The finest artisanal grower-producers in the Champagne region (after Robert Walters)

Robert Walters "is a wine merchant, writer and vineyard owner with over 25 years of experience in the wine trade. His obsessive search for great grower wines has led him to work closely with many important producers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand as well as many of Champagne's finest artisans ..." In an article titled Alternative Champagne 2 (The World of Fine Wine, Issue 35, 2012), Walters described "Champagne de Terroir," as a wine which "maximizes the expression of the vineyard and removes the influence of the winemaker."  These Champagnes de Terroir were, according to Walters, "only produced successfully by a handful of the finest growers." I have summarized the methods of construction, the builders, and the characteristics of these Champagnes de Terroir in the chart below.

Walters has gone behind the curtains of his concept in a book titled Bursting Bubbles: A Secret History of Champagne and the Rise of the Great Growers. He takes two journeys in his book: (i) through the history of the Champagne region and (ii) a physical journey through the region to "... visit many of the finest of these 'grower producers' -- the artisans who are producing Champagne's most exciting and authentic  wines." I have covered each of these "finest" growers individually on this blog and will use this post to compare and contrast them across a number of relevant characteristics.

The figure, and immediately following table, show the population and geographic distribution of the growers identified as the "finest" by Walters.

Table 1: Regions and communes of the Great Growers

Producer	Sub-region	Growing Zone	Home Commune	Other Communes
Agrapart et Fils	Côte des Blancs	Côte des Blancs	Avize	Ogier, Cramant, Oiry
Anselme Selosse	do.	do.	Avize	Cramant, Le Mesnil, Aÿ, Ambonnay, Mareuil-sur- Aÿ
Larmandier-Bernier	do.	do.	Vertus	Cramant, Chouilly, Oger, Avize,
Ulysse Collin	do.	Val du Petit Morin, Côte de Sezanne	Congy
Jacques Lassaigne	do.	Montgueux	Montgueux
La Closerie (Jérôme Prévost)	Montaigne de Reims	Petite Montaigne	Gueux
Chartogne-Taillet	do.	Massif de St. Thierry	Merfy	Chenay, St. Thierry
Egly-Ouriet	do.	Grand Montaigne, Petite Montaigne	Ambonnay	Bouzy, Verzenay,Vrigny
Vouette et Sorbée (Bernard Gautherot)	Côte des Bar		Buxières-sur-Arce	Ville-sur-Arce
Roses de Jeanne (Cédric Bouchard)	do.		Celles-sur-Ource

Grand Cru, Premier Cru, Autre Cru.

Some points of note on the above data:

• Vineyard sizes range between 1.5 and 12 hectares
• Almost half of the producers have been influenced in one way or the other by Jacques Selosse
• A majority of the producers had served a stint away from the estate before returning and taking up the reigns
• Four of the 10 producers have access to Grand and/or Premier Cru vineyards.

In order to be officially classed as a grower-producer, the producer has to vinify and age estate-grown fruit. Use of non-estate fruit positions the producer to be classed as a negociant-producer; and two of our identified producers have crossed over into that territory:

(i) Jérôme Prévost came by way of his 2.2-ha vineyard -- Les Béguines -- as a result of his mother inheriting the property. According to Tyson Stelzer (Champagne Grower-producers: the beginning of the end, Decanter, 7/7/2018), while the 13,000-bottle annual production is well-regarded, and sells for respectable prices, "such a small production is insufficient to sustain his livelihood. In order to grow production by purchasing fruit, Prévost recently relinquished his récoltant-manipulant credentials to be reincarnated as a négociant-manipulant."

(ii) Jacques Laissagne's estate holding is a single 3.5-ha block in the Le Cotet vineyard. In an effort to tap into all of the terroir opportunities on Montgueux, Emmanuel supplements the estate fruit with grapes purchased from a few small growers. In order to ensure that the purchased product approaches the level of quality of his grapes, Emmanuel's requirements are as follows:

• The source vineyard must be located in Montgueux
• The source vineyard must have a south or southeast exposure
• The source vineyard must rest on chalky soils
• The vineyard must be managed by a good grower who works effectively in the vineyard
• The fruit must issue from old vines (45 - 60 years old).

As a result of purchasing fruit, Jacques Lassaigne is classed as a négociant-manipulant.

Farming Practices

For the vast majority of Champagne's growers, it is easier, and more profitable, to sell grapes to the Houses than it is to make and sell their own wine (Tyson Stelzer, Champagne Grower-producers: the beginning of the end, Decanter, 7/7/2018). So the growers that do produce their own wines are not doing so to have things easy, or in pursuit of easy dollars. Rather, they are mission-oriented; and the mission is the production of wines that are reflective of the terroir within which they are produced.

