The Emperor Edition

By Monica Sabbatucci Tucked away just outside of Reims and home to only 630 inhabitants, lies the charming town of Merfy. Ever since the Middle Ages, the town of Merfy has been known for its winemaking. However, there is nothing medieval when it comes to Chartogne-Taillet’s champagnes. Using the instilled old-world traditions fused in new world innovation, Alexandre Chartogne leads the charge in a vanguard approach to winemaking. The house itself has been handed down through the Taillet family, generation after generation tending to the vines ever since 1683 when Chartogne-Taillet grounded its name in champagne history. At the heart...

By Monica Sabbatucci Is bigger always better? The age old question that is always up for debate no matter the subject! With champagne the answer is always yes - bigger bottle = more champagne. It is not a hard answer. May it be magnums, jeroboams, methuzelahs and all the way up to nabuchadnezzars (15 litres!), who wouldn’t want to splurge a little bit more and taste a little bit more for that special occasion?As the bottles get bigger, you will notice the unusual names. In fact, these bottles are aptly named after Biblical kings who ruled in Ancient times. Someone...

We welcome the quietly spoken yet confident winemaker, Arnaud Margaine to Emperor. Arnaud took over this six and a half hectare estate from his father Bernard in 1989 and he represents the fourth generation of his family to work these vineyards in the Montagne de Reims. The estate was founded in the 1920s and was expanded by Bernard in the 1950s.  The majority of Margaine’s holdings are in the village of Villers-Marmery, a 95% village for Chