The Wines of Domaine Meá- A gem nestled in Louvois, a small Grand Cru vineyard in the Montagne de Reims that has historically played second chair to its more famous neighbors Bouzy and Ambonnay. That is, not so slowly, changing. That is almost entirely due to Sophie and Franck and their efforts in the vineyards and the cellar. Sophie took over as winemaker from her family becoming the fifth generation to farm the land and craft the wines. She farms her vineyards organically, listens to the rhythms of the year and expresses what mother nature and the terroir give her. It is, as you would expect from this part of the region, one of power but also finesse. The chalk is very present in the vineyards, lurking just below the thin layer of topsoil. It gives minerality and structure to the fruit. There is no mistaking the Grand Cru power and ripeness but it is wrapped in delicate fruit and deft winemaking that coaxes every drop of excitement out of the land and in to your glass. Domaine Meá is a rocket ship headed to the top, we are happy to share it with you now. You can tell all your friends you’ve been drinking it since all the way back in 2024… More info and Tech Sheets

Cyril Bonnet of Bonnet Ponson is the sixth generation of his family to make champagne in the beautiful village of Chamery. Though they had to relocate within the village once after their winery was destroyed in WWII, the heritage of winemaking remains unbroken. He farms 50 plots that are all farmed with the utmost care. The health of the soil is the most important part of vine growing here and as such, herbicides and pesticides are never used and even organic compounds used in organic and biodynamic farming are used as little as possible. The result is a biodiversity of plants, animals, insects and microorganisms allow the plants to grow their own defenses and survive in the harsh climate of Champagne. All of this leads ultimately to a balance in the glass that is unmatched in many other places. The base of the ’Non-Dose’ is a solera-style blend that dates back almost 50 years and is the ‘taste memory’ of Cyril’s ancestors. We recently had a bottle with some friends at an event where the occasion of celebration has long faded from memory but the bottle has not.  TECH INFO

The transition from father to son, traditional farming to Organics, and selling to the co-op and now making their own wine has been almost half a decade in the making. When it was time for Antoine to take over the family winery he decided he wanted to do things differently than his parents. Not only did they support him but they (and their youngest daughter) have built a family team around him to make the project successful. A new vineyard plot, a new winery and a new outlook on winemaking has yielded an amazing new small family grower-producer; Durdon Bouval based in Vincelles. This month their 100% Chardonnay ‘Candide’ will be arriving to club members. This wine has the finesse and fine laced aromatics and structure of classic Chardonnay but also features a surprising depth and body that feels serious and at the same time playful. The champagne strikes a balance of expected and unexpected that rewards the drinker. To make sure you are that drinker, put this in the fridge as soon as you get it and pop it when you get thirsty. You can thank us later! TECH SHEET

Didier Herbert ‘Cuve 4’ is a deeply intense champagne. A blend of richly perfumed Pinot noir and beautifully bold Chardonnay are bolstered by the addition of 33% reserve solera. Thomas says, ‘Ninety percent of wine is made in the vineyard. The rest is just love and blending.’ He rages against boring champagnes and doing things because it’s always been done this way. He looks to make wines with rich mouthfeel and lush fruit. He achieves this by harvesting as ripe as possible paying, ‘more attention to taste and less to pH.’ The wines coming from his cellar in Rilly-la-Montagne will never be boring and have never disappointed. Only 1,300 bottles produced. TECH SHEET

Marx-Coutelas ‘Rosé’ is creating a benchmark for rose in the region. Not only is the base of this wine all from the spectacular 2019 vintage but it is also from a single vineyard. The red wine used to turn this wine pink has an extra year of barrel age (coming from the 2018 vintage) and ads depth and complexity without weighing down the blend. It is light and boisterous and can pair with raw seafood or a seared steak. There isn’t anywhere we wouldn’t drink this wine. Bryan Marx has created more of our favorite champagnes that we can count and that’s saying something! TECH SHEET

Louis Brochet "Extra Blanc" 2015 Extra Blanc is 100% Chardonnay by brother and sister Louis and Hélène. It is an excellent example of Chardonnay in all its richness and opulence. It never teeters off to overblown, instead it finds a nice groove with notes of hazelnut, quince and apricot held together with brilliant structure. This wine comes from the 2015 vintage where warm weather at harvest created an ideal situation for ripeness. The grapes for this blend come from two single vineyards; ‘Les Vouagnes’ in Ecueil and Le Mont Benoit in Villers aux Noeuds. In the vineyards cover crops are planted and all reasonable efforts are made to work sustainably and organically. In the cellar this wine is aged six years before its release and only 2,128 bottles produced for the world, and we saved the last little bit for you.   TECH SHEET

Hélène Beaugrand "Le Grand Carre" Helene Beaugrand’s vineyards are some of the most peculiar in all of Champagne. They lie almost 2 hours by car removed from the heart of the appellation and its rolling chalky hills. Most of that span is filled with crops like sugar beets and wheat. Out there, amongst all the grains there is a small hill of chalk and clay formed in the Upper Cretaceous period and perfectly suited to Chardonnay. The village of Montgueux  is an outlier, unlike anything around it. The vineyards are planted with South-East exposure perfect for ripening grapes. This combination allows grapes to be both generous and complex while maintaining a subtle profile. Helen’s family were the first to replant the village after the ravages of phylloxera and the First World War and her grandfather was the one to establish the appellation in 1927. The Main Street in town is named in his honor. Helene is a brilliant winemaker with years of experience not only in Champagne but also Burgundy, Africa, Australia, the United States, Mexico and New Zealand.  Her wines are as complex as her background. This is a single plot perfectly situated on chalk that shows off the richness and depth of the grape. The winemaking has minimal intervention and the wine spends three years on lees. Only 2,000 bottles were made.  TECH SHEET

Labbé et Fils “Blanc 2 Noirs” 2015 Our first visit to Champagne Labbe in Chambray was during a particularly rainy stretch of the summer in 2021. So instead of a vineyard tour we got a tour of every barrel and tank in the cellar. It was obvious after just the first few sips that this was a world class wine, and after every barrel we were 1000% convinced. Brothers Jerome and Damien craft some of the finest champagne you have yet to hear of. They are farmers first and the care and attention they show their vines translates to the wine in the most pleasing way. This bottling is 90% Pinot Noir and 10% Meunier showcases the two red grapes of Champagne in an extraordinary way. The concentration of fruit overwhelms the nose and delivers on the palate while maintaining the light airy quality you expect, it is a truly well crafted champagne that we know you will love.  TECH SHEET

Pertois Lebrun “L’Ambitieuse” This wine is 100% Chardonnay in stark contrast to the first wine this month. It is also 100% Grand Cru vineyards from Chouilly and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. A blend of two vintages  featuring 50% from 2014 and 50% reserve from 2013 strike an amazing balance of two dramatically different years. Another brother duo, Antoine and Clement craft this wine from their many holdings in the Cote des Blancs, an area known to have some of the best Chardonnay plantings in the world. When we last visited the brothers this wine stood out as supremely enjoyable now due to extended time on lees in the cellar and its extra brut style. That being said if you did save it for years you would be rewarded too. We are very excited to offer a champagne from Pertois Lebrun in our club, this is truly one of the best producers you aren’t drinking enough of.  TECH SHEET

Caillez Lemaire “Pur Meunier” 2016 This is actually the bottle we thought of first when we dreamed up our club. It’s a wine made it minuscule quantity and is the absolute definition of a mono-cru wine. It’s all from the village of Damery. All the grapes come from Damery, the wood for the barrels come from the forest on the top of the hill in Damery and the barrels never left Champagne to be constructed. 100% Meunier all from the harvest of 2016. It gives you a very specific look at a great winemaker, one of their best plots of their best grape, Meunier, and a year that really only the best made wines of this quality. It’s the exact opposite of a Grande Marque wine and we love it. If you saw the first edition of ‘one bottle review’ this will look very familiar to you. It’s one to be enjoyed alone or with friends. TECH SHEET

