Our know-how

Soils, subsoils and vintages

Our chalky soils enable enough humidity and sun, needed for the grapes to mature well.

We choose our vintages according to each plots. The meunier vintage fully thrives on the clay-chalky soils,. The pinot noir wine prefers a chalky soil, whereas the chardonnay is more adapted to a clayey soil.

The vintage culture

In average, our vintages are 20 years old and the oldest are from 1926, which is important when you know that old vintages determinate the final quality of the champagne.

It is essential to have good raw materials to get a Champagne of good quality.

For more than 15 years, we work the wine in a "reasoned culture" to preserve the environment :
- the tilling of all our wines so that our ground remains alive and because qulity is more important than quantity.
- the exclusive use of selective pesticides to safeguard the predatory ones which naturally fight some kind of acarina or insects
- stripping in July only of the face of the vines exposed to the raising sun in order to air to the maximum the bunches and to dry moisture as well as possible.

Pressing

At the time of pressing, we still use a traditional press Coquard that lots of people prefer to abandon today because of its low rentability. But this press low capacity and manual work that it requires, give the best of the grapes and its slow control and meticulous fractionation of the juice makes it possible to isolate the "heads from vintages" and on this press, the efforts of the men to draw the best reinforce the heart of the products.

A press contains 4000 kg of grapes and is called a marc. and produce 25.50 hectolitres of différent juices, from which only 18 hectolitres of the vintages are used.

Wine making, assembly and aging


The wine making is made "with old" and mainly in the lightnings of oak.
- the wine making and the breeding with wood allow the wine, under the effect of the controlled oxydation, to gain gradually in character and complexity
- the absence of malolactic fermentation, another characteristic of the wine making to old, makes possible to preserve the fruity and the freshness of the wine
- respect of the naturalness, the wines are subjected to the winter cold and continue their slow maturation on dregs until the assembly

Each wines are then tasted with the blind man, without the assistance of an oenologis to be prepared for the assembly. Our aim is to seek the quality rather than the standard of the Champagne and to preserve the sense of taste and of flavours that our forebears transmitted to us, and to respect the techniques they used...

During its ageing the magic is given to the chalk of our cellar. With the shelter of their freshness and the work of time, the Champagne, still enriched by dregs, acquires this unforgettable bouquet, born with the alliance of the primary education flavours of the grape and the incredibly complex flavours of an ageing which lasts on our premises on average 3 years.