture in the Champagne region. The house’s origins date back to 1872, when Lucien Leclerc, Pascal’s great-great-grandfather, began cultivating vines in Cumières, acquired in the dowry of his wife Adèle. In 1955, Pascal’s father, Bertrand Leclerc, moved the house to Epernay: together with his wife, Jacqueline Briant, he began négociant activity alongside the cultivation of the family vineyards, changing the name of the company to Leclerc-Briant. Bertrand had already stopped using herbicides and chemical fertilizers as early as 1947, and he was one of the first in Champagne to explore organic viticulture, beginning trials in the 1960s. Pascal joined the family business in the 1970s, continuing to pursue organic farming, and he began experimenting with biodynamics in 1990, working 2.5 hectares as a trial for the next ten years. Convinced by the results, he began converting the rest of his vineyard holdings to biodynamic viticulture in 2000, and by 2005, the entire 30-hectare vineyard area under the house’s control was either certified biodynamic or officially under conversion.

Leclerc was also well-known for his single-vineyard champagnes, which he began making in 1990, selecting three different parcels in Cumières to bottle individually: Les Crayères, Les Chèvres Pierreuses and Clos des Champions. The idea was to highlight the individuality of top sites, and all three of these vineyards were planted with pinot noir, meunier and chardonnay, which were harvested and pressed together. "When I began working here in 1974," Leclerc told me, "we were already pressing and vinifying different parcels separately [to make base wines]. We noticed that certain parcels always had distinct personalities that made them stand out from the others." While he eventually lost the Clos des Champions due to a family dispute, he added two other single-vineyard champagnes in its place: La Croisette, a blanc de blancs from a chardonnay parcel of the same name in Epernay; and La Ravinne, a 100-percent meunier champagne from Verneuil.

Sadly, Pascal Leclerc suddenly passed away in 2010 at just 60 years old, and the family business was thrown into disarray, with the brand, the business and virtually all of its vineyards sold. In 2012, however, the company was acquired by a group that includes American investors Denise Dupré and Mark Nunnelly, with Frédéric Zeimett becoming managing director and Hervé Jestin (pictured), one of Champagne’s most highly regarded winemakers, taking charge of the cellars. Since then the house has experienced an extraordinary rebirth, establishing itself as one of the foremost ambassadors of organic and biodynamic champagne in the region. They have retained the name Leclerc-Briant, and the company continues to be housed in its stately old facilities on rue Chaude Ruelle in Epernay, where it has been since Bertrand and Jacqueline Leclerc moved there in 1955. The buildings have been extensively renovated, though, and an impressive new cuvérie built in 2016. In addition, the house has acquired a property on the Avenue de Champagne: Le 25bis by Leclerc Briant serves not only as a tasting room and boutique but also as a maison d’hôtes with five luxurious and elegant bedrooms.

As of 2020, Leclerc-Briant owns 14 hectares of vineyards: only one of the house’s original parcels, La Croisette, remains from the former collection, yet they have sought out additional vineyard purchases across the region, including parcels in Cumières, Hautvillers, Mardeuil, Bisseuil, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Villers-Allerand, Rilly-la-Montagne and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. All of the estate vineyards are certified both organic and biodynamic, with the exception of one parcel in Trépail that is currently undergoing biodynamic conversion. In addition, about ten hectares of grapes are purchased, all from certified organic or biodynamic growers.

Leclerc-Briant has slowly increased production under the new owners, and the house now produces about 200,000 bottles per year, which was Jestin’s target goal. The new winery facilities were built under Jestin’s direction, and they are impressive, with 2016 being the first harvest vinified there. The grapes are pressed in a PAI that is equipped with refrigeration, capable of reducing the temperature of the must by 5 to 7 degrees centigrade, before fermentation in vessels of various sorts: about 40 percent of the production is made in barrels from Burgundy and Bordeaux, with another 10 to 15 percent in unusual, horizontally oriented egg-shaped terracotta vessels and the rest in stainless steel tanks, specially designed by Jestin in accordance with the golden number. All of the wines go through malolactic, and they are aged for nine months or more on their fine lees, with bottling usually taking place in June or July.

Behind all of this, though, is Jestin’s unique methodology and philosophical approach. Originally from Brittany, Jestin gained renown at Duval-Leroy, where he was chef de cave for twenty years; following this, he has been a consulting enologist for organically and biodynamically oriented wineries in Champagne and around the world (including, in fact, Leclerc-Briant under Pascal Leclerc). In 2006 he and Benoît Marguet created a special, vintage-dated champagne cuvée—eventually released as Sapience by Marguet and simply as Jestin Extra Brut under his own label—that was made with grapes from Vincent Laval, David Léclapart and Benoît Lahaye.

From 2012, though, we are able to see at Leclerc-Briant a full picture of Jestin’s methods and philosophies, as he is in control of the house’s processes from start to finish. There is much of what he does that is beyond my understanding, and frankly I cannot even explain his practices in a way that would do them justice. Jestin cites biodynamics as a key influence, yet many of his methods are of his own devising, exploring ideas that delve far beyond those of typical biodynamic practitioners. Much of his focus is on energy and the transmission of information, in a homeopathic-like manner, and above all he regards wine as a living and holistic entity, treating it accordingly. Some might view his practices as controversial, even bordering on the arcane, yet the results speak for themselves, being not only of a consistently high quality but also of an expressly individual character.

The Lilbert family has been growing vines in Champagne since at least 1746, although their history of wine production dates from the beginning of the 20th century. In Lilbert’s cellar there is a document showing that Alphonse Lilbert won a silver medal for his champagne in 1907, which is the earliest known mention of estate-bottled Lilbert champagne. Alphonse’s son sold champagne under the Jules Lilbert label, and when his son André took over in 1939, the estate became known as Lilbert-Fils. André’s son, Georges Lilbert, continued to produce wine through the latter part of the 20th century, and since 1998, Bertrand Lilbert (pictured), Alphonse’s great-great-grandson, has been in charge of the estate.

Lilbert’s 3.5 hectares of vines are spread over 15 parcels, all in grand cru villages in the Côte des Blancs, with 60 percent of the surface in Cramant, 30 percent in Chouilly and ten percent just over the border in Oiry. The vines average about 45 years of age, with the oldest planted in 1936. Since 2007, Lilbert has a new, pneumatic membrane press of 4,000 kilograms, and all of the wines undergo fermentation and malolactic in enameled steel tanks. Lilbert chooses to encourage the malolactic, inoculating the bacteria in a separate tank and then adding it to the wines just after fermentation, as this allows for a more constant temperature, without the spike of temperature at fermentation and then the re-warming of the wine later on in the year to facilitate the malo. All riddling is done by hand, and disgorgement is carried out without freezing.

Founded in 1776 as Dubois Père & Fils, this famous house acquired its present name in 1833, when Louis Roederer took charge of the firm. Under his direction the business expanded considerably, particularly in the lucrative Russian market, and by 1872 the house’s sales had grown to an astounding 2.5 million bottles a year, accounting for one-tenth of Champagne’s total production at the time. The house was to achieve even greater fame in 1876 when Roederer’s son, also named Louis Roederer, invented the legendary Cristal, packaging it in a clear crystal bottle as an exclusive cuvée for Tsar Alexander II of Russia.

Unfortunately, the house’s principal market was to vanish overnight with the Revolution of 1917, and it would take several decades to recover. Camille Olry-Roederer took control of the house in 1932, following the death of her husband Léon Olry-Roederer, the nephew of Louis Roederer II, and under her direction the house not only rebounded but established itself as one of the most important in Champagne. Olry-Roederer would manage the house with great energy and vivacity for over 40 years, and upon her death it passed into the hands of her daughter, and then in 1979 to her grandson Jean-Claude Rouzaud. Rouzaud continued to expand the house’s production and sales, and also to acquire other wine properties, establishing a group that today includes the Champagne house of Deutz as well as other top estates around the world, such as Roederer Estate and Scharffenberger in California, Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Château de Pez and Château Haut-Beauséjour in Bordeaux and Ramos-Pinto in the Douro. Since 2006, his son Frédéric Rouzaud has taken over the reins, forming a formidable team together with Roederer's chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon (pictured), who has been with the house since 1989, and in charge of the cellars since taking over from his predecessor Michel Pansu in 1999.

As sophisticated as Roederer’s winemaking is, the true heart and soul of its operation lies in its extensive array of vineyards. Records show that Louis Roederer himself first purchased vineyards as early as 1841, with a parcel of Poirier Saint Pierre in Verzenay, and over the next thirty years the house acquired another 100 hectares of vines, largely in terroirs that are now classified as grand cru. Another 60 to 70 hectares were purchased from 1920 to 1940, with an equal amount again in the 1980s, and today Roederer owns 240 hectares of vines in the Champagne region, which account for 70 percent of the house’s total needs: an astonishingly high figure that undoubtedly contributes to the quality and consistency of Roederer’s wines. More significantly, all of Roederer's champagnes except for the non-vintage Brut Premier are made entirely from estate-owned vineyards, which is unique among Champagne houses—indeed, were it not for the Brut Premier, Louis Roederer would be the largest récoltant-manipulant in Champagne.

Yet it’s not only the quantity of Roederer’s vineyards that is impressive, but also the quality of work performed in the vines. The house divides its vineyards into seven different “domaines,” each dedicated to the production of a specific cuvée, according to the character of the site. Thus, viticulture is adapted not only to variety and soil type, but also to the production of a specific wine: making rosé, for example, requires grapes of a different character than blanc de blancs does.

Roederer is at the forefront of the progressive viticultural movement in Champagne, aided in this regard by the house’s financial resources and quantity of vineyard holdings. Roederer is the largest organic vineyard owner in Champagne, and the largest biodynamic vineyard owner as well. In 1996, the house began increasingly investigating more environmentally-friendly methods of viticulture, stopping the use of systemic herbicides and reducing synthetic treatments. As of 2018, all of Roederer’s 240 hectares are farmed organically, with 122 hectares officially certified organic by Ecocert, and the goal for the future is to obtain organic certification across the estate. The house began trials with biodynamics in 2007, following a seven-year period of "cleaning" the relevant parcels, and today it has a total of 109 hectares farmed biodynamically. Roederer has also been expanding its experiments with plowing by horse rather than tractor: as of 2018, 30 hectares are worked entirely by horse. Roederer makes all of its own biodynamic compost—2,000 metric tons of compost are produced per year, divided between the spring, which requires high-nitrogen compost for growth, and the winter, when the soil needs replenishment and maintenance of nutrients.

Roederer also maintains its own vine nursery in the village of Bouleuse, which is relatively isolated and protected from disease. Since 2000, the house has propagated its own sélection massale here, which it uses for all replantings, and the scale of its vineyards allows for a great genetic diversity: for example, Roederer currently has 151 identified strains of pinot noir in its massale program, whereas in Champagne there are only 11 commonly used clonal selections of pinot noir. Since 2012 the house has begun doing its own rootstocks and grafting here as well, which allows for more control over the process and more detailed work. Lécaillon and his vineyard manager, Johann Merle, have worked for many years to adapt their grafting and pruning methods, exploring field grafting to decrease the amount of dead wood and working with Marco Simonit of Simonit & Sirch [http://simonitesirch.com/] in Friuli to develop a “soft” pruning that increases the flow of sap, thereby producing a greater regularity in flowering and budbreak, as well as extending the longevity of the vine.

The house owns three pressing centers in Avize, Aÿ and Verzenay, where all of its grapes are pressed, whether estate-grown or purchased. Each variety is treated differently: as pinot noir bleeds juice quite readily, it’s pressed in traditional vertical Coquard presses, which have a very gentle action. In Avize, however, the chardonnay is pressed with pneumatic presses, as chardonnay has a thicker pulp, requiring a more active pressing to extract the juice. In addition, Lécaillon gives his chardonnay a short skin contact before pressing to release its aromas, and for several years now he has not added any sulfur to his chardonnays at pressing. (“We still haven’t found the perfect zero-sulfur pinot,” he says.) All of Roederer’s parcels across the entire 240 hectare estate are pressed and vinified separately, except for parcels that are too small to fill up a particular tank, in which case they are put together with other parcels of a comparable terroir. “I have 410 parcels, and 450 vessels to vinify them in,” says Lécaillon.

Fermentation can be either in stainless steel tanks or in large oak casks, depending on the wine, and here at Roederer, oak always means large vats of 6,000 liters or more, never barriques. “We want the oak to bring another layer of complexity,” says Lécaillon. “We want to feel it, but not smell it.” Up to fifteen different yeasts are used for fermentation, some of them indigenous, and all selected for their transparent identity. “We want to preserve a purity of fruit without the imprint of the yeast,” Lécaillon says. Another hallmark of Roederer’s wines is that as a general rule, the base wines do not undergo malolactic, except for a portion used in the Brut Premier. “Malic acidity gives a great purity to the nose and to the flavors,” says Lecaillon. “This is the main reason we don’t do malolactic, to maintain purity and also to keep freshness for aging.” The house keeps an impressive store of reserve wines in large oak casks, housed in a beautiful series of vaulted chambers in Roederer’s cellars in Reims—the reserve wines are typically sourced from Cristal parcels planted with vines that are younger than 25 years old, and they play a key role in maintaining the character of the non-vintage Brut Premier.
 

There are many cooperatives in Champagne, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest: Mailly Grand Cru. A collection of 80 winegrowers, representing 25 different families, Mailly Grand Cru controls 485 parcels of vines spread over 70 hectares, all in the village of Mailly. Today, no other producer so strongly defines a winegrowing village in Champagne.

The company was founded in 1929 as the Société de Producteurs de Mailly Champagne, when a group of 24 vinegrowers, led by Gabriel Simon, banded together to create a facility to press their own grapes. The idea was that this would allow them to sell juice rather than grapes to the négoce, giving them more latitude for negotiation in prices. As this was a highly unusual practice for the time, they met resistance from the négociant houses, and the members of the Syndicat du Commerce des Vins de Champagne voted to refuse purchases in the 1929, 1930 and 1931 vintages. Faced with this boycott, the Société decided to begin bottling its own champagnes, exclusively from the village of Mailly-Champagne, which had achieved grand cru status in 1930.

Since 1988, the company has been known as Mailly Grand Cru. Today the president of the company is Xavier Muller and the general director is Jean-François Préau; Sébastien Moncuit was appointed chef de cave in 2013, following the departure of longtime cellarmaster Hervé Dantan.

Mailly Grand Cru works very closely with their growers, advising them on viticulture and harvesting, and they maintain 22 test parcels located throughout the village that are checked weekly for quality control and analysis. Many parcels are vinified separately, especially the highest-quality ones, allowing for a wide diversity of base wines and the preservation of the variations in terroir character across the Mailly slope. 

In the cellar, there are three 8,000-kilogram pneumatic presses and one 4,000-kilogram press, and only the cuvée, or first portion of the pressing, is used for the wines. Fermentation is largely in thermo-regulated stainless steel, but recently they have purchased about 80 barrels from Château Margaux, formerly used for Pavillon Blanc, and since 2007, a portion of barrel-fermented reserve wines (roughly ten percent) have been used for the Brut Réserve, as well as for the liqueur d’expédition. Reserve wines are an important component of the Mailly Grand Cru style, as the Brut Réserve can contain up to 40 percent of reserves depending on the base year, and there are currently reserves in the cellar from every year dating back to 1996.

Jean-Paul Hébrart has been in charge of this estate since his father, Marc Hébrart, retired in 1997. Marc Hébrart had been producing estate-bottled champagne since 1964, and since 1985 the estate has been a member of the winegrowers’ association called the Club des Viticulteurs Champenois (now called the Club Trésors de Champagne). While Jean-Paul (pictured) had been making wine for several years under his own label, Jean-Paul Hébrart, he consolidated the two estates upon his father’s retirement, and now works 15 hectares of vines under the original family label of Marc Hébrart.

Hébrart’s vineyards are spread over 75 parcels in ten different villages: Aÿ, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Louvois, Avenay Val d’Or, Bisseuil, Dizy, Hautvillers, Avize, Chouilly and Oiry. Viticulture here is raisonnée, avoiding synthetic treatments as much as possible, and parcels are vinified separately to preserve their distinct identities. Fermentation has traditionally been done in enameled steel tanks; Hébrart purchased thermo-regulated stainless steel in 2003, but he says that the difference in quality isn’t very pronounced. In 2002, Jean-Paul Hébrart experimented with fermentation in barrel for some old-vine parcels, and pleased with the results, he created a barrel-fermented cuvée called Rive Gauche-Rive Droite, the first vintage of which was 2004.

Hébrart’s wines see a respectable amount of lees aging—in general, a minimum of 24 to 30 months for the rosé and Cuvée de Réserve, and 36 months for the Sélection—but he would like to hold them back for an even longer period of time. Financially, however, this is a difficult thing to achieve, and requires patience and careful planning. “My goal is to gain another year of stock within the next four years,” he says.

As an aside, Jean-Paul Hébrart is married to Isabelle Diebolt of Diebolt-Vallois in Cramant. While they live in Mareuil, they each work at their respective family properties, with little to no overlap. “We function completely separately, each with our own estates,” says Isabelle. “We don’t even share the same clients!” Still, their son Guillaume seems destined to have a lifetime of stellar drinking ahead of him.
 

The Marguet family has an old and colorful history in Champagne: they were producing champagne as long ago as 1850, owning a whopping 90 hectares of vines, and in 1883, Émile Marguet was one of the first growers to graft his vines onto American rootstocks in the face of the impending invasion of phylloxera. Unfortunately, this caused him to be so widely ridiculed and condemned by his peers in Champagne that he was eventually forced to pull the vines back out. (Phylloxera would not arrive in Champagne until 1890, just slightly too late to vindicate poor Émile.) Bankrupt from this whole operation, he sold his magnificent collection of vineyards to Champagne Henriot, and at the end of the 19th century there were actually bottles labeled Henriot-Marguet.

Today, Benoît Marguet (pictured) traces his winegrowing ancestry back to Émile Marguet through his father's family, while on his mother's side, the Bonnerave family has been producing estate-bottled champagne since 1905. In 1973, his parents created the estate of Marguet-Bonnerave, and in 1991 his father created an additional négociant label called Charles Marguet, which was later renamed Marguet Père et Fils. Benoît had been making both the Marguet-Bonnerave and Marguet Père et Fils wines since 1999, and formally took over Marguet Père et Fils in 2005.

Initially, his family's vines all belonged to Marguet-Bonnerave, and Marguet had to purchase all of his fruit for Marguet Père et Fils, sourcing primarily from premier and grand cru villages, and paying a premium for organically grown grapes, for which he has a strong preference. In 2008, however, he was able to purchase some of the family's vines, and also to contract for fruit from other family members, which he farms himself; today, he farms a total of ten hectares (8.5 of which are owned by Marguet and his parents): eight hectares are in Ambonnay and two hectares are in Bouzy, and eight hectares are farmed biodynamically. Since 2009, Marguet has been experimenting with plowing by horse, and he now owns two horses that are capable of working all ten hectares. Purchased fruit continues to account for about 15 percent of his production, and since 2011, all purchased fruit comes from vineyards that are either certified organic or in conversion.

In the cellar, all of the wines are fermented in oak barrels, which Marguet prefers for the additional complexity that barrel-fermentation brings, but also because using wood makes him feel closer to nature than working with the cold impersonality of steel tanks does. His wines always go through malolactic ("If you're stopping the malo, you're interfering with the wine's evolution," he says), and all of his cellar work is done with respect to the lunar calendar, including racking, bottling and disgorgement. He is also gradually working more and more without sulfur, as he believes that sulfites are indigestible and that they impart an adverse energy to the wine—in the 2012 harvest, for example, 80 percent of the production was vinified sans soufre.

Since 2006, Marguet has been working with Hervé Jestin, the former chef de cave of Duval-Leroy who is now a consultant to many wine estates around Europe. Marguet has gradually integrated Jestin’s homeopathic and biodynamic practices into his own winemaking, and the two of them have collaborated to create a special, naturally grown champagne that encapsulates and expresses Jestin’s philosophies. The first vintage of this super-cuvée was 2006, released in 2013, and the production was divided: half of it was sold under the Jestin label, with the other half under the label Sapience, which Marguet has indicated is a separate brand from the Marguet label.
 

Despite having only been making wine since 2006, Dominique Moreau has already attracted a devoted following worldwide for her richly expressive, organically-grown champagnes. Moreau’s husband is the proprietor of Piollot Père et Fils, also located on the rue de Tonnerre in Polisot, and she began farming vines of her own in 2001, when she had the opportunity to rent one hectare of vines, planted with a sélection massale, from a grower who was retiring. She later acquired and planted parcels adjacent to this one, and today she has a total of about 2.5 hectares, all located in a single block within a three-hectare vineyard in the Polisot lieu-dit of Le Tremble (her husband owns the other half-hectare). The majority of her vines are pinot noir, although 16 ares are planted with chardonnay, and there are also a number of pinot blanc vines scattered throughout the plot. Like most vineyards in Polisot, this parcel largely faces south, located in one of the east-west valleys that run through the area, although a portion of the parcel, planted with older vines, turns slightly to the east.

Farming organically is important to Moreau as a matter of principle, and she also works with some biodynamic preparations. In 2006 she began conversion to organic certification, and the 2010 vintage was the first to be officially certified organic. She notes that in terms of organic viticulture, it’s a great advantage to have all her vines in a single, isolated parcel, minimizing the pollution from neighbors who farm conventionally.

Moreau is keenly aware of the history of the region, and has a deep respect for those who have worked the land before her. Because of this, she chose to find a name other than her own for her champagne label. “I didn’t want to put my name on the bottle because it’s not just me who has been involved,” she says. Instead, she chose the name of her great-grandmother, Marie Courtin, “someone who was very close to the earth.”

Marie-Noëlle Ledru’s tiny, perfectionist grower-estate is known only to a handful of champagne connoisseurs, yet today she is making some of the best wines in Ambonnay. The estate has existed since 1946, and Ledru has been making the wines here since 1984. The winery is now in an old stone house that belonged to her mother’s family, tucked discreetly away behind the place de la Croix; her father came from Bouzy, and tended vines there as well.

Until recently, Ledru owned five hectares in Ambonnay and one in Bouzy, with a total of 30 different parcels. In 2010, however, she lost several hectares of land due to family disputes, leaving her with a mere two hectares. She continues to farm as she always has: all of the vineyards are planted with cover crops and tilled, and she uses no herbicides or insecticides, seeking to work her vines as naturally as possible.

The same sensibility extends to the cellar, where she makes the wines without filtration, without cold-stabilization and without any sulfur at disgorgement. Fermentation is all in stainless steel and enameled steel tanks, for their neutrality, and the malolactic is allowed for all wines. “I do the malo because for me it’s natural,” she says. The wines are aged for a respectably long time on their lees, averaging about three years for the brut sans année and five years for the vintage wines, and all disgorgement is done by hand, in a fashion not dissimilar to how it might have been done two or three generations ago. Ledru has typically only bottled about half of her production, selling the rest to the négoce, most notably to the houses of Pol Roger and Deutz. This has resulted in very little wine to go around, and with the recent reduction in vineyard land, that quantity will decrease further.

This grower estate originated with the Lefevre family, who had been cultivating vines in Verzenay since the late nineteenth century. Henri Lefevre began bottling his own champagne in the 1930s, and the domaine was expanded by his son André. André’s granddaughter, Françoise, married Michel Arnould, and in the 1960s they founded the company as it exists today. Their son Patrick (pictured) has been making the wines since 1985, and the Arnould estate is now one of the most significant in Verzenay.

Arnould’s 12 hectares of vines are spread over 30 parcels, all of which are in Verzenay except for one just over the border in Verzy. Unsurprisingly for this section of the Montagne de Reims, the majority of Arnould’s vineyard is planted with pinot noir (85 percent), with the rest chardonnay. He owns vines in nearly every major sector of Verzenay’s vineyard area, but the area around Les Voiettes, in the northern portion of the village at the base of the slope, is particularly important. Michel Arnould liked this sector a lot for the quality of its wines, even if it was sometimes prone to frost, and he made a special effort to exchange parcels with négociant houses who had vines in the area in order to consolidate larger holdings of land here. In addition to the Verzenay holdings, Patrick Arnould now purchases five percent of additional chardonnay from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger under the rules for récoltants-manipulants, which he uses for his top cuvées. “The chardonnay in Verzenay is good, but it doesn’t have the finesse of the Côte des Blancs,” he says. “That’s why I buy a little extra.”

A high regard for the environment is kept in mind when working in the vines. “In the past, everyone used a lot of fertilizers, so now I use the minimum amount possible, to achieve a balance in the soil,” says Arnould. “I also do regular analyses to check the health of the soil and try to keep it as natural as possible.” In the cellar, the wines are fermented in either stainless steel or enameled steel tanks, and some barrels are used to vinify red wine, made from 50-year old vines in the vineyard of Les Coutures. The malolactic is completed for most of the wines, but for the vintage cuvées, each wine is allowed to do what it likes—if the malo occurs naturally, it’s fine, but it’s not mandatory.

The quietly idyllic Flagot valley runs perpendicular to the Marne just south of Mareuil-le-Port, and while few visitors find their way to this hidden area, it’s worth coming here if only to taste the wines of Michel Loriot. In 1903, Léopold Loriot was the first grower to install a press in the village of Festigny, although it wouldn’t be until 1931 that his son, Germain Loriot, would begin to produce estate-bottled champagne. Germain’s son Henri became a full-time récoltant-manipulant in 1952, and in 1977 the estate passed into the hands of its current proprietor, Henri’s son Michel (pictured).

Loriot’s seven hectares of vines lie primarily in the villages of Festigny, Troissy and Le Breuil, and they are planted with 85 percent meunier, ten percent chardonnay and five percent pinot noir. Meunier is a natural fit for these clay soils, and when planted in the right vineyards and treated with proper care, it can yield a wine of unusual character and expression. In addition, this section of the Marne is more prone to frost than the areas farther east, which creates problems for both chardonnay and pinot noir. As meunier is naturally prolific, Loriot doesn’t use the Vallée de la Marne pruning at all, and his meunier is mostly on cordon du Royat, which he says involves much more work but results in lower yields and smaller, more concentrated berries. Once in the winery, the grapes are pressed with a traditional Coquard vertical press, and fermentation and malolactic are entirely in enameled steel tanks.

The tiny village of Cuisles is nestled in the hills above Châtillons-sur-Marne, on the northern side of the Marne River. The Moussé family has been cultivating vines in Cuisles since 1880, having been vignerons in this sector of the Vallée de la Marne since 1750. Initially, the family sold their entire harvest to the négoce, but in 1923, Eugène Moussé began bottling champagnes under his own label.

Both Eugène and his son, Edmond, were in the Résistance during the Second World War, helping British and American soldiers escape through the underground network—in fact, displayed in the family’s house is a letter from then-General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower expressing gratitude to Edmond Moussé on behalf of the President of the United States for Moussé’s services in assisting Allied soldiers. Both Eugène and Edmond were eventually captured by the Germans and sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp, and sadly, the elder Moussé perished there in 1945. Edmond survived, however, and returned to the family estate after the war. The estate continued to grow through the second half of the twentieth century, first under Edmond and then through the efforts of his son, Jean-Marc. Today, Jean-Marc’s son, Cédric (pictured), is the fourth generation of his family to make champagne at Moussé Fils.

Moussé’s vineyards cover a total of 5.5 hectares, four of which are in Cuisles, with the rest in the villages of Jonquery, Châtillon-sur-Marne, Vandière and Olizy. Eighty percent of the estate is planted with meunier, the typical grape variety of this sector of Champagne, with another 15 percent being pinot noir and just five percent chardonnay. All of Moussé’s parcels have been planted with cover crops for the past 15 years, and no herbicides are used. While some parcels are worked completely organically, Moussé is skeptical about the long-term effects of copper in the soil, and so he uses small amounts of synthetic pesticides only at the beginning and the end of flowering, when the vines are at their most fragile; he believes that this is less harmful to the environment than the equivalent treatments of copper sulfate. In addition, he employs infusions of various plants such as ortie (stinging nettle) and prêle (Equisetum arvense) to aid the overall health of his vines.

In 2012, Moussé completed construction of a new winery in Cuisles, designed to be as environmentally sustainable as possible. A ground-coupled heat exchanger (or puit canadien in French) provides a constant temperature both above and below ground, with no need for any other climate control, while solar panels on the roof provide enough electricity to power both the winery and the family home. Rainwater collection is possible, although it is not even necessary here, since there are several underground springs nearby that provide enough water for all of the winery’s needs. Following the harvest, the grapes are pressed in a pneumatic press, and all of Moussé’s champagnes are vinified in tank, with barrels used only to make red wine. All of the wines go through malolactic as well, and Moussé prefers a traditional liqueur for his dosage, rather than concentrated must.

Since January 2015, Moussé Fils has been registered as NM rather than RM: as with many contemporary grower-estates, Moussé wants to grow his business in a responsible way, yet he can’t afford to purchase more vineyard land. Being an NM allows him to purchase grapes, but he only does so in and around the village of Cuisles, in order to preserve the terroir signature that characterizes his champagnes.

Sébastien Mouzon (pictured) is currently in the midst of transforming this Verzy estate, which has winegrowing roots dating back to 1776. It was Sébastien’s great-grandparents who first began bottling champagne at the estate—while they both worked at Veuve Clicquot, they owned one hectare of vines in Verzy, which allowed them to produce a small quantity of wine. Today, Sébastien works alongside his parents, Philippe and Pascale, tending ten hectares of vines in the northern Montagne de Reims.

In fact, the Mouzons continue to own just one hectare of vines themselves, but they farm nine more hectares through long-term contracts. Nearly eight hectares are in Verzy, all of which have been farmed biodynamically since 2008; since 2011, these have also been certified organic by Ecocert. The rest of the parcels, which are in lutte raisonnée, are found in Ludes, Villers-Marmery and Verzenay.

In the cellar, the grapes are pressed in a 6,000-kilogram pneumatic press, and all fermentations are carried out with a pied de cuve of natural yeasts—rather than allowing each lot to ferment with its own yeasts, Mouzon assembles a starter culture using grapes from all of his vineyards, as he believes that the greater diversity is beneficial. About half of the production is fermented in barrel, with the rest in enameled steel tanks, and a portion of the reserve wines are stored in oak demi-muids. All of Mouzon’s wines go through malolactic, as he doesn’t want to block it through heavy filtration or excessive sulfur, and in fact, sulfur levels here are typically quite low, under 30 mg/l.

Nathalie Falmet (pictured) holds degrees in both viticulture and oenology, and she worked as a consulting oenologist before taking over her family estate in 2008. Her 3.2 hectares of vines are located all the way at the eastern edge of the Aube, on the border with the département of the Haute-Marne: 2.8 hectares are in Rouvres-les-Vignes, while the remaining 40 ares are in the nearby village of Arsonval, on the other side of the town of Bar-sur-Aube.

Most of Falmet’s vineyards are planted with pinot noir, as is typical for this sector of Champagne, and she also owns a half-hectare of chardonnay and a 60-are parcel of meunier. Viticulture is lutte raisonnée, with parcels regularly plowed, although she avoids cover crops in her vineyards: “I’m not sure it changes the taste of the wine,” she says, “and it can result in herbaceous flavors, which I don’t like.”

Falmet built a new winemaking facility in 2009, which houses a pneumatic press and a cuvérie. Only the cuvée, or the first portion of the pressing, is used in the estate’s champagnes, with the taille always sold, and most of the wines are fermented in stainless steel. Falmet does own four barriques, which she has used for fermentation, and she’s planning to purchase more in the future. All of her wines go through malolactic, in order to keep sulfur levels as low as possible.

Most of Falmet’s champagnes come from a single vintage, with the exception of the non-vintage brut. Her reserve wine is stored in a perpetual cuvée, started in 2009, and this is refreshed each year with the non-vintage blend, which contains a slightly higher percentage of pinot noir than chardonnay. “I don’t use a lot of reserve wine,” she says. “I think if you use it in all of your cuvées, they tend to become stylistically similar. I prefer to maintain the individual personalities of each parcel, each grape variety, each vintage.”

The Maillart family has been growing vines in the western portion of the Montagne de Reims since at least 1753, and has been bottling champagne for five generations. Originally based in the village of Chamery, they have since moved to the neighboring village of Ecueil, and the current estate dates from 1965, when it was created by Michel Maillart. Today the house is in the hands of Michel’s son Nicolas (pictured), who took over in 2003.

Since his arrival, Nicolas Maillart has completely reworked the estate’s entire operation, from the vineyards to the cellar. In the past Michel did not own a press, and so the grapes were pressed at the local co-operative; since 2003, Nicolas has pressed all of the grapes at the estate. He has also purchased thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks for fermentation, although an increasing portion of the wine has been vinified in barrel, and today it's about 50 percent—the wines in barrel are fermented with indigenous yeasts, while those in tank are done with selected yeasts. Parcels are grouped together by soil type and vine age, in order to preserve their distinct characters, and while the malolactic was previously carried out, this has been discontinued.

Maillart places a great deal of emphasis on environmentally-responsible viticulture, and while he is currently converting some parcels in Villers-Allerand to organic certification, he generally prefers not to be certified, because he doesn’t believe that strictly organic viticulture necessarily results in less pollution (citing the use of copper as an example). He prefers the term sustainable agriculture, and since taking over he has eliminated chemical pesticides and weedkillers and has planted cover crops in all of his parcels. Some parcels on the hillsides are left with grass to combat erosion, but most of the vineyards are tilled, which Maillart notes has aided optimum maturity, while decreasing the risk of botrytis. Maillart owns 8.5 hectares in the villages of Ecueil, Villers-Allerand and Bouzy, as well as small parcels in Sermiers and Sacy; also, he works eight additional hectares of vines in Bouzy and Villers-Allerand that belong to other members of the family, which is the sole reason that he’s registered as a négociant (strictly speaking, he’s purchasing grapes that he actually grew himself, in a typically ironic Champenois business structure). The average age of the estate’s vines is 30 years old, which is high for Champagne, and 65 percent of the vines are planted with a sélection massale, ensuring greater genetic diversity. Pinot noir comprises roughly 70 percent of the vineyard area, with the rest chardonnay.

One of the brightest stars among the newest generation of Champagne’s vignerons is Flavien Nowack (pictured), who has been making wine at his family’s estate in the village of Vandières since 2012. The Nowack family has been in the village of Vandières since 1795, when Jean-Baptiste Nowack arrived in Champagne from Bohemia. He was a builder and brick maker, working with local clay to make roofing tiles, bricks for building, fountain piping and the like, and by 1850 his grandson Ferdinand, Flavien’s great-great-grandfather, was the first of the Nowack family to become a winegrower. Ferdinand’s son Fernand continued to work the estate’s vineyards and gained renown for his wines, particularly his still wines made from meunier, which were sold under the name Vin Nature de la Champagne and which won prizes at the Concours Général Agricole de Paris in 1935 and 1936. After the war, his son Bernard expanded the estate further, increasing production of champagne and forming the foundations of the Nowack company today. Bernard’s son Frédéric, Flavien’s father, took over the reins of the estate and continues to make a range of wines under the Champagne Nowack label, and Flavien himself finished his studies in 2010, experimenting with making a few selected cuvées of his own before joining the estate full-time in 2012.

Today the Nowacks own 10 hectares of vines, 7 hectares of which are in and around the villages of Vandières and Châtillon-sur-Marne. While most of the estate goes towards the production of Champagne Nowack, Flavien is slowly converting an increasingly larger portion of the vineyards towards his method of viticulture, using these to bottle champagnes under his own collection, which he labels Domaine Nowack. These vines are essentially farmed organically, together with biodynamic preparations, with an aim of preserving biodiversity and promoting microbiological life in the soil. As befits their location in the Vallée de la Marne, about three-quarters of the vineyards are planted with meunier, with the remainder split between chardonnay and pinot noir. In the cellars, the grapes are pressed with either a traditional Coquard vertical press or a Coquard PAI (pressoir automatique à plateau incliné), before fermentation with indigenous yeasts, which Nowack feels is important for full expression of his terroirs. The wines can be fermented either in barrel or in tank, although since 2017, all of Flavien Nowack’s single vineyard champagnes have been fermented entirely in barrel. Malolactic is generally avoided, but Nowack admits that it can happen on rare occasions: as he keeps sulfur levels low (typically between 15 to 20 mg/l at bottling), malo can occur, and in those cases he lets it happen. While the bottling was previously done in May, Nowack has sought to increase the time that the base wines spend on their fine lees, and since 2017 he has delayed bottling until July. Nowack is also using an increasing percentage of cork for the second fermentation and lees aging, which he says produces “creamier bubbles and a more unctuous mousse.”

As young and dedicated winegrowers continue to make their mark across the Champagne region with sparkling wines, it’s perhaps inevitable that one would emerge to champion the cause of Rosé des Riceys as well. Olivier Horiot’s father, Serge, is the president of the local cooperative, and continues to market champagnes under the label Serge Horiot. Yet in 2000 when Olivier began producing wines under his own label, he chose to focus exclusively on rosé and red wines. “I am more motivated to make still wines than to make champagne,” he laughs. “I am maybe the least Champenois of all Champenois.” He has since begun to make champagne as well, but still wines continue to represent roughly two-thirds of his production.

Today Horiot tends close to seven hectares of vines, although only about a third of this is used for the production of his own wines—another third is used to produce the cooperative wine of Serge Horiot, and the rest is sold to the négoce. Olivier Horiot is meticulous about every detail of his production, and like many others of the new generation of growers he is passionate about natural viticulture. He immediately stopped using chemical fertilizers and herbicides upon taking over the estate, and since 2002 the portion of his estate used for his own production has been farmed biodynamically.

Horiot is also passionate about terroir, and has two major vineyard sites in Les Riceys that he vinifies separately: Barmont and Valingrain. One fascinating result of this is that with the new releases of Horiot’s champagnes, it’s now possible to taste rosé, red wine, champagne blanc and rosé champagne all made from the vineyard of Barmont. Barmont faces east to southeast, and lies on heavy clay soils. “Barmont is always very fruity, with a lot of red fruit,” says Horiot. “It’s always like that no matter if it’s made as rosé, red wine or champagne.” In contrast, Valingrain faces fully south, and while the soils are still an argilo-calcaire like the rest of the region, the clay here is lighter and finer, and correspondingly it seems to produce a lighter and finer wine. “It’s more discreet,” says Horiot, “and it takes longer to develop.” 

The rosé and red wines are all made by carbonic maceration, which Horiot finds to give a better color and produce a less herbaceousness aroma. While most Rosé des Riceys is produced with a four- to five-day maceration, Horiot’s usually takes seven to eight, due to the whole clusters. Fermentation, which is as long and slow as possible, takes place in used barriques from Burgundy, most notably from the Domaine de l’Arlot in Nuits-St-Georges, and the wines are left on their fine lees until the fall, when they are bottled without filtration or fining. “I find that the wine is less oaky if it’s fermented in wood than if it’s fermented in tank and put in barrel in the spring,” says Horiot. At the same time, he feels that the extra vinosity and depth of character that he achieves by farming biodynamically is a key factor in allowing the wines to be made entirely in wood.

Horiot first began to make champagne in the 2004 vintage, producing a blanc de noirs and a saignée rosé, and in the same year he began to make a Coteaux Champenois blanc as well, from unusually ripe chardonnay grapes. Since 2006, he has made one barrel each of pinot blanc and arbanne, intended for a future champagne cuvée that will be called 5 Sens (Five Senses), as it’s blended from five different varieties (chardonnay, pinot noir and meunier make up the balance). Only 1,400 bottles will be made, and while he admits that it’s still a bit of an experiment, he’s hardly worried. “With these small quantities, I figure that there’s very little risk,” he says. “If something goes wrong and we can’t sell it, we’ll just drink it!”

Although Pascal Doquet established his own estate as recently as 2004, he has been making wines under his parents’ label, Doquet-Jeanmaire, since 1982. His family’s winemaking roots extend even further back: André Jeanmaire, Doquet’s maternal grandfather, was a winegrower in Le Mesnil, and began making wine in 1933 under the Jeanmaire label, in response to the grape crisis of the time. The Jeanmaire brand was sold in the 1970s, eventually becoming connected with Château Malakoff, and today both houses are part of the Laurent-Perrier group. In 1974, however, Jeanmaire’s daughter Nicole and her husband Michel Doquet founded the Doquet-Jeanmaire estate, and their son Pascal began working with them eight years later.

Pascal took charge of Doquet-Jeanmaire in 1995 and made the wines until 2003, and following that, as is often the case with wineries in France, the estate was divided among several siblings upon their parents’ retirement. Doquet established his own brand as a Société Récoltant (SR) with a portion of the family vineyards, and today he farms 8.66 hectares of vines, devoted entirely to the Pascal Doquet label since 2004—while he still has some old stocks of Doquet-Jeanmaire wines for sale, he discontinued the label and stopped making those wines after the 2003 harvest.

The vineyards are planted with 95 percent chardonnay and five percent pinot noir, and they lie in several different areas, across a diversity of soil types. A little over five hectares are in the Côte des Blancs, all at the southern end: 1.67 hectares are in the grand cru of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, lying on very chalky soil, and more than two hectares are in Vertus and Bergères-les-Vertus, where the deeper soils contain more clay as a result of being part of a former estuary. Just south of Bergères, Doquet has 1.2 hectares of vines on Le Mont Aimé, an outlying butte of yellow chalk, silex and sand that is completely different in its geological makeup than the rest of the Côte des Blancs. The remainder of the vines, nearly 3.5 hectares, are in the communes of Bassuet and Bassu, in the Perthois region near Vitry-le-François, where the slopes are built on grey clay mixed with chalk.

Doquet is firmly dedicated to sustainable viticulture, and began making significant changes in the vineyards upon taking over the family estate in 1995. By 2001 he had stopped using all chemical herbicides across the domaine, and in 2004, once the estate was entirely in his own hands, he began working strictly organically, officially entering conversion in 2007 and becoming certified fully organic as of the 2010 harvest.

He admits that due to the wet, northerly climate, organic viticulture in Champagne presents many challenges, and notes that his yields are always lower than his neighbors, sometimes drastically so. “I think it’s the most difficult wine region to farm organically,” he says. “One bad storm has the potential to wipe out your harvest.” At the same time, he is deeply committed to the cause, and says that he has already seen tangible results: “There’s a harmony and length in the wines that wasn’t present before I started working organically.”

Cover crops are a fundamental part of Doquet’s viticultural philosophy, and he cultivates a rich and diverse population of plants among his vines. “I don’t work the soil, I work the plants,” he says. He keeps a permanent cover crop in his rows, which he says prevents erosion, and he plows only to cut the vegetation and break up the vine roots, not to open up the soil. He doesn’t like grass, as he thinks its roots are too deep, sometimes providing too much competition, and instead he allows a natural biodiversity to develop as it will, when and where it wants to. Different types of plants grow in different locations, and he watches these plants carefully, as he says that the naturally-occuring vegetation reveals a lot about the character of the soil: the presence of mourron des oiseaux (common chickweed), for example, indicates that a soil is healthy, balanced and full of nutrients, while an abundance of amaranth means that the soil is rich in nitrogen (it also balances the soil by consuming free nitrogen, so that the vines don’t absorb too much).

He has taken other steps to protect the health of his soils as well: on a visit in 2009, for example, he showed me a recently purchased fuel-efficient tractor that, weighing only 1.6 tons, compacts the soil much less than a three-ton conventional one does. In addition, he says that he is trying to multitask more, performing multiple operations at one time so that fewer passes of the tractor are required.

At harvest, he seeks to pick all of his grapes at a minimum of 10.5 degrees of potential alcohol, avoiding the need for chaptalisation. His work in the cellar is as non-interventionist as possible, and he says that the first thing he did upon taking over the winemaking at Doquet-Jeanmaire in 1995 was to stop listening to his oenologist. “Oenologists are like doctors,” he says. “They see sickness everywhere.” While he is not of the opinion that the wine simply makes itself, he also doesn’t believe that the cellar is the primary arena in which quality is attained. “It’s the viticulture that makes the difference,” he says, “not the vinification.”

Pressing takes place in a pneumatic press, and only the cuvée is used, with the taille sold to the négoce. However, within the cuvée, which is normally the first three pressings, Doquet retains only the first two, which he considers to be of higher quality than the third. In addition, the first 50 liters after each retrousse is discarded with the taille: “That portion tends to be very fruity,” he says. “It’s good for non-vintage brut but not for long-aging.”

Fermentations are carried out with natural yeasts, which he considers to be an important part of the identity of each terroir, yet if the musts don’t start fermenting right away, he will sometimes create a little cuvée from his own yeasts to kickstart the process. With only a few exceptions, all of the wines go through malolactic after their primary fermentations, and they remain on their fine lees for four to five months, with only a minimal bâtonnage to put the lees in suspension from time to time.

Prior to 2004, he used some barrels to age the vintage Le Mesnil, but since then he has expanded his use of wood, and today about one-third of the wines are aged in oak. Bottling takes place around the end of April or beginning of May, after a light filtration but no fining and no cold-stabilization. After the second fermentation, Doquet’s wines are aged on their lees for a relatively long time compared to other growers: even the basic blanc de blancs is released after three years, and the vintage-dated Le Mesnil and Le Mont Aimé are aged for seven years or more.

The Bara family has been growing vines in Bouzy since 1833, and they’ve occupied the same house since 1860, tucked away on the quiet rue Yvonnet in the middle of the village. During the 19th century they sold their grapes to the négoce, but they joined the cooperative of Bouzy when it was created in 1929, one of the earliest cooperatives in Champagne. While it was at this time that Auguste Bara began selling wines, including the famed Bouzy rouge, to clients and restaurants both locally and in Paris, it wasn’t until after the Second World War that his son Paul began producing estate-bottled champagne. Paul Bara purchased a press in 1965 that is still in use today, and he also doubled the estate’s vineyard holdings from its previous size of five hectares. Today Paul has retired, and the estate is in the hands of his daughter, Chantale Bara (pictured).