Most of the producers practice some form of biodynamic, organic, or sustainable farming. Of the ones practicing biodynamic or organic farming, individual producers may or may not be certified. Jacques Lassaigne, for example, farms its vineyards organically, eschewing fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. The grass in the vineyard is cultivated between vines and rolled flat between rows. Ulysse Collin practices a mix of organic and conventional farming in order to provide the flexibility to intervene if the occasion warrants it. Vineyard practices include:

• Ploughing ("To plough the soil encourages biological activities for oxygen, water, temperature and fungus" -- Olivier Collin)
• Powdered sulfur to combat odium
• Organic insecticides used against ver de la grappe (tiny caterpillar that eats the berries and causes gray rot)
• Mildew is fought with chemical compounds
• Organic compost is added to the soil as needed.

Bertrand Gautherot of Vouette et Sorbée Bertrand started out a grower and his passion has always been in the vineyards. He began farming biodynamically in 1998 and gained his certification in 2001. He feels that "biodynamics has encouraged the root structure of his vines to descend deeper into the ground rather than settling for nutrients near the surface" (Peter Liem, Champagne).

Fruit Quality
Growers and Houses in Champagne are not too concerned about the ripeness of the fruit as chaptalization and dosage are available as options to boost the sugar content of the wine. Further, if a yeasty character is the end goal, then fruit ripeness represents something that has to be mitigated. That is not the case for the grower-producers, however. Every one of the producers identified herein pursues ripeness of fruit (As a matter of fact, Tom Stevenson, noted Champagne critic, has accused Selosse of using over-ripe fruit in his wines).

According to Walters, the key to the Larmandier-Bernier wine is its ability to harvest fully ripe grapes. Walters sees this ability being driven by:

• Biodynamic viticulture
• Balanced yields
• Minimal fertilizers
• Precise pruning 
• The nerve to wait.

According to Larmandier-Bernier, its recipe for high quality grapes is:

• Old vines
• Working the soil (The estate feels that ploughing promotes deep roots and facilitates healthy soils)
• Moderate yields
• No fertilizers
• Mature grapes picked by hand.

Yields in the Roses de Jeanne vineyards are vanishingly small -- 26 hl/ha -- making it easier for the vines to produce ripe, high-quality wine grapes. With the low yields, Bouchard's wines easily attain 11% - 12% alcohol, unfamiliar territory (without chaptalization) for most other Champagne producers.

Pressing
Grapes are gently pressed in refrigerated (Egly-Ouriet), bladder (Larmandier-Bernier), or manual (Ulysse Collin) presses. In the case of Egly-Ouriet, the press is whole-cluster and only the first run juice is used. In the case of Ulysse Collin, the first and second issue from the press are pumped into vats and stored separately for 1 year after which they are blended. According to Olivier, the first press provides backbone and structure while the second adds strength and richness.

Fermentation
All producers use indigenous yeasts to ferment the grapes in a variety of vessels to include oak barrels (of various sizes and origin), stainless steel tanks, and concrete eggs. Plots are vinified and held separately.

Scalawine.com, in discussing fermentation at Egly-Ouriet, stated thusly:

Like many Burgundians, Francis (ed. of Egly-Ouriet) is convinced a big element of barrel fermentation and long (7 - 10 months) aging on the lees of the first fermentation is critical for expressing the terroir in the wine, giving less of a reductive "stainless steel" effect to the wine and, of course, allowing individual parcels to be captured and calculated into blending options much more precisely than if larger tanks were used. The small volume of wine in barrel gives less pressure over the lees than in a big tank, so better convective contact with the solids and enough infinitesimal exchange with air to avoid the sulfery reductive aromas that can be the bane of wines kept long on lees. A long time on the first lees allows a gentle flocculation of yeasts and settling out of the tiny colloidal solids in the wine. There is no battonage to avoid "fatness" in the wine and this long barrel regime for the vins clairs obviates any fining or filtration.

Aging
Malolactic fermentation and aging occur in stainless steel tanks or in oak; in some cases on the lees (6 - 36 months) and, in some cases, with lees-stirring. Prevost ages his wines in a mix of used barriques and demi-muids ranging in size between 400L and 600L. Unlike Jacques Selosse, for example, Cédric Bouchard does not use any oak in the aging of his wines. In his view, wood adds substances to the wine and, in so doing, detracts from the terroir effects. In addition, the use of oak promotes oxidation of the wine and he views oxidative notes in Champagne as a flaw (as does Tom Stevenson). All of the Bouchard wines are fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks

Additives
For the most part, the producers do not fine, filter, cold stabilize, add enzymes, or chaptalize their wines. Agrapart adds 50 mg/l of SO₂ at crush to combat oxidation while Prévost, Selosse, and Vouette et Sorbée own up to minimal amounts added.

Blending
Because of the small plot sizes in Champagne, a producer generally presses grapes from multiple villages and stores the resulting wines separately until blended. Bouchard and Prévost do not blend their wines. Rather, they seek to distill the essence of terroir through single-vineyard, single-variety, single-vintage wines.