Daniel Moreau “Pièce Maîtresse” Précise, exacting, uncompromising. This describes not only the wine making of Bastien Moreau but the Champagne he has created. He’s been making wines the way his dad did in the 80’s. That’s usually a really bad thing, but not here. There have been no chemicals in the vineyards since 1978 and biodiversity has been commonplace since the 1990’s. In short they were cool before it was cool. This wine is a blend of all three grapes and all grown in close proximity to the cellar. There are 16 individual vineyards all within 10km of each other. The wines are always from one vintage and only made when the conditions are right. Only 8 vintages have been made over the last 30 years. We are very excited about this month’s offerings. TECH SHEET

Rousseaux Batteux “Les Grandes Voyettes” Verzenay 2019 Visiting the cellar of Adrien Rousseaux is a mind bending experience. Barrels and bottles stacked precariously filled with some of the most sought after champagne in the region. Each barrel holds a different plot where he has coaxed flavors both complex and delicate. The resulting wines often drive us to hyperbole but suffice to say you will not suffer to find praise to heap on this bottling. He’s not a recluse but he doesn’t take many visitors and the biggest production of any one bottling is less than 6,000. This specific cuvée is less than 2,000. 50% Chardonnay and 50% Pinot Noir, all Grand Cru fruit from Verzenay. Adrien has confessed this to be his favorite cuvée he made in 2019. We tend to agree.  TECH SHEET

A. Levasseur “Trait de Saison” 2015 On our most recent trip to visit David Levasseur in Cuchery we revisited some favorites and dug in to some back vintages. The way these champagnes age is amazing to see. With that knowledge David has a program of releasing wines a bit later than others and that is why we are able to have some of this magnificent 2015. Most other people have sold this vintage off years ago and presumably they have mostly been consumed. Here we have the ability to go back in to the not so distant past and taste what that year 2015 provides. A year with great ripeness and expressive fruit that was not universally loved by tasters. This, however, is a shining example of a great producer making great champagne in a less than optimal year. Personally we love drinking wines like this, great wines from less than perfect years show how good a winemaker and their terroir actually are.   TECH SHEET

Domaine des Tuileries “Les Crayeres” 2019 Though he grew up in a winemaking family, Bryan Marx is not a classically trained winemaker. This has allowed him to make wines the way he wants and the results are sublime. A visit to see Bryan in Venteuil usually ends 10 meters underground in a hand dug chalk cellar that he used to play in as a child. Now this cellar holds the barrels for his highly sought after project Domaine des Tuileries. “Les Crayeres” is three individual plots from his village in the Marne Valley. Only the best barrels are chosen and blended to show the best of the vintage. Minuscule quantities are made and even less are available in the US.  It is the beginning of a new journey into the possibilities of a New Champagne that we are all discovering together with the help of pioneering winemakers like Bryan Marx. TECH SHEET

Famillie Delouvin “Sauvage” It doesn’t take much to convince Geoffrey Delouvin to jump in the truck and take you on a tour of his vineyards. For ten generations his family had been farming in the village of Vandieres in the Marne Valley. His plots are only in this one village, something that is less common than you would imagine. When standing along the road, looking down at the arc of the amphitheater of vines and the village below it really is easy to see the various terroirs at offer. The soils vary from limestone, chalk and clay giving Famillie Delouvin many different grape expressions to play with. In the “Sauvage” bottling Geoff uses 100% Vandieres Meunier from three different plots all with different soil types, at different elevations and expositions. This is a true snapshot of the terroir of the village all presented with no dosage to further show off the beauty of the fruit.  TECH SHEET