Bara’s vineyards are all located in the grand cru of Bouzy, with roughly 9.5 hectares now planted with pinot noir and another 1.5 hectares with chardonnay. Many of the estate’s parcels are relatively old, and average vine age is between 35 and 40 years. The grapes continue to be pressed with the traditional Coquard vertical press from Paul Bara’s time, although as of 2006 the estate has also added a modern Coquard PAI inclined press. Fermentation takes place in either stainless steel tanks or tiled cement vats, and while the wines of the past used to see a partial malolactic, the malo has been strictly avoided since 1990. “With our ripe fruit here,” says Chantale Bara, “the wine becomes very flat and heavy with malo.”

While a small portion of Bara’s cellars date from the original construction of the house in 1860, they were later expanded to their present capacity, built on three levels, and an unusual feature of the cellar is the presence of numerous tanks built into the floor, used for storing reserve wines. These tanks are lined with tile or glass, and are generally in relatively small sizes, scattered throughout the cellar, which allows Bara to retain a wide variety of reserve wines from different parcels and different vintages.

Marie-Thérèse Clouet created this estate in 1992, taking over a portion of her family’s long-established vineyard holdings in Bouzy. She named it after her grandfather, Paul Clouet, and today the estate owns six hectares of vines. Marie-Thérèse Clouet is married to Jean-Louis Bonnaire of the Bonnaire estate in Cramant, and all of the Paul Clouet wines are made by Jean-Louis and Jean-Etienne Bonnaire (pictured) in the Cramant facilities.

On the property in Bouzy, Clouet runs an impeccable maison d’hôte (bed & breakfast) called Les Barbotines, housed in a charming 19th-century house on the main road of the village. The rooms are reasonably priced, and as Bouzy is located only about 19 kilometers (12 miles) from Epernay and 27 kilometers (16 miles) from Reims, it makes a good base from which to explore the region.

The Déthune family has been bottling estate-grown champagnes as far back as 1890, but as was common in those days, the wine production existed alongside other agriculture connected with the family farm, and it was Paul Déthune, father of the current proprietor Pierre Déthune (pictured), who was the first to focus exclusively on champagne production.

Déthune’s seven hectares of vines are spread over 30 different parcels, all in Ambonnay, and they are planted with roughly 70 percent pinot noir and 30 percent chardonnay. Pierre Déthune isn’t willing to call himself an organic viticulturist, but his vineyard practices speak for themselves: all parcels are planted with cover crops and tilled, there are no insecticides used and only organic manures are used for fertilization. His environmentally-conscious sensibilities go even further: Déthune has installed 54 square meters of solar panels on the roof of his winery that currently provide for 20 percent of the estate’s electricity, and he’s planning an additional purchase of panels that will double that output. In addition, he has installed a rainwater collection system that provides for 20 percent of his water needs. It’s not used for anything requiring potable water, but it’s useful for tasks such as washing tractors and cleaning winery equipment.

David Pehu is the fourth generation of his family to produce estate-bottled champagnes, and in his house you can see old Veuve Pehu labels from the early 20th century. His grandfather sold champagne under the Antonin Pehu label, and in the early 1970s his parents created Pehu-Simonet, with the introduction of vines from his mother’s side of the family. Pehu has been involved in the winemaking here since 1988, apart from a year in the army in 1989 and 1990, and he has been solely responsible for the cellar since 1995.

Of Pehu-Simonet’s 7.5 hectares of vines, six are in grand cru villages, and these are the ones used for making estate-bottled champagnes—in addition to 3.5 hectares of vines in Verzenay, Pehu has holdings in Verzy, Sillery, Mailly and Bouzy in the Montagne de Reims. The rest of the estate’s harvest is sold to the négoce, including, historically, the fruit from a parcel of old vines in Villers-Marmery that Pehu says produces exceptional wine. “It’s a pity it’s premier cru,” he used to say. “If I could call it grand cru, I’d happily use it.” However, in 2012 he bottled this separately for the first time, and has released this as his only premier cru champagne. Pehu began organic conversion of his vineyards in 2008, and as of 2012, his wines have all been certified organic.

Vinification is either in tank or in barrel, depending on the particular wine. Pehu, who studied oenology in Burgundy, has been using barrels since 1988, and while most of his barrels are purchased second-hand from Burgundy, he’s experimenting more and more with local oak from Verzy, coopered by the Tonnellerie de Champagne in nearby Cauroy-les-Hermonville. Pehu strictly avoids the malolactic for all of his wines, including the red wines used for making rosé, as he believes that blocking the malo better preserves the finesse and expression of fruit in the long run.

The roots of this estate run deep: the Chardonnet family has been living in the village of Verzenay for 400 years, while the Penets have been in Verzy for nearly as long. The estate's current incarnation, however, dates from 2008, when Alexandre Penet took over full-time—since then, he has been attracting increasingly widespread attention for his bold, full-flavored champagnes.

Although his parents grew vines and made wine at their Verzy estate, Penet didn't immediately follow in their footsteps. He originally studied to become an engineer before earning an MBA at the University of Chicago; he earned a degree in oenology as well, prior to returning to the estate. Upon taking over the family business, he immediately set out to study his vineyards, spread over 27 parcels in Verzy and Verzenay. He has worked with both the University of Reims and the CIVC to research the specific geology and terroir of his various sites, and since 2009, he has vinified each of his parcels separately in order to preserve their individual identities.

Penet's vineyards total six hectares—five in Verzy and one in Verzenay—and about two-thirds of the surface is pinot noir, with the rest chardonnay. The vineyards are relatively old, averaging 29 years across the estate. While Penet seeks to be as sustainable and ecologically responsible as possible, he notes that different parcels have different requirements, and he manages each of his parcels according to its particular needs: for example, some respond well to pure organic farming while others don't, and some thrive with a cover crop while others do better when they're regularly plowed.

In the cellars, the grapes are pressed with a pressoir automatique à plateau incliné (PAI), considered by many to be the finest type of press in Champagne. Fermentation takes place in either barrel or tanks: Penet has both stainless- and enameled steel tanks in his cuverie, but he has been working with wood since 2009, and today, about half of his production is fermented and aged in oak vessels of various sizes, from 228-liter barriques to larger 350-liter and 500-liter barrels and 600-liter demi-muids. The malolactic is never allowed to take place, and the wines are not fined, filtered or artificially cold-stabilized.

In 2011, Penet created a négociant label called Alexandre Penet, designed to complement the estate portfolio. While there is a relationship in style between the two, the brands are kept separate, with different sources of grapes for each. "It enables me to avoid the confusion between grower and négociant," says Penet.
 

The Gonet family has been established in the village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger for nearly two centuries, and the current proprietors, Pierre Gonet and his sister Chantal, represent the seventh generation of their family to tend vines here. While the family has been making wines in Le Mesnil since at least the 1820s, it was Pierre and Chantal’s great-grandfather who first sold champagne under the Gonet name. Their grandfather, Charles, expanded the estate after the Second World War, purchasing vines not only in the Marne, but also in Montgueux, in the Aube. Philippe Gonet, their father, took over the house in 1972, and upon his passing in 1990, Pierre (pictured) took charge of the family cellars.

The Gonets own 23 hectares of vines, about 20 percent of which are located in Le Mesnil. Other parcels can be found in villages in the Côte des Blancs such as Oger and Vertus, as well as in Rilly-la-Montagne, Chigny-lès-Roses and Ludes in the Montagne de Reims and Le Breuil and La Chapelle-Monthodon in the Vallée de la Marne. The Gonets have also owned vines in Montgueux since 1959, making them some of the first viticulturists to be established in that area, and today they own 7 hectares in the commune. In addition to their estate holdings, the Gonets purchase a small amount of pinot noir from other family members to include in their non-vintage blend.

In the cellars, the wines are pressed either in a traditional, 4,000-kilogram vertical press or in an 8,000-kilogram pneumatic one. The wines are vinified in stainless steel tanks, although there are some oak barrels, demi-muids and foudres in the cellar that are used for aging wine, most notably for the Cuvée Roy Soleil.

While the Philipponnat family has been growing vines in Champagne since the 16th century, the present house dates from 1910, when it was founded by Pierre Philipponnat. In 1987 the house was purchased by Marie-Brizard, and was sold ten years later to Bruno Paillard and the BCC group, who continues to own it today. Since 1999, Charles Philipponnat (pictured, on the left), the grandnephew of Pierre, has been at the head of the house, and under his direction the house has seen even further improvements in quality.

Philipponnat owns 18 hectares of vines and farms another two under a sharecropping agreement, all of which are located in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Aÿ, Avenay Val d’Or and Mutigny. Mareuil-sur-Aÿ makes up the majority of the house’s holdings, and their 11 hectares there include the magnificent, 5.5-hectare Clos des Goisses, Champagne’s most renowned vineyard site, from which they make a vintage-dated, single-vineyard champagne. The house has traditionally fermented all wines in tank or old oak foudres, but since 2000 the Clos des Goisses has been partially (40 to 50 percent) fermented in 228-liter oak barrels. Some barrel-fermented wine is used for other cuvées as well, and this has been steadily on the rise over the last decade. In 2004, Philipponnat completed a new winery next to the cellars in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ to accommodate all of the winemaking, and this has undoubtedly resulted in an improvement in quality, as in the past their presshouse was located in Reims. While the Clos des Goisses is always made without malolactic, the other champagnes contain a portion of malolactic wines depending on the cuvée and the vintage.

Dosage is generally low, around eight grams per liter for the non-vintage Royale Réserve and four to five grams for the vintage wines. The 1522 is usually four to four and a half, while the Clos des Goisses has been dosed at around four grams since the last few disgorgements of the 1990 vintage (the previous disgorgements were higher). Beginning in 2005, the house has also changed the way that they handle the dosage. In the past, the dosage always employed wine stored in stainless steel tank, while today the wine is put in barrel for a short time before being blended. “It has a little more bite to it, some tannins,” says Charles Philipponnat. 

Pierre Brigandat didn’t originally come from a winemaking background. The Brigandat family had a small farm in the village of Channes, in the Aube’s Bar-sur-Seine, tending crops and livestock for self-sufficiency but not for commercial purposes. Pierre became a banker, and eventually the head of the Crédit Agricole in the nearby town of Les Riceys. However, he also had an interest in vineyards, and between 1961 and 1985 he assembled a collection of seven hectares of vines in Les Riceys, Channes and Buxeuil. He quit the bank in 1985 to focus full-time on the wine estate, and began to increase his commercial production of champagne. His son Bertrand (pictured) completed his oenological studies in 1993 and joined him at the estate, and since 2001 Bertrand has taken over the reins full-time.

The winery occupies an old farmhouse in the middle of the village, which was expanded in 1985 to accommodate a larger production of wine. All of the wines are fermented and stored in enameled steel tanks, and while there are several thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks used for cold-stabilization, even these are lined with enamel, as Bertrand Brigandat doesn’t like the idea of wine in direct contact with stainless steel. The wines are aged on their fine lees for a relatively long period of time, until their bottling in late May or early June.

Brigandat has become increasingly focused on more natural viticulture, and in fact in 2001 he even began some trials with biodynamics. He eventually stopped these as his father didn’t approve, but he continues to plant cover crops in all of his vineyards, using a minimum amount of chemical treatments, and he also works with the lunar calendar when undertaking winery operations such as racking or bottling. His goal is to eliminate chemical herbicides completely in another three years, and has left open the possibility of exploring biodynamic viticulture again one day in the future.

There have been Callots in Avize since the eighteenth century: the first family birth to be documented in the village was Louis Callot in 1784, and today, Thierry Callot (pictured) is the sixth generation of his family to grow vines there. Thierry’s great-grandfather was the chef de cave for a négociant house, although he produced a little wine from his own vines as well; Thierry’s grandfather, unfortunately, was injured during the Second World War, and was unable to work in the vineyards or cellars. It was Thierry’s father, Pierre, who created the modern company in 1955, and in 1971, he purchased the estate’s current premises on the avenue Jean Jaurès, which formerly belonged to Piper-Heidsieck. Thierry began working alongside his father in the 1980s, and took charge of the domaine in 1996.

Callot owns seven hectares of vines, most of which are located in the grand cru of Avize, with half a hectare in Cramant and a tiny parcel of 5 ares in Chouilly, as well as one and a half hectares in Grauves. Callot describes his viticulture as “lutte intégrée” (integrated farming), employing largely organic products. All of his vineyards are planted with cover crops between the rows, with the soil plowed underneath the vines themselves. The grapes are pressed with a traditional vertical press, and fermentation is carried out in tank, with a portion of the wines going through malolactic. The only one of Callot’s wines to see wood is his top cuvée, Clos Jacquin, which is fermented in tank but aged in wood for one year, as a nod to tradition: “The use of wood dates back to the Gauls and Celts,” says Callot. “The Romans already introduced it as a technique, so it’s part of our heritage.”

The Gerbais family has been growing vines in Celles-sur-Ource for eight generations, and making wine since 1930. After the Second World War, Pierre Gerbais began investing heavily in vineyard land: while he started with just 40 ares of vines, the domaine has grown to nearly eighteen hectares today. His son Pascal is now at the helm of the estate, and since 2009, Pascal’s son Aurélien (pictured) has been working together with the family as well.

Apart from one parcel in the neighboring village of Landreville, all of Gerbais’s vineyards are in Celles-sur-Ource. Roughly half of the estate’s 17.5 hectares are planted with pinot noir, while the rest are split between chardonnay and pinot blanc—with over four hectares of pinot blanc, Gerbais is Champagne’s most important producer of this variety. Average vine age is 30 years across the estate, with the oldest pinot noir vines over 50 years and the oldest pinot blanc vines up to 80 years old.

Responsible agriculture is at the heart of the Gerbais philosophy, and since 1996, the estate has been a member of Ampelos, an organization that controls and certifies sustainable viticulture. (Other Ampelos-certified champagne estates include Vilmart & Cie. and René Geoffroy.) Ampelos allows no chemical fertilizers, herbicides or insecticides, and Gerbais grows cover crops where appropriate, plowing the vineyards regularly as well.

In an effort to reduce yields, Gerbais uses no chablis pruning, not even for chardonnay; instead, vines on clay soils are pruned in cordon, while those on more chalky soils are trained in Guyot simple. “We’re much more influenced here by Bourgogne than by Avize,” says Aurélien Gerbais.

The vineyards of Celles-sur-Ource lie at the confluence of several river valleys—the Laignes, Seine, Ource and Arce—and this creates a variety of expositions. A primary distinction, though, can be made between the vineyards that face south and those that face north. The south-facing slopes, which Gerbais terms “en droit,” are exposed to the sun throughout the day, creating rich, ripe wines. In contrast, the north-facing slopes, which Gerbais calls “en vert,” are less well-exposed, yet they provide a better balance in warm years, retaining acidity and freshness. The village’s growers have historically preferred the south-facing vineyards, yet Aurélien’s grandfather always believed in the value of the north-facing slopes, and today the estate’s holdings are divided equally between the two sides.

Gerbais owns both a traditional vertical press and a pneumatic one, and while it’s necessary to have multiple presses for an estate of this size, he notes that the characters of the two are different. “The extraction in the traditional press is more precise, since it takes a longer time,” he says. “It’s better for certain terroirs.” All of the wines are fermented in tank, “for precision, and to respect the terroir,” says Gerbais, although he has begun using some demi-muids for aging. All of the wines go through malolactic, and they are bottled without fining or filtration.

The Gimonnet family has been growing vines in Champagne since 1750. Pierre Gimonnet, for whom the estate is named, began making wine in the village of Cuis in 1935; today Pierre’s grandsons Didier and Olivier are in charge of the estate.

Of Gimonnet’s 28 hectares of vines, 11 are in the grand cru villages of Cramant and Chouilly, and another hectare of grand cru land in Oger was purchased in November of 2004. The remaining 16 hectares are all in the premier cru village of Cuis, except for two hectares in Vertus purchased in 2008, plus half a hectare divided between Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. Didier Gimonnet (pictured) believes that the preservation of old vines is crucial to maintaining the high quality of his wines, and the average age of his vineyards is 35 years. In the grand cru parcels, 70 percent of the vines are over 40 years old, and there are two parcels, totaling an entire hectare between them, of remarkably old vines in Cramant: one in Fond du Bâteau, planted in 1911, and the other in Buissons, planted in 1913.

Despite owning a high proportion of grand cru vineyards, Gimonnet has historically refused to make a cuvée exclusively from these parcels, as he feels that the old vines would result in too much strength and intensity. “I am against ultra-concentration,” says Gimonnet. “I prefer balanced wines, with a lot of finesse and elegance.” Cuis, with its freshness and acidity, is seen as the ideal counterpart to balance the depth and richness of Cramant and Chouilly, and Gimonnet’s vintage blanc de blancs typically combine these three villages in some proportion. Gimonnet now includes his new parcels from Oger and Vertus in his blends, but is careful not to add too high a percentage of either of these, so as not to significantly alter the blend’s character.

For similar reasons, he uses no wood in the cellar, as he feels it would overpower chardonnay’s intrinsic delicacy. All parcels are vinified separately to preserve their distinct identities, and both primary fermentation and malolactic take place in stainless steel tanks. Since 1982, a portion of the reserve wines have been stored in 750-milliliter bottles rather than in tank, with the addition of a few grams of sugar to create a hint of pétillance that keeps them very fresh. "When you conserve the wine in bottles rather than tank, you don’t have the same evolution at all," explains Gimonnet. "In tank, the wine oxidizes much more rapidly. In bottle, we conserve part of the non-vintage blend with four grams of sugar [and a little yeast], and the wine stays much fresher for a longer period of time. Also, the lees nourish the wine, giving more complexity.” Since 1997, Gimonnet has opted to use the base blend from a given vintage as reserve wine rather than keeping individual parcels or villages separately, and he feels that this has improved the overall consistency and complexity of the brut sans année.

The Moncuit family has been growing vines in the village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger since the late 19^th century. Pierre Moncuit and his wife Odile Moncuit-Delos began producing estate-bottled champagnes in the middle of the 20th century, and since 1977, their daughter Nicole Moncuit (pictured) has been in charge of the viticulture and vinification, while her brother Yves is responsible for the commercial side of the business.

The estate owns 15 hectares in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, spread over 20 different parcels, along with another five hectares in the Sézanne. The two terroirs are never blended: the fruit from the Sézanne is all used to make the Cuvée Hugues de Coulmet, while the Mesnil fruit is used for all of the house’s other cuvées. In addition, Nicole Moncuit always makes each wine from a single vintage, without any reserve wine, “in order to preserve typicity and terroir,” she says. For the same reason, fermentation is always in stainless steel tanks, and due to the naturally high acidity of Le Mesnil, the malolactic is always carried out.

This grower estate traces its history to 1768, when Antoine Paillard bought his first parcels of vines in the village of Bouzy. The modern company was founded by Pierre Paillard in 1946, who was joined by his son Benoît in 1973. Today, Benoît is assisted by his sons Antoine (pictured) and Quentin Paillard, who represent the eighth generation of their family to grow vines in Bouzy.

Paillard’s vineyards are divided into 28 parcels comprising 11 hectares in total, all in Bouzy. Despite the strong identity of Bouzy as a pinot noir village, chardonnay accounts for no less than 40 percent of the Paillard holdings. “Our grandfather had already planted a high proportion of chardonnay,” says Antoine, “and we continue to do so. It brings freshness and liveliness to our wines.” The average age of the estate’s vineyards is about 29 years, with the oldest parcels dating from 1956.

Viticulture here is heavily focused on sustainability, without any interest in being certified organic. The Paillards have used no fertilizers for the past 20 years, and all parcels have been planted with cover crops for the last ten to fifteen years. Any synthetic treatments, such as those used against mildew, are kept to an absolute minimum, used only when necessary, and each parcel is treated according to the specific needs of the soil and the site. In addition, all replanting is done with a sélection massale, taken from one of two specific parcels: Les Maillerettes for pinot noir and Les Mottelettes for chardonnay. Before replanting, the parcels are left fallow for a full two years, covered with vegetation to clean the soil and to produce natural material for fertilization.

At the harvest, the grapes are picked with a high degree of ripeness, and none of the musts are chaptalized. The Paillards have owned a Coquard PAI press since 2008, and unusually, it’s 6,000 kilograms in size, rather than the standard Champenois measure of 4,000 kilograms: Antoine Paillard notes that with this size, you can press any volume between 3,000 and 6,000 kilograms, which provides extra flexibility. Most parcels are pressed and vinified separately, except for the smallest ones, and all wines undergo both primary fermentation and malolactic in stainless steel tanks. The wines remain on their lees until bottling, which takes place between April and July, depending on the conditions of the year. Afterwards, they age in bottle anywhere from three to ten years in the Paillards’ nineteenth-century cellars, which descend to 16 meters (52 feet) below ground.
 

The Péters family has had roots in Champagne since 1840, when Gaspard Péters, who was originally from Luxembourg, married into the Doué family, winegrowers in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Both Gaspard Péters and his son, Louis Joseph Péters, tended vines and sold grapes to the négoce, but it was Louis Joseph’s son, Camille, who began to produce estate-bottled champagnes in 1919. Camille Péters purchased a press that is still in use by the house today, and beginning in 1929 he became a full-time récoltant-manipulant. His son Pierre took over the estate in 1947, with the 1944 being the first vintage sold under the name Pierre Péters. In 1967, Pierre’s son François took the helm, expanding the domaine’s vineyards and increasing export sales, most notably in the United States and Scandinavia, and as of 2008 he has handed the estate to his son Rodolphe (pictured).

The estate’s vineyards cover 18 hectares, about 17 of which are used for the estate’s own production, with the remaining grapes being sold to the négoce. The majority of the estate’s holdings (90 percent) are in the grand cru villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger, Avize and Cramant, and of Peters’s 63 parcels of vines, 45 are in Le Mesnil. Viticulture is environmentally conscious without being dogmatic, eschewing the use of insecticides and focusing on cover crops in the right parcels to manage yields. At the same time, the goal is to keep yields reasonable but not overly low. “We are not partisans at all of low yields,” says Rodolphe Péters. “If you have too much concentration, you lose the elegance and finesse that is the signature of blanc de blancs champagne.”

Péters points to the pressing of the grapes as one of the key factors in achieving quality, and while he still owns the 100-year old vertical press purchased by his great-grandfather, he now uses a modern pneumatic press that provides a slow, gentle pressing. Special attention is paid to the settling of the must, as Péters believes that this is directly tied to the quality of the mousse, and all of the wines are fermented in stainless steel: “It retains the original quality of the fruit,” says Péters, “and it results in a more regular and more consistent fermentation.” However, he doesn’t like to ferment at temperatures that are too low, as this produces exotic aromas that he says are “farther from the terroir.”

The origins of the three Heidsieck champagne houses can all be traced back to 1785, when Florens-Louis Heidsieck founded the original Heidsieck company. In 1828, Florens-Louis Heidsieck passed away, and in 1834, his nephews established companies of their own: Christian Heidsieck took over the Heidsieck brand, and Henri-Louis Walbaum founded Walbaum, Heidsieck & Co., which would later become Heidsieck & Co. Monopole. (A third nephew of Florens-Louis, Charles-Henri Heidsieck, had a son named Charles-Camille, who would eventually found the firm of Charles Heidsieck in 1851.)

Christian Heidsieck passed away soon after this, and in 1838 his widow married Henri-Guillaume Piper, who had been working for the old Heidsieck firm since 1815. The business became known as H. Piper & Co., but they continued to sell champagne under the Heidsieck label, and in 1845 they began marketing their wines as Piper-Heidsieck.

Upon Henri-Guillaume Piper’s death in 1870, his business partner Jean-Claude Kunkelmann took charge, running the house under his firm Kunkelmann & Cie., although the house continued to be called Piper-Heidsieck. In 1926, Jean-Claude’s daughter, Anne Marie Yolande Kunkelmann, married Jean de Suarez d’Aulan (their daughter Catherine would later marry Claude Taittinger of Champagne Taittinger in 1958). The d’Aulan family sold the house to Rémy-Martin (now Rémy-Cointreau) in 1988, just three years after Rémy-Martin’s acquisition of the house of Charles Heidsieck in 1985. Rémy-Cointreau combined the two houses under one company, P&C Heidsieck, although both brands continued to be marketed separately; they remained in Rémy-Cointreau's hands until July of 2011, when the company was sold to the French luxury group EPI. Régis Camus, Piper-Heidsieck's chef de cave since 2002, continued to direct the cellars until October of 2018, when Emilien Boutillat (pictured) was appointed as his successor, with Camus remaining in the company as the overall technical director for P&C Heidsieck and the chef de cave of Rare Champagne.

Being owned by the same parent company, the houses of Piper-Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck exist in a symbiosis that is unusual for Champagne, sharing not only the same winemaking facility but also grape sources and base wines. Essentially, each house is conceived as having a particular style, and the base wines are made in the same winery and then separated according to which style they best represent: the richer, more structured wines tend to go to Charles Heidsieck, whereas the fruitier, more forward wines are used for Piper-Heidsieck. As with Charles Heidsieck, all of Piper-Heidsieck’s wines are made in stainless-steel tanks, and while Piper-Heidsieck’s champagnes were known for their lack of malolactic in the past, all of the wines today go through a full malo.

Piper-Heidsieck has a long history of collaborating with artists and designers to create special packages and advertising campaigns. In 1885, to celebrate the house’s 100th anniversary, Piper-Heidsieck commissioned the jeweler Carl Fabergé to design a special bottle made with diamonds, gold and lapis lazuli; in 1896, the Art Nouveau artist Aubrey Beardsley designed his now-famous Isolde poster for the house. In the modern day, the Rare was launched in a special bottle designed by Van Cleef & Arpels in 1985, while in 1999, Jean-Paul Gaultier created a suggestively racy, corset-like package of red vinyl for Piper-Heidsieck’s Cuvée Spéciale. More recently, Viktor and Rolf have played on an upside-down theme for the Rosé Sauvage, creating a uniquely inverted bottle, flute and ice bucket in 2007.
 

This small, family-owned Champagne house was created in 1930 by Marcel Ployez and his wife, Yvonne Jacquemart. Upon Marcel’s death in 1957, Yvonne ran the house for the next ten years, and was succeeded by her son Gérard. Today Gérard Ployez’s daughter, Laurence (pictured), is in charge of the winemaking.

The house owns roughly two hectares of vines—one hectare of meunier in Ludes, behind the winery, and another hectare of pinot noir in Mailly—and the rest of their grapes are purchased exclusively from grand cru and premier cru villages. To make the champagnes, only the cuvée, or first pressing, is used, and the must goes through two settlings before the fermentation in order to obtain the clearest juice possible.

A portion of the wines are vinified in barrel, most notably for the house’s prestige cuvée, Liesse d’Harbonville, and these are purchased secondhand from Burgundy, never new. Vinification in wood is typically done without malolactic, although the rest of the wines do undergo malo.

The vintage wines are aged for a minimum of six years in Ployez-Jacquemart’s deep, chalky cellars: unusually, they spend the first couple of years on their sides, sur latte, and then are stored upside-down, sur pointe, for a minimum of four years. “This method keeps the wine fresher,” says Laurence Ployez, noting that aging sur pointe provides the antioxidative and aging benefits of the lees while not allowing the wines to become too rich from the lees contact. "The goal is to extract fruit flavor," she says. "I’m not really looking for the complexity of yeasts."

Born in Aÿ in 1831, Pol Roger founded the négociant house that bears his name in 1849, when he was only 18 years old. By 1876 he had established a presence in Great Britain, selling to the most prestigious clubs, restaurants and hotels, and in 1877 he received a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria. The English market would soon become the cornerstone of Pol Roger’s business, thanks to his savvy agent, Conrad Reuss, and his success here would eventually allow him to discontinue selling wine to other firms sur lattes and to focus exclusively on sales of his own brand.

Upon his death in 1899, his sons Maurice and Georges took over the firm, and in a tribute to their father, they legally changed their family name from Roger to Pol-Roger. The house was struck with disaster in 1900, when a major portion of their cellars in Epernay collapsed, destroying 1.5 million bottles of champagne; however, with the help of other Champagne firms, the brothers kept the business alive, further establishing the brand in important markets such as the United States and France.

The latter half of the 20th century saw Pol Roger continue to flourish under the direction of Christian de Billy and Christian Pol-Roger, both great-grandsons of Pol Roger himself. Christian de Billy’s son Hubert joined the house in 1988 and is its commercial director today, while Laurent d’Harcourt is Pol Roger’s Président du Directoire. Dominique Petit, chef de cave here since 1999, has retired as of 2018, and is now succeeded by Damien Cambres.

Pol Roger’s 87 hectares of vines provide for about 55 percent of their needs, with the rest of the grapes purchased through long-term contracts. The wines are made in the house’s extensive network of cellars in Epernay, which is built on three levels, covering over seven kilometers and reaching depths of up to 35 meters. The exceptional coolness of these cellars, which maintain an unusually low ambient temperature of 9°C all year round, contributes to the fine mousse that is a hallmark of Pol Roger champagnes.

The Prin family has been growing vines for four generations, and has been established in the village of Avize since the beginning of the 20th century. Daniel Prin (pictured) established this label in 1977, and today produces about 150,000 bottles of champagne a year.

While the Legras family has roots in the village of Chouilly that date back to at least the 15th century, the family’s viticultural history begins in 1808, when Honoré Legras first purchased vines. It wouldn’t be until the 1950s, however, that the brothers René and Lucien Legras began producing champagne, estate-bottling as a récoltant-manipulant until 1972, then registering as a négociant. They were succeeded by Gérard Barbier, whose mother had been an employee of the Legras brothers. Barbier managed the house for over thirty years, building the Legras brand and establishing the high reputation that it enjoys today. Today, Gérard’s son Jullien (pictured) is at the helm.

The house owns five hectares of vines and purchases the rest of their needs, all from the grand cru of Chouilly. “Villages like Cramant, Le Mesnil and Avize are very good, but they must be a little older to enjoy,” says Jullien Barbier. “Here the wines are lighter, and are easier to drink when they’re young.” All of the wines are made in stainless steel tank and the malolactic is always carried out.

The viticultural area of the Aube, excluding Montgueux, is properly called the Côte des Bar, and this is itself divided into two regions: the Barséquanais and the Bar-sur-Aubois. While most of the well-known names of the Aube are in the Barséquanais, the Bar-sur-Aubois has its share of producers as well, among them the estate of R. Dumont & Fils. The Dumont family has been growing vines in Champagne since 1808, but their history of wine production dates from the 1970s, when brothers Raphaël and Robert Dumont founded the estate (hence the “R” in R. Dumont). Today it is in the hands of Bernard Dumont, who is in charge of the cellar, and his cousin Pierre, who looks after the vines.

Dumont’s 23 hectares of vines are all in the village of Champignol-lèz-Mondeville, on the southwestern side of the Bar-sur-Aubois. As in the Barséquanais to the west, the predominant variety here is pinot noir, although according to Pierre Dumont, the argilo-calcaire soils here tend to be not quite as deep as those of the Barséquanais, with the bedrock closer to the surface, making the vines naturally less productive. The vines are worked according to the philosophy of lutte raisonnée, with an increasing interest in mechanical labor. In the cellar, the grapes are pressed using modern, horizontal Coquard presses, and both fermentation and malolactic take place in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks.

The Pouillon estate was founded in 1947 by Roger and Bernadette Pouillon, with the help of Bernadette’s uncle, the renowned oenologist Louis Baulant. At this time, most of Pouillon’s vines were in contract with the négoce, but they were able to vinify a small portion of wine from a parcel in Mutigny. Their son James began assisting them at the estate in 1964, and his wife Josette the following year—while the estate had grown by this point, it still comprised just one hectare of vineyards, spread between Mutigny, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and Tauxières. James was instrumental in expanding and modernizing the estate, and by 1987 it covered five hectares of vines, including two hectares of chardonnay in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, owned by his wife’s family.

Today, the estate is in the hands of James’s son Fabrice (pictured), who joined the estate in 1998, after finishing studies in business, oenology and viticulture. Fabrice took over the estate full-time in 2004, together with his wife Elodie, and in addition to their vines in the Grande Vallée and Côte des Blancs, they farmed nine hectares in the region of Ecueil in the Petite Montagne, obtained through Elodie’s family.

Fabrice and Elodie parted ways in 2014, and Elodie has taken her vineyard holdings to her own estate, Desbordes-Amiaud. In addition, the parcels in Le Mesnil that belonged to Fabrice’s grandmother have been taken over by another member of the family since 2007. This leaves the Pouillon estate with 6.5 hectares of vines today: 3.5 hectares are in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, half a hectare is in Aÿ, and another half-hectare in Mutigny, Avenay and Tauxières, with the remaining two hectares split between Festigny and Epernay.

Fabrice Pouillon has invested heavily in viticulture since arriving at the estate, and today his vineyard work is virtually organic, although he isn’t interested in pursuing official certification. All parcels are plowed, and cover crops are grown where appropriate; all fertilizers and composts are organic, as are treatments against pests. In addition, Pouillon employs various biodynamic practices such as 500 and 501 preparations and herbal tisanes, which he has been using since 2003.

The grapes are pressed using a traditional, 4,000-kilogram vertical press, and most parcels are vinified separately, to maintain a maximum diversity of terroir expression. Fermentation can be carried out in barriques, foudres, or tanks (both stainless steel and enameled steel), although Pouillon has recently been experimenting with 400-liter barrels, particularly for the wines from Aÿ: “Aÿ is a terroir that’s quite puissant,” he says, “and sometimes it can get a little heavy in smaller barriques. Larger barrels can bring more finesse.” A portion of the harvest is fermented with indigenous yeasts, notably those wines that are vinified in barrel, and all wines go through malolactic. Reserve wines can be stored in either barriques or foudres, and one cuvée contains reserve wines stored in a perpetual cuvée that was started in the early 1990s.

In 1785, Florens-Louis Heidsieck founded the champagne house bearing his name, and on the 5th of May he presented a special cuvée to Marie-Antoinette, queen of France, who by all accounts was thoroughly enamored with the wine. One hundred years later, the house—now called Piper-Heidsieck—produced a champagne to commemorate this event, which it called la cuvée du centenaire (the Centenary Cuvée): this was put in a bottle created by Pierre-Karl Fabergé, jeweler of the Russian Tsar Alexander III, which was specially enameled and encrusted with gold, diamonds and lapis lazuli.

Nearly a hundred years after that, in 1976, Piper-Heidsieck sought to capture the spirit of that centenary cuvée with the creation of a new prestige cuvée called Rare. Released in 1985, it also had a unique bottle created for it, this time by Van Cleef & Arpels, whose gold, diamond and lapis design was inspired by the original Fabergé one—this, of course, was a special and exclusive production, and not the bottle used for the commercial release. Following this, the house produced Rare again in 1979, 1985, 1988 and 1990, before deciding to discontinue production.

In 1998, however, Piper-Heidsieck’s chef de cave Régis Camus (pictured) opted to resurrect the cuvée, restoring Rare as the prestige cuvée of Piper-Heidsieck. The 1998 was bottled exclusively in magnum, although the subsequent releases of 1999 and 2002 were produced in both 750-milliliter bottles and magnums. As of 2017, however, Rare has been separated from Piper-Heidsieck to be marketed as a brand of its own, under the name Rare Champagne (in a similar fashion to Dom Pérignon, which originated as the prestige cuvée of Moët & Chandon).

Piper-Heidsieck and its sister house, Charles Heidsieck, are owned by the same parent company, P&C Heidsieck, and for a time Camus was chef de cave for both houses, although since 2012 Charles Heidsieck has had its own separate chef de cave. The houses are unusual in that they share grape sources and winemaking facilities, and the two winemaking teams separate base wines according to style. Rare Champagne continues to be part of this arrangement, with Régis Camus as its chef de cave: he now focuses exclusively on Rare Champagne, with Émilien Boutillat taking over at Piper-Heidsieck in 2018.
 

Francis Boulard is a fifth-generation vigneron, from a family with roots in La Neuville-aux-Larris in the Marne. His grandfather owned two hectares of vines, and in 1956 he registered as a négociant-manipulant in order to be able to expand his production of champagne. At this time there were hardly any vines planted in the Massif de St-Thierry, north of Reims, and a decade later Francis’s father, Raymond, began planting vines in this area, near the winery’s location in Cauroy-lès-Hermonville. Francis took over the estate in 1973, and while he continued to be registered as an NM, he eventually stopped purchasing grapes, focusing instead on estate-grown champagnes. In early 2010, the Raymond Boulard estate was divided between Francis and his two siblings, and ceased to exist. Francis took his portion of the vines and set up his own company, together with his daughter Delphine, and he took the old stocks of wine with him as well, which he now sells under the Francis Boulard label.

Prior to the split, the Raymond Boulard holdings totaled 10.25 hectares, spread over eight different villages in the Massif de St-Thierry, Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne and the Aisne. Boulard farmed the vines organically, tilling the soil, allowing cover crops to grow and employing various organic manures and composts. In addition, he worked a small portion of his vines biodynamically since 2001, and since 2004 these parcels have been certified as biodynamic by Ecocert.

All of the parcels were vinified separately in order to preserve the expressions of their distinct terroirs. About half of the wines were fermented in small, stainless steel tanks, while the rest of the wines were fermented in barrel. Boulard used indigenous yeasts as much as possible, adding cultured yeasts only if there was a problem with fermentation, and the malolactic may or may not have been performed, depending upon the individual cuvée, terroir or vintage.

While this prominent grower estate is now headquartered in the village of Aÿ, the Geoffroy name is inextricably linked to that of Cumières, where the family has winegrowing roots that date back to the 17th century. Today Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy and his father René farm 14 hectares of vines, 11 of which are in Cumières. A few parcels are located just across the border to the west in the adjacent village of Damery, while the rest is all meunier in the nearby village of Fleury-la-Rivière.

Geoffroy’s vines average about 20 years of age, and the oldest are from 1926. Viticulture is described as lutte intégrée, or “integrated pest control”—it is heavily aimed at sustainability, eschewing all chemical weedkillers and employing methods such as the planting of cover crops, tilling of the soil and the encouraged habitation of predatory insects to combat vine pests. Geoffroy also belongs to the organization Ampelos, which provides certification and oversight for sustainable farming methods.

Previously, Geoffroy’s cellars were located in the heart of Cumières, on the rue du Bois des Jots. While the location was certainly convenient for its proximity to the vineyards, the family’s old cellars weren’t large enough to support the growth of the estate over time, and for many years Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy had to shuttle his wines between three different storage locations in the village. In May of 2006, he purchased a historical and beautifully-appointed facility in Aÿ that once belonged to Champagne Raoul Collet, located on the same street as Deutz and Henri Goutorbe. In addition to its aesthetic value, the building attracted him for two practical purposes: first, it's spacious and ample, easily consolidating his entire production into one location; and second, it's built on five levels—three for the cuverie and two for the caves—allowing him to work entirely by gravity.

The top level of the cellar houses two traditional Coquard vertical presses that feed into the settling tanks on the level below, with enameled-steel fermentation tanks and wooden foudres located on the level below that. Only the coeur de cuvée, or the middle 1,800 liters from a standard 2,550-liter pressing, is used for the upper-tier cuvées: Empreinte, Volupté, Les Houtrants and Terre. In addition, Geoffroy vinifies all of his parcels separately in order to retain their individual identities and to provide as diverse a palette of wines as possible for blending his various champagnes. A portion of the wines are vinified in wood of various sizes—barriques, demi-muids and foudres—and in general, none of the wines go through malolactic.
 

The Coutier family has long-established roots in the village of Ambonnay. There is a document showing that a Coutier was baptized in the village’s church in 1619, and another from before the French Revolution demonstrating that Coutier’s family was growing vines here as early as 1760. Even their beautiful, old, half-timbered house on a quiet side street in Ambonnay has a long familial history: René Coutier, the current proprietor, says that his family has lived on this property for five or six generations, and he remembers the compound and its gardens as being his grandmother’s farm when he was a child. Coutier’s grandfather had a press and was already bottling sparkling champagne in 1901, as well as pressing grapes for Charles Heidsieck and other firms. This business was brought to a halt during World War II, but Coutier’s father, who took over the estate in 1947, began to build it up again, and he was the first in this pinot-dominated village to plant chardonnay vines. René Coutier (pictured) began making wine at the estate in 1971, and officially took charge of it in 1983.

Today, Coutier farms nine hectares of vines, all in Ambonnay, but he produces only about 50,000 bottles of champagne a year, as he continues to sell grapes to the négoce, principally to the houses of Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot and Taittinger. As he doesn’t currently have a press on his property, he takes his grapes to be pressed at the Ambonnay cooperative, which is why he is registered as an RC rather than an RM.

Since 2000, Coutier has been working in viticulture raisonnée, decreasing the use of chemical treatments and planting cover crops in the vines, although he says that he hasn’t really seen a difference in quality. The only significantly positive aspect, he says, is that there are fewer chemical products being put into the ground, which is “good for the conscience, and good for future generations.” He feels that the use of cover crops has been successful, particularly in chalky parcels, although he notes that in clay plots “you have to be very vigilant.”

All of the wines are fermented in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks, and the Cuvée Henri III is the only wine that sees any élevage in barrel. The non-vintage Brut Tradition normally goes through full malolactic, but the other wines only see a partial malolactic fermentation, with the exact percentage depending upon the year. Lees aging is relatively long for a small estate, and dosage is always relatively low, at around six grams per liter. “There’s already a lot of material here,” says Coutier, “so the wines don’t need much.”

Tucked away on a side street in the charming village of Landreville, the estate of Robert Dufour et Fils lives a quiet, unassuming existence. Among the carefully tended flower gardens and pretty stone buildings, there’s no sign to mark the property, nor are there, in fact, many signs that this is a wine-producing estate at all.

While the estate was founded by Robert Dufour, it was his son Yves who, upon taking over in 1971, expanded the vineyard holdings and began seriously commercializing the range of estate-bottled champagnes. “In the past it was easy,” says Charles Dufour, Yves’s son. “My grandfather only made three wines: Brut, Sec and Demi-Sec.” Yves Dufour began to focus on dry wines, introducing a traditional range of champagnes and vinifying different varieties separately.

Today, Yves is moving towards retirement and Charles is assuming control of the reins. Charles worked in New Zealand and Australia before returning to the family winery in 2006, and intriguingly enough, while he was away his mother decided to begin trials with biodynamics — the estate was already fully organic in its entirety, but since 2006 they’ve also had three parcels farmed biodynamically. As of the 2007 vintage, all of the vineyards have officially begun undergoing conversion to organic farming, certified by Ecocert. Typically for the Côte des Bar, the majority of the vineyard area is planted with pinot noir, here accounting for about 75 percent of the estate’s holdings. Another 23 percent is chardonnay, with the remainder comprised of one parcel of meunier and one parcel of pinot blanc.

Eric Coulon is the eighth generation of his family to grow vines in the village of Vrigny. His grandfather, Marcel Coulon, began to produce estate-bottled champagne here in the late 1920s, and was later followed by Eric's father, Roger. Today, Eric and his wife Isabelle are in charge of this impressive estate, making distinctive, richly-flavored champagnes. Since 2016 they have also been joined by their son Edgar, who came back to the estate after his winemaking studies and stages abroad in England, Australia, New Zealand and Burgundy, and in addition, their daughter Louise has been at the estate since 2019, taking care of the commercial and export side of the business but participating in vineyard and cellar work as well.

Coulon's 11 hectares of vines are spread over more than 70 parcels in six villages along the Petite Montagne—Vrigny, Gueux, Coulommes-la-Montagne, Pargny-lès-Reims, Jouy-lès-Reims and Villers-Allerand—as well as a vineyard in Chouilly, Les Hauts Partas. Roughly forty percent of the vineyard area is planted with meunier, while the rest is divided equally between pinot noir and chardonnay. The average age of Coulon's vines is 38 years, which is relatively high for Champagne, and the estate's oldest vines were planted in 1924, located in a parcel named Hubert, after Coulon's great-uncle.

Coulon is deeply committed to farming as naturally as possible, and since 2017 the entire estate has been cultivated organically. “The goal is to have living and healthy soils,” says Coulon, noting that healthy soil structures also allow them to better express the individual identities of each parcel. Tilling has been abandoned in favor of a permanent cover crop, so as not to disturb microorganisms in the layers of soil near the surface, and biodiversity is encouraged both by the planting of trees in the vineyards and the presence of sheep, who are allowed to roam the vines. With the exception of some parcels of chardonnay that are trained in the Chablis system, all of Coulon's vines are on cordon de Royat, in order to limit yields. "The quality of the grapes is derived above all from a low yield," he states emphatically.

All parcels are pressed separately, in one of two Bucher pneumatic press, and only the cuvée, or first portion of the pressing, is retained, with the taille sold to the négoce. The wines are all fermented with indigenous yeasts, which both Eric and Edgar Coulon believe give a better expression of terroir and a greater level of complexity. Due to this, the wines take a longer time than usual, generally finishing around the end of November, but they see this as beneficial for extracting aromas in the wines. Coulon has even attempted various methods of employing native yeasts for the second fermentation, but none of them have worked reliably enough. He points out, though, that in the second fermentation there isn't much sugar for the yeasts to eat, only around 20 grams, so they don't have nearly as much impact on the wine as they do in the primary fermentation.

While the majority of Coulon's wines are vinified entirely in thermoregulated, stainless-steel tanks, some of the best parcels can be aged in barrel, depending on the year. Coulon uses barrels from both Champagne and Burgundy, and while they are purchased new, they are not used until the second or third year. "New wood is too brutal for champagne," he says. "It extracts too much tannin and too much aroma." Coulon prefers to use barrels for aging rather than fermentation, but certain wines can be fermented in oak if he thinks that they will benefit from it.

Despite being a partisan of low yields, Coulon is firmly against wines that are overly alcoholic. All of his champagnes finish between 11 and 12 degrees of alcohol in the final wine, with 12 being a maximum. "For me, champagne should be elegant," he says. "Alcohol is powerful, not elegant." In keeping with this spirit of elegance, Coulon also makes all of his champagnes with a slightly lower pressure than the regional norm, at 4.5 to 5 bars instead of 6, in order to prevent them from feeling aggressive. The only exception to this is the vintage wine, which is bottled with a higher pressure due to its potential for longer aging. The malolactic is usually allowed for most of the wines, particularly as the sulfur levels are kept as low as possible, but as with most processes here, Coulon adapts this to the particular characters of each wine and each vintage.

As Ruinart has been commercially producing sparkling champagne since 1729, it has the honor of being the oldest champagne-producing house in the region. While the house of Gosset traces its ancestry back to its founding in Aÿ in 1584, and is thus legitimately the oldest existing wine house in Champagne, the wines at this time were still, not sparkling. Throughout the 17th century, wine was sold exclusively in cask, and it wasn’t until 1728 that wine was legally permitted to be shipped in bottle, permitting the sale of bottle-fermented champagnes. In 1729, Nicolas Ruinart founded the house that bears his name, and the firm has been producing sparkling wines ever since.

The house continued to be run under the name Maison Ruinart Père et Fils by the descendants of Nicolas Ruinart, and quickly began developing sales abroad. Historically, Belgium and Holland represented important export markets, and like many other Champagne houses, Ruinart would find success in the lucrative 19th-century markets of Russia and the United States—in fact, Edmond Ruinart de Brimont, the great-grandson of Nicolas, was received at the White House by American President Andrew Jackson.

The business remained in family hands through the first part of the 20th century, at first under the direction of André Ruinart de Brimont, grandson of Edmond, and then by André’s wife Charlotte after his death in 1919. In 1925, the house passed into the hands of their son Gérard Ruinart de Brimont, the last of that name to head this historic firm. This period would prove trying, marked first by the worldwide financial crisis and then by the Second World War, which brought an abrupt halt to export activities. Following the war, Gérard Ruinart de Brimont passed the direction of the house over to Bertrand Mure, a relative of the Ruinart family on his mother’s side. In the face of the house’s financial difficulties, Mure sought financial assistance from Baron Philippe de Rothschild, but even this was not a long-term solution, and in 1963, the house of Ruinart was sold to the Moët & Chandon group.

Today Ruinart is part of LVMH, the luxury goods group that owns Moët & Chandon, as well as the champagne houses of Veuve Clicquot, Dom Pérignon and Krug, among others. Since 2007, Frédéric Panaïotis has been the house’s chef de cave.

Franck Malot is a fifth-generation winegrower in Villers-Marmery, farming ten hectares of vines spread between Villers-Marmery and Verzy. Villers-Marmery, along with its neighbor Trépail, is planted predominantly with chardonnay despite its location in the Montagne de Reims, and Malot’s vines in the village consist entirely of chardonnay. A small amount of pinot noir is grown across the border to the north in the grand cru village of Verzy, and this is used in Malot’s brut sans année, called Carte Blanche, and also made as red wine for blending into his rosé.

Fermentation takes place largely in stainless steel tanks, but unusually, the old-vine cuvée called Vieille Réserve is fermented in unlined cement vats, encrusted with tartrate crystals that contribute a particular character to the wine, as well as protecting it from direct contact with the cement. Malot stores his reserve wines in cement tank as well, but those are lined with tiles and are therefore neutral. Malolactic is completed for all wines except the Cuvée SM, the estate’s vintage wine.

There’s a history to the unusual name “Sadi”: Frank’s father, Sadi Malot, was named for a great-uncle who was killed during World War I. This great-uncle, in turn, was named for Marie François Sadi Carnot, president of the French Republic from 1887 to 1894, as he was born on the day that Carnot was assassinated.

This jewel of a house is unique in Champagne in that it has always only produced a single wine, made from a single village, grape variety and vintage. It has always been a rare and exclusive champagne ever since it was created in the early years of the 20th century, and officially, there have only been 41 vintages ever released. Salon is a champagne that has always had a certain glamour about it, but it is never ostentatious or lavish. Salon is a discreet, private experience, one for those initiated into its secrets, and indeed, up until recently, many wine lovers around the world had never even heard of it, much less tasted the wine. It is a champagne of connoisseurs, but even then, it is restricted to the small group of those knowledgeable enough to understand and appreciate it and wealthy enough to afford it.

The Mathieu family has been growing vines in Avirey-Lingey since the middle of the 18th century. Serge Mathieu began estate-bottling champagne in 1970, and in 1987 his daughter Isabelle began to assist him at the estate. Today Isabelle runs the estate with her husband, Michel Jacob (pictured), who has been working at the estate since 1998. Jacob has strongly influenced the viticulture here, reorganizing the vineyards to embrace more environmentally-friendly practices.

The estate’s 11 hectares of vines are all in Avirey-Lingey, planted with 80 percent pinot noir and 20 percent chardonnay. Jacob describes his viticulture as “borderline organic”, as the goal is to cultivate the vines with maximum respect toward nature, while deciding on a carefully reasoned approach rather than following dogma. Cover crops are planted, weedkillers and insecticides are eschewed, and only natural fertilizers are used; Jacob also hires an entomologist to introduce insects into the vines to achieve a more balanced biosphere, preferring this to the “sexual confusion” method of controlling pests. On the other hand, Jacob dislikes the use of copper to combat mildew, as he considers it to be more toxic to the soil than certain synthetic alternatives. Jacob utilizes ecologically-friendly practices in the winery as well, such as rainwater collection and heat pumps, even using only organic sugar for the liqueur d’expédition. The wines are fermented in temperature-controlled stainless steel, and they are aged in either stainless steel or enameled steel tanks, where they also go through malolactic. They are bottled without cold-stabilization, and the minimum amount of lees aging is three years for the non-vintage wines and five years for the top cuvées.

Stéphane Coquillette is the fourth generation of his family to grow vines in Champagne. The Coquillettes have long been established in the village of Chouilly, and in fact, Stéphane’s grandmother was the first in the village to bottle her own champagne. No one knows exactly when she started to make wine, but she was already showing her champagnes at a fair in Paris in 1928, under the label Pierre Coquillette. She also created a brand called Saint-Chamant, intended as a more premium range of champagnes, and this was taken over by Stéphane’s father, Christian. Rather than working with his father, however, Stéphane created a company of his own in 1979, despite not possessing a single parcel of vines at the time. “I wanted to make wines that were completely different from my father’s,” he says.

Since then, Coquillette has built up an estate of 6.5 hectares, spread over a number of villages—Chouilly and Cuis in the Côte des Blancs, Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ in the Grande Vallée, and a small portion in Polisy and Les Riceys as well, although those grapes from the Aube are sold. About three-quarters of the vineyard area is planted with pinot noir, with the rest chardonnay. No herbicides are used, and a portion of the vineyards are planted with cover crops and plowed; in addition, Coquillette uses only organically certified fertilizers.

In 2000, Coquillette purchased an old cooperative building on the rue des Écoles in Chouilly, which included some excellent cellars but no winemaking facilities. He built a cuvérie here in 2001, and today it houses no fewer than four wine presses: a traditional vertical press, a 4,000-kilogram and an 8,000-kilogram pneumatic press, and a PAI. Unlike most other Champenois winemakers, though, he doesn’t draw much distinction between the various types. “Honestly, the quality between the four presses is essentially the same,” he says. “What’s important is to get the grapes into the press as quickly as possible, and then to press them slowly.” Only the cuvée is used to make the estate’s champagnes, and all of the taille is sold.

All of Coquillette’s wines are fermented in stainless steel tanks, and all undergo malolactic. Since 2009, a portion of the wine is aged in secondhand barrels, purchased from a grower in Meursault, although these are never used for fermentation. Dosage is low, typically around 5 g/l for all cuvées, and disgorgement dates are now printed on all back labels, including those for export.

Aurélien Suenen (pictured) took charge of his family’s Cramant estate in 2009, when he was just 23 years old. His family has been established in Champagne for five generations, first in Damery, where his great-great-grandfather started growing vines in 1898, and later in Cramant, where his grandfather Bernard owned a grocery store in addition to cultivating his vineyards. The Suenen family had been making champagne since the 1940s, but it was Bernard who began estate-bottling in earnest after the Second World War. His son Daniel, Aurélien’s father, expanded the estate’s vineyards and increased champagne production, and he continued to make wine here until his death in 2009. Aurélien, who was formerly training to become a professional basketball player, began to develop a more serious interest in wine by 2003 or 2004, and when his father took ill in 2008, he assumed responsibility for the management of the estate.

Suenen owns five hectares of vines, spread over 17 parcels: three hectares are in the Côte des Blancs, in the villages of Cramant, Chouilly and Oiry, and two are in the Massif de St-Thierry, planted with pinot noir and meunier. His vineyard work is largely organic, with some trials in biodynamics, but he prefers to explore his own path rather than adhere to predetermined systems. In this he is heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Pascal Agrapart, another grower whose vineyard work is highly conscientious and quality-oriented without being easily categorized.

“For me,” says Suenen, “the most important thing is to work the soil.” Since 2014, all of his vineyards in the Côte des Blancs have been regularly plowed, and in terms of other vineyard work, each parcel is treated according to its individual needs. Suenen has taken great pains to learn as much as possible about each of his parcels, not only through the empirical experience of working them on a daily basis, but also through detailed soil analyses, conducted with the help of Claude and Lydia Bourgignon. “I’m putting in 200 percent of effort,” he says, “and I’m learning something new every day.”

Suenen’s quest for knowledge and his dedication to quality extend to the cellars as well, where he is unafraid to take risks if he feels that they have the potential to lead to better results. He’s the first to admit that they don’t always work out, but as he says, “You learn from your errors, too.”

He doesn’t work with stainless steel, preferring old, enameled-steel tanks: “They provide more gras, more richness,” he says. In 2012, he purchased a concrete egg as well—he finds it to have an effect of opening the wines very rapidly in comparison to other vessels, making it useful for blending. About a quarter of his production is vinified in wood, not only barriques, but also demi-muids and large oak foudres; he began by buying three- to six-year-old barrels from Meursault, but he now prefers barrels from the Austrian cooper Stockinger, which he finds to impart less of an oak imprint than Burgundy barrels do, even when they’re new. Like a few others in Champagne, he’s tried acacia casks, but was disappointed with the results. None of his wines in wood see any bâtonnage.

Suenen experimented with indigenous yeast fermentations in 2012, and in 2013, half of the harvest was fermented with native yeasts. He typically uses sulfur only at pressing, and the wines stay on their lees until bottling, which is now done in July, without fining or filtering. Malolactic may occur or not, depending on the individual wine.

This renowned house was founded in 1734 by Jacques Fourneaux, and was known as Fourneaux-Forest when it was acquired by the Taittinger family in the early 1930s. Purchased by Pierre Taittinger and renamed Ets Taittinger Mailly & Cie., the house was moved to Reims in 1933, and since 1942 it has been established in its current location on the place Saint-Niçaise, over the ruins of the 13th-century Saint-Niçaise abbey and it’s spectacular Gallo-Roman chalk pits dating back to the 4th century. Much of the house’s contemporary reputation is due to the efforts of François Taittinger and his brother Claude Taittinger, who took charge in 1960 upon the tragic death of François in an auto accident. In 2005, Claude’s nephew, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, took control of the house until the beginning of 2020, when his daughter, Vitalie Taittinger, succeeded him as its president, with her brother Clovis becoming general manager.

The house owns a respectably large collection of vineyards, and of their 289 hectares of vines, 47 percent are planted with pinot noir, 16 percent with meunier and 37 percent with chardonnay. Chardonnay, in fact, is a strong element of the house’s signature, and it’s fitting that Taittinger’s prestige cuvée, Comtes de Champagne, is a blanc de blancs from pure chardonnay. Taittinger’s cellars are in the hands of chef de caves Alexandre Ponnavoy, who took over from his predecessor Loïc Dupont in 2018.

Taittinger made plenty of headlines in 2005 when the Société du Louvre, Taittinger’s parent group, was sold to Starwood Capital, an American investment group specializing in luxury hotels. However, Starwood Capital had more interest in the Société du Louvre’s other assets, which included the Hotel de Crillon and Baccarat crystal, and in 2006 the French bank Crédit Agricole du Nord-Est helped Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger repurchase the champagne house, putting it back into the family’s hands.
 

The Tarlant family traces their winegrowing history back to 1687, when Pierre Tarlant first cultivated grapevines in the Marne Valley. In 1928, Louis Adrien Tarlant produced the family’s first estate-bottled champagne, and since then there have been four successive generations of Tarlants producing wine at their estate in the village of Oeuilly. Today the estate is in the hands of Benoît Tarlant (pictured), who has been making wine here since 1999.

The estate’s vineyards are spread over 40 different parcels in four villages, and are composed of roughly 50 percent pinot noir, 30 percent chardonnay and 19 percent meunier, along with a tiny portion of arbanne, petit meslier and pinot blanc. The soils in this area west of Epernay are very diverse: close to the river they can be very sandy, sometimes containing a number of fossils, while up the hill there is chalk that ranges from the crumbly and friable to the very hard. There are Sparnacien soils composed of a mixture of chalk and clay, which are best suited to pinot noir, and there is even some silex in various places.

Viticulture is conducted with respect for the environment firmly in mind, and no chemical pesticides or fertilizers are used. Benoît’s father Jean-Mary has been working with cover crops since 1996, although in these diverse terroirs each parcel must be considered individually: for example, planting grass between the rows in calcareous soils encourages competition and restricts yields, but planting grass in sandy soils is detrimental to the vines in the summertime, as they struggle to gain a balance of water and nutrients. Benoît is constantly seeking ways to improve and refine his viticultural methods, in the belief that better grapes simply produce better wine. “The future evolution [of champagne] will be here in the vineyards,” he says.

Each parcel is pressed and vinified separately, and about half of Tarlant’s production is barrel-fermented, in Vosges barriques of medium toast from Claude Gillet in St-Romain. Tarlant always buys new barrels to ensure that there is no malolactic bacteria present, as he strictly avoids the malolactic in all of his wines. In addition, only the older vines are vinified in barrel, as Tarlant feels that the young vines often don’t have enough structure and depth to stand up to the oak. “Wood is something that must open the wine and give it complexity, but not dominate it,” he says. While the wine in barrel is often fermented with indigenous yeasts, this is flexible according to the individual wine, and it is largely dependent on the sanitary conditions of the vintage. “I am not against natural yeasts,” says Tarlant, “but sometimes after the débourbage, you can see that they’re not the best.” As with much of the practices here, there is no recipe: Tarlant seeks to adapt to the conditions of each wine and each vintage in an effort to produce the highest quality possible.

The Côte de Sézanne is a large region, spanning nearly 45 kilometers from north to south, and the village of Bethon is almost all the way at its southern tip. This is a relatively young vineyard area, historically known more for agriculture than for viticulture, and vines have only been planted in earnest here for the last 50 years or so. Thierry Triolet’s father, Marcel Triolet, began making champagne from estate-owned vines in 1969, and Thierry has been making the wines since 1982.

Triolet’s 11 hectares of vines are in Bethon and the neighboring communes of Villenauxe-la-Grande and Montgenost, and aside from 1.5 hectares of pinot noir and half a hectare of meunier, all are planted with chardonnay, which is well-suited to the chalky soils of the area. Triolet says that the southern expositions of the slopes in this area result in ripe, fruity wines, and the grapes ripen earlier here than anywhere else in Champagne. While much of Triolet’s harvest is sold to the négoce, in recent years he has been steadily increasing his production of estate-bottled champagnes. 

Each of Triolet’s parcels is vinified separately, pressed in a water-driven membrane press and fermented in enameled steel tanks. The malolactic is completed for all wines except for a small part of the red wine that is fermented in barrel, used to make rosé.

One of the newest stars in the Champagne firmament is Olivier Collin, in the village of Congy in the Coteaux du Morin, the area that lies between the Côte des Blancs and the Sézanne. An inquisitive winegrower, Collin gives credit to Anselme Selosse for inspiring him to become a Champenois vigneron. He describes his stage with Selosse in 2001 as “one of those encounters that changes your life,” and it prompted him to take back a portion of his family’s vines that had been rented to Pommery, allowing him to make his own wines. Nature wasn’t immediately in the mood to cooperate, however, as his first crop, 2003, was severely hit by frost, and Collin was forced to sell off the entire harvest.

He succeeded in making his first wine in 2004, from a 1.2-hectare parcel in a vineyard called Les Pierrières, in the nearby village of Vert-Toulon. The chalk in this area is very close to the surface, with little topsoil, and it’s mixed with chunks of black silex, which is highly unusual in Champagne. Les Perrières faces roughly southeast, and Collin’s vines here are about 30 years old. In addition, he has some other chardonnay parcels in Vert-Toulon and Congy, as well as parcels of pinot noir that are largely between 35 and 60 years old. Collin has waited longer to produce wine from these other parcels, as he feels that many of them still need to be “cleaned” through working of the soil and the application of organic composts—today, out of his 8.7 hectares, he vinifies about five of them.

Winemaking as a rule here is as natural and non-interventionist as possible. All fermentation is carried out with indigenous yeasts, which can take a remarkably long time to complete: six to eight months is not at all unusual for Collin, and even when tasting vins clairs in June or July, they can sometimes be in the middle of their alcoholic fermentations. Both the fermentation and malolactic are carried out in three- to six-year old barriques, and the wine is neither fined nor filtered before bottling, which takes place in the fall after the harvest.
 

Valérie Frison (pictured) took over her family’s vines in the village of Ville-sur-Arce in 1997, initially selling the grapes to the local cooperative. Together with her former husband, Thierry de Marne, she began converting her vineyards to organic viticulture in 2003, and in 2007, the first vintage eligible for organic certification, they began to make small quantities of their own champagne. They released their first wines in 2010, but in typically bureaucratic French fashion, the CIVC didn’t allow them to market the wines under Thierry’s name, de Marne: they felt it implied that he came from the département of the Marne, when in fact he was from the Aube. To satisfy the authorities, de Marne and Frison combined their two names, and a new champagne estate was born. The two made wine together for six years, but de Marne left in February of 2013, and as of 2015, the estate has been renamed Val Frison.

While Frison owns a total of six hectares of vines in Ville-sur-Arce, two and a half hectares are still sold to the co-operative each year. Another two and a half hectares have been under long-term contract to Duval-Leroy, although this ended in 2012, meaning that production will increase from the 2013 harvest onward.

Most of Frison’s vines are pinot noir, with just 45 ares planted with chardonnay. As is typical for this area, Kimmeridgian soils dominate, although Frison draws a distinction between parcels that contain white clay and yellow clay (argile blanche and argile jaune). Two chardonnay parcels lie on Portlandian soil, and one of these—Les Cotannes—is bottled separately. All parcels are allowed to grow a natural cover crop, which is plowed in March to prevent the vines from having too much competition for nutrients, and intriguingly, a different set of plants naturally grows in each parcel, reflecting subtle differences in terroir.

As de Marne and Frison had no facilities of their own when they began to make wine, they pressed and vinified their 2007s in the cellars of their friend Bertrand Gautherot, of Vouette et Sorbée. Unfortunately, in 2008 Gautherot was renovating his cellars and didn’t have enough space for them, so de Marne and Frison were forced to sell their entire 2008 crop, despite its excellent quality. In 2009, however, they built their own winemaking facility, installing a 2,000-kilogram pneumatic press, and since then they have made all of their wines there. All vinification takes place in secondhand barriques, purchased from La Chablisienne, and the wines are fermented with indigenous yeasts; they are never chaptalized, and they are allowed to go through a natural malolactic.

This impeccably-run estate in Avize may be small in size, but its vineyard holdings are impressive, as all four hectares of vines lie in the grand cru villages of Avize, Oiry, Oger and Cramant. The Fannière family has been growing vines in the Côte des Blancs since 1860, and Jean Fannière began producing estate-bottled champagnes in the 1950s. Fannière was succeeded by his son-in-law, Guy Varnier, and since 1989, Guy’s son Denis (pictured) had been in charge of the estate. Sadly, Denis passed away in April of 2017, and the future of the estate is unclear.

Denis Varnier placed a strong emphasis on the preservation of old vines, and the average age of the estate’s vines is between 30 and 50 years old. He noted that vines under 20 years old are often deceptive: “You think the flavors are rich, but in the final wine they’re not.” Vinification takes place in stainless steel tank, and the wines are bottled relatively early. “I prefer the wine to evolve in the bottle rather than in tank," he said, "so I try to get as much time in the bottle as possible."

Located in an imposing farmhouse on the main road in Chouilly, this well-known estate was created at the end of the 19th century by Camille Vazart. Vazart’s son married a Coquart, resulting in the estate’s current name, and while the family grew grapes in addition to operating the family farm, it wasn’t until 1954 that Jacques Vazart, Camille’s grandson, began to bottle champagne and to focus on wine production. Since 1989, Jacques’s son Jean-Pierre (pictured) has been working at the estate as well, and as of 2005 he has officially taken over the reins.

Vazart’s 11 hectares of vines are all in Chouilly, spread over 30 parcels in every sector of the village except, ironically, Les Partelaines, where the estate is actually located. All but one of the parcels is planted with chardonnay: Vazart has one 40-are parcel of pinot noir used to make a rare Coteaux Champenois Chouilly rouge. The average age of the estate’s vines is 30 years. Vazart ferments his wines in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks, as he prefers as neutral an environment as possible for chardonnay, and the malolactic is always completed for all of the wines.

Undoubtedly one of the most famous houses in Champagne, Veuve Clicquot is known worldwide for its distinctive yellow label and its rich, pinot-driven champagnes. The origins of the house date back to 1772, when it was founded by Philippe Clicquot-Muiron, a textile merchant in Reims. His son François joined the company in 1798, and in the same year, François married Barbe Nicole Ponsardin. François unfortunately passed away in 1805 at a very young age, and Madame Clicquot, only 27 years old at the time, took the reins of the company. The young Madame Clicquot proved herself to be a savvy businesswoman, and in 1810, the name of the house was officially established as Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.

Export markets have been critical to the company’s success almost since its founding, and in fact, the first exports of Clicquot champagne to the United States were in 1798, when several cases were sent to a client in Philadelphia. A major gamble paid off handsomely in 1814, when Clicquot shipped 10,000 bottles of the legendary 1811 “comet vintage” to Russia, in defiance of Napoleon’s blockade on trade. The bottles reached their destination safely, the war was brought to a close, and almost overnight, Russia became an important and lucrative market for the company. In fact, Russia would account for nearly two-thirds of Clicquot’s annual sales throughout the 19th century.

In 1841, Madame Clicquot appointed Édouard Werlé to take over the direction of the company, and in 1866, she passed away at 89 years of age. Werlé would run the company until 1884, when his son Alfred Werlé took over; it would later pass into the hands of Alfred’s son-in-law, Comte Bertrand de Mun, and then de Mun’s own son-in-law, Comte Bernard de Vogüé. In 1987, Veuve Clicquot, already owned by Louis Vuitton, became a part of LVMH when Vuitton merged with Moët Hennessy. Today, Jean-Marc Gallot is president of the house and Manuel Reman is the general director. Didier Mariotti (pictured) has been chef de cave since late 2019, taking over from Dominique Demarville, who had been in charge of the cellars since 2008.

The house used to be headquartered in the center of Reims, near the cathedral, but in the beginning of the 20th century it was moved to its present location in the southeastern sector of the city. This area is home to a magnificent series of crayères, or chalk pits, that date back to Roman times, and in addition to their stunning beauty, these crayères, which are 20 meters deep and a constant 11 degrees centigrade year-round, make ideal homes for the storing and maturing of champagne. Today, all of Veuve Clicquot’s production takes place at these facilities, and the house’s 24 kilometers of cellars include over a hundred crayères.
 

While proprietors Emmanuel and Charles-Henry Fourny are fifth-generation vinegrowers in Vertus, the history of estate-bottled champagnes at Veuve Fourny dates from the 1930s, when their grandfather began producing champagnes under the Albert Fourny label. The estate became known as Veuve A. Fourny in the 1950s after Albert’s death, and today it is called Veuve Fourny & Fils.

It’s important to the Fournys that all of their wines come entirely from the village of Vertus: "We want to be specialists of our cru," says Emmanuel Fourny (pictured). While the estate was founded as a récoltant-manipulant (RM), it changed its status in 1979 to négociant-manipulant (NM), in order to buy grapes from other family members who owned vines in the village. Their purchasing practices remain highly selective: they now buy about four to five hectares of grapes a year, all in Vertus and exclusively from family and friends. The Fournys work closely with these other growers to ensure that their vineyard practices correspond to those of the estate itself, and each parcel is vinified separately wherever possible, whether estate-owned or otherwise.

Fourny’s 8.5 hectares of vines are divided among 40 parcels located in all sectors of the village, although 70 percent of the estate’s vines lie on the northern side, closer to Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Average age of the vines is nearly 40 years old, which is unusually high for Champagne. In the vineyards, they try to work as organically as possible—from 1996 to 1998 they made an attempt to farm strictly organically, experimenting with biodynamic methods as well. However, the financial strain proved to be too great, particularly in 1997, when mildew destroyed a full 50 percent of their crop. Today they use largely organic methods, planting cover crops and working the soil where they can, but they do reserve the right to treat synthetically if necessary, particularly against the all-too common threat of mildew.

Veuve Fourny’s cellars date from the 1840s, and one of the first things that a visitor notices is a notorious humidity. All the better to keep barrels in: about 30 percent of the harvest is fermented in secondhand barriques from Burgundy, and while two cuvées—R de Veuve Fourny and the Clos Faubourg Notre Dame—are vinified entirely in wood, the eventual goal is to have all of the house’s other wines contain about 20 percent of barrel-fermented wine. "The wood is able to bring out the terroir a little more," says Fourny. The family has built a new cuvérie adjacent to the aging cellars, and this has been in operation as of the 2011 harvest.

Vilmart & Cie. traces its history back to 1890, when it was founded by Désiré Vilmart, and from the beginning, Vilmart & Cie. has always been a récoltant-manipulant, making champagne exclusively from estate-owned vines. Since 1989 the estate has been in the hands of Laurent Champs (pictured), the fifth generation of the family to take the helm of the house.

The majority of Vilmart's 11 hectares of vines lie in Rilly-la-Montagne, although there are a few plots just over the border in the neighboring village of Villers-Allerand. Vilmart is a member of Ampelos, an organization that promotes organic and sustainable viticulture, and Champs has never used any herbicides or chemical fertilizers since taking over the estate. All of the vineyards are planted with cover crops and plowed, and Champs enjoys an additional advantage in that his parcels are relatively large—only 12 different parcels over 11 hectares—meaning that he is more protected from contamination by chemical treatments in neighboring plots.

All of Vilmart's wines are fermented and aged in oak: foudres for the non-vintage wines (casks ranging in size from 2,200 to 5,500 liters), and 225-liter barrels for vintage-dated ones, although Champs is also in favor of 600-liter demi-muids. The malolactic is avoided, giving the wines a crisp structure and excellent longevity, as evidenced by the remarkable freshness and vigor of wines even from warm vintages such as 2000, 2006 or 2009.
 

The Voirin family has been based in Cramant for four generations, and has been producing estate-bottled champagnes since 1945. The Jumel family, who has also been bottling champagne since the end of the Second World War, comes from the village of Chouilly, and the two combined to create this estate when Gilles Voirin married Françoise Jumel. Today, the estate is in the hands of their daughter Alice, who runs the administrative side of the business, and her brother Patrick, who is in charge of the cellar.

Voirin-Jumel’s 12 hectares of vines are largely in the Côte des Blancs, with just a little pinot noir in Aÿ and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ in the Grande Vallée. The majority of the vines lie in the grand cru villages of Cramant, Chouilly, Avize and Oger, and there is also some chardonnay in Cuis, Vertus and Verneuil. While the estate is not entirely organic, much attention is paid to environmentally-friendly viticulture: no systemic chemical products are ever used, treatments are kept to a minimum, and a cover crop is kept in all of the parcels. In addition, there is a 75-are parcel just behind the winery in Cramant, called Clos des Mardu, which is farmed completely organically, and a special cuvée will be released from this vineyard beginning in 2010. In the cellar, the grapes are pressed using the PAI inclined horizontal press by Coquard, widely considered to be the finest champagne press available. Except for the Cuvée 555, which is vinified in oak barrels, all of the wines are fermented in thermo-regulated, stainless steel tanks.

The first time I ever visited Bertrand Gautherot, the first thing that he showed me were his cows. “Having animals like cows and chickens around is important for cultivating biodiversity, in order to increase the diversity of natural yeasts,” he said. “But that’s not the only reason I have them. My cows are important to me because they regulate my mood. I take care of them first thing in the morning, and if I’m in a bad mood, they know it, and they’ll let me know that they know it. It makes me realize that I have to calm down and readjust my attitude before I go out into the vineyard.”

Yves Ruffin is not a native of the Grande Vallée de la Marne, having created this tiny grower estate in 1970, with vines inherited from his wife’s family. Today, his three hectares of vineyards are largely in Avenay Val d’Or, with one parcel in the nearby village of Tauxières. While this area has historically been known for growing pinot noir, Ruffin chose to plant some chardonnay here, and his holdings are now almost equally divided between the two varieties. No meunier is planted: "Meunier ages too quickly," he says.

Ruffin has always been a dedicated advocate of natural winegrowing, and the estate has been practicing strictly organic viticulture since its inception, with certification obtained in 1971. While these vineyards were worked conventionally by Ruffin’s father-in-law prior to the creation of this estate, Ruffin himself is proud to say that under his tenure, "not a single drop of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides has ever touched my vines." The grapes always achieve a high maturity, generally picked at 10.5 degrees or higher of natural potential alcohol, and chaptalization is avoided as much as possible.

Pressing takes place in a traditional, 4,000-kilogram Coquard vertical press, and after débourbage in enameled steel tanks, the juice is fermented in either oak foudres or barriques. No new wood is used—Ruffin purchases secondhand barriques that are at least two years of age, and his foudres are significantly older, with the oldest being made from Hungarian oak nearly 100 years ago. Reserve wines are kept in foudre as well, in this case large, oval-shaped oak casks from Alsace. Unusually, Ruffin also has an old foudre made of acacia wood, which is used to ferment the base wine for his Extra Brut. "The tannins of acacia are more subtle," he says. "They’re less aggressive than those of oak." Following the alcoholic fermentation, the wines go through a natural malolactic, and in the winter the cellar doors are opened to allow for a natural cold settling. All of Ruffin’s champagnes spend a minimum of three years in the cellar before release.