In Agrapart's view, some components show as complete and then regress when blended with wines from another village. They notice no such regression when wines from similar geological environments are blended and this has led them to implement geological blends -- finished Champagnes that come from vineyards with similar geology (Walters). In Pascal's assessment, these similar-soil wines blend more "comfortably."

Peter Liem calls the Selosse blending process solera and describes it as being akin to the process used to make sherry in Jerez. Both White and Parker refer to the Selosse method as perpetual blending. According to Parker, the true solera method requires that each vintage (criadera) be kept separately with the oldest vintage being called the solera. Selosse, on the other hand, adds the new vintage to a common pool and then draws from that pool for the current season's wine.

A number of the producers hold back a portion of each year's wine as a reserve to be added to future vintages. Those future wines will then be comprised a blends of two or more vintages.

Liqueur de Tirage
Prévost adds 23 gm down from 24.5 gm prior to 2007. This new level has resulted in lower pressure, fewer bubbles, and lower alcohol. Bouchard is even lower at 20 gm (well below the norm of 24 gm). This reduced level of sugar yields gas pressure of 4.5 atmospheres (versus and average of 6) and "a gentle, disappearing mousse."

Lees Aging
Depending on the producer and the wine, lees aging can range between 1 and 10 years.

Dosage
Dosage is very low among the producers, ranging from zero across the entire line (Vouette et Sorbée) to a range that tops out at 7 g/l (Larmandier-Bernier and Agrapart). The entire line of the Prévost, Egly-Ouriet, and Ulysse Collin wines fall at or below 3 g/l dosage.

The table below captures selected critical perspectives of the Great-Grower wines.

Table 2: The wines of the "Finest" producers

PRODUCER	WINE
AGRAPART ET FILS	… pillowy textures from ripe Chardonnay … married to a racy, saline, mineral freshness … mouth-filling and relatively full-bodied wines, yet they are never heavy; rather, they are always refreshing, energetic and racy. They are without doubt some of the very finest wines being produced today in Champagne
JACQUES SELOSSE	"outstanding for their arresting tang and vinosity combined with what I can only call a gorgeous finesse of mousse ..." (Tom Hall, scalawine.com)
LARMANDIER-BERNIER	“… wines of great purity, monuments of restraint that are one more nod to the monastic" Peter Liem (Champagne)
ULYSSE COLLIN	“… ripe, richly expressive single-vineyard wines
JACQUES LASSAIGNE	Les Vignes de Montgueux – a racy, salty, iodine noted wine, at once deliciously refreshing yet having good depth and some exotic notes. Le Cotet – a racy, mineral, citrusy, complex wine (Walters)
LA CLOSERIE (JEROME PRÉVOST)	“Saline, savory undertones and sleek, tense build. Its energy and vibrancy is unlike any other Meunier in Champagne and his wine always needs several years after its release to reveal its depth and complexity of flavor” (Peter Liem)
CHARTOGNE-TAILLET	"… each distinct, complex and terroir-driven and yet they share a minerality and vinosity that can be attributed to Alexandre's hard work in the vineyard" (closcru.com)
EGLY-OURIET	Power, purity, intensity of fruit
VOUETTE ET SORBÉE (BERNARD GAUTHEROT)	“… uncompromisingly original, possessing deep, vinous aromas and assertive personalities. These are wines before they are Champagnes, and their intensity of character makes them more suitable for contemplative drinking or to accompanying food than to casual sipping” (Peter Liem)
ROSES DE JEANNE (CÉDRIC BOUCHARD)	“… some of the most spectacular wines being made anywhere in the world …” (Antonio Galloni)

 The shared objective of these producers is to craft wines reflective of the grape sources -- terroir wines -- and they accomplish that goal by harvesting ripe fruit and vinifying and aging them with the minimum of intervention. Ripe grapes result from a combination of the right soils, right exposition, and best farming practices.

For additional information on each of the individual estates, please click on the links below.

Agrapart et fils
Jacques Selosse
Larmandier-Bernier
Ulysse Collin
Jacques Lassaigne
La Closerie (Jérôme Prévost)
Chartogne-Taillet
Egly-Ouriet
Vouette et Sorbee (Bernard Gautherot)
Roses de Jeanne (Cédric Bouchard)

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Jacques Lassaigne: Making Great Grower Champagne in Montgueux, the edge of the known (Côte des Blancs) universe

Montgueux is a tiny hill of pure chalk that, even though 100 km to the south of Epernay -- and being only 12 km northeast of Troyes -- is classified into the Côte des Blancs growing area by the Union des Maisons de Champagne. In addition to its remove from its Côte des Blancs counterparts, Montgueux's grape growing history is fairly recent, stretching back, as it does, to the 1950s and 1960s when negociants, seeking new product sources, encouraged the locals to begin growing grapes. It is in this remote, fledgling, Côte des Blancs outpost that Emmanuel Lassaigne (of the label Jacques Lassaigne) crafts the wines that have led to Robert Walters (Bursting Bubbles) numbering him among Champagne's Great Growers.

