Champagne

Cédric Bouchard has been making wine on his own since 2000 on his newly created Roses de Jeanne estate.

Cédric doesn’t use any wood for his champagnes, preferring to ferment all of his wines in stainless or enamel-lined steel, since as a purist he thinks that the wood would ultimately add something that was not supposed to be there. The wines are made from hand-harvested fruit, crushed by foot and only the finest juice is retained (the rest of the less qualitative production being sold to the négoce). All of his wines are fermented with natural yeasts and see neither chaptalisation or dosage. The wines will go through malolactic fermentation and be racked only once prior to bottling.

Each wine comes from tiny parcels around Celles-Sur-Ources, the village where Cédric bouchard vinifies his wines.

He has also a very rare parcel of old Pinot Blanc vines called ‘La Bolorée’ with a very uncommon chalky soil for Celles-Sur-Ources and from which he makes an outstanding Cuvée, of which less than 1000 bottles are released per year. The smallest plot of the estate, however, is the Creux d'Enfer with only 4 little rows of vines making around 500 bottles a year. In 2014 he started to release a cuvee from ‘La Presle’, a small parcel in which he planted 10 different Pinot Noir rootstocks.

1.37 ha

•After having worked at Bollinger for a long time, Fabrice Gass has set up his own domaine producing no more than 5,000 bottles per year.

•Located in Damery, with vineyards planted mostly to very old-vine Pinot Meunier, Gass’ working methods very much reflect those seen at Bollinger in the past:vinification and ageing under old wood (some barrels over 100 years old), ageing under natural cork and a liqueur d’expédition made from old wine and cane sugar. This results in wines that are intense, incisive and immensely complex.

1 ha