Club

Firstly I would like to welcome some of our newest members this month; Kyla and I are thrilled to have you as part of our champagne community.  It is with great pleasure that we present this month’s edition, showcasing a smaller, yet intriguing category being Blanc de Noirs. As we are in the middle of winter, we wanted to pair our two producers this month with dishes we think would work well together. Our producers this month are AR Lenoble who make an excellent vintage Blanc de Noirs coming from the Premier Cru village of Bisseuil and Besserat de Bellefon...

Often, we introduce you to artisanal style champagnes that you may not have come across before and the club focuses its energy on discovering exciting new producers. This month we thought we would look at two monolithic Grande Marques and have a champagne-off in the rosé division.

We are continuing the ‘producer-type’ series by delving into how an ‘NM’ works and creates their champagne. So far we have covered off the Cooperative-Manipulant – ‘CM’ which is a group of growers that make their wines collectively and the Marque d’Acheteur or ‘MA’ which is essentially a ‘Buyers Own Brand’, whereby a brand can purchase a ready made champagne and place their label on it.  The Negociant-Manipulant (NM) owns vineyards and can purchase grapes or grape juice to supplement their needs. The houses we looking at this month are Bruno Paillard, based in Reims and Vollereaux who are situated...

This month we turn our attention to producers who age their champagne under cork instead of a crown seal and look at what this choice in the cellar makes.  We wanted to understand the ‘why’ of making champagne this way and how this impacts the flavours and ageing potential. Finding them was not easy, but it was rewarding. I