Montgueux
Montgueux falls into the Aube Department administratively but does notr share the Kimmeridgian soil and Pinot Meunier variety of the Côte des Bar growers. In contrast to the Côte des Bar, Montgueux's soil is comprised of chalk from the Turonian age and is, according to Lassaigne, really a geologic continuation of the Côte des Blancs chalk -- even though 15 million years older. The Montgueux chalk is 60 metres depth and is endowed with silex inclusions.

A total of 209.3 ha is planted to vine with 90.25% allocated to Chardonnay, 9.22% to Pinot Noir, and the remainder to Pinot Meunier (This Chardonnay dominance is a hallmark for Côte des Blancs vineyards.). The vineyards are southeast-facing and this, coupled with their far-south location, results in the production of fully ripened grapes. Over 50% of the grape production is sold to Champagne Houses.

The Estate and the Wines
As mentioned, vine planting in Montgueux is a fairly recent occurrence. Jacques Lassaigne (Emmanuel's father) began planting vines in 1964 and sold his fruit to the Houses. He began holding back some of his grapes for wine production in the 1970s but at this time he only made still wine. He began producing Champagne in 1980. Most of the wine was sold at the "cellar door."

The family business was not doing well so Emmanuel came back home in 1999 to aid in its rescue (at the time he was working in manufacturing. At that time he had no formal training in viticulture or viniculture nor had he apprenticed at the feet of Jacques Selosse (as have many of his peers). Rather he worked by trial and error and experimentation and has been rewarded with the acclaim accorded  his wines today.His first vintage was in 2002.

The estate holding is a single 3.5-ha block in the Le Cotet vineyard. The vineyard is farmed organically, eschewing fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. The grass in the vineyard is cultivated between vines and rolled flat between rows. Vines are Guyot-trained.

In an effort to tap into all of the terroir opportunities on Montgueux, Emmanuel supplements the estate fruit with grapes purchased from a few small growers. In order to ensure that the purchased product approaches the level of quality of his grapes, Emmanuel's requirements are as follows:

• The source vineyard must be located in Montgueux
• The source vineyard must have a south or southeast exposure
• The source vineyard must rest on chalky soils
• The vineyard must be managed by a good grower who works effectively in the vineyard
• The fruit must issue from old vines (45 - 60 years old).

As a result of purchasing fruit, Jacques Lassaigne is classed as a negociant-manipulant.

The Lassaigne portfolio of wines is shown below.  This array has recently been supplemented with a vintage Champagne called Clos Sainte-Sophie.

Lassaigne traditional portfolio (Source: la-champagnerie.com)

The grapes for the Lassaigne cuvees are hand-harvested, destemmed, and then gently pressed. A small amount of sulfur is added to the mix at this time to retard oxidation. Each parcel is processed separately. The must is vinified in stainless steel tanks (or barrels) with indigenous yeasts and the wine aged according to the practice for that cuvee.The treatment for the individual cuvees is shown in the table below.

Characteristics	Les Vignes de Montgueux NV	Le Cotet NV	Millésimé	La Colline Inspirée NV	Clos Sainte-Sophie*
Fruit source	7 – 9 parcels; 1/3 purchased fruit	Estate, single vyd.’ Single plot	Le Cotet, Les Paluets, La Grande	La Grande Côte, Bouillerate	Clos St Sophie
Vine age (yrs)	35	Planted 1964 - 1967	40 - 50	45	Planted 1968 - 1975
Yield (hl/ha)	35 - 45	45 - 60		45 - 60
Fermentation vessel	Mostly tank (15% in wood)		SS tank	Old barrels
Fermentation	Indigenous yeasts	Indigenous yeasts	Indigenous yeasts	Indigenous yeasts	Indigenous yeasts
Aging	Aged in new and old barrels for 12 – 24 months	12 – 24 months on lees in stainless steel and used barrels (4 – 20 years)		24 – 36 months on lees; old barrels	6 mos in barrel
Blend	Last three vintages with greater amounts of last two; over 50% reserve	Significant % of base-year wine plus small %s from prior vintages; perpetual blend		Two vintages
Sur Lie	1 – 5 years	3 – 5 years		3 – 5 years

*1.2 ha plot surrounded by a hedge
Compiled from various sources.

The characteristics of two of the Lassaigne Champagnes, as seen by Walters, are as follows:

• Les Vignes de Montgueux -- a racy, salty, iodine-noted wine which is at once deliciously refreshing yet having good depth and some exotic notes
• Le Cotet -- a racy, mineral, citrusy, complex wine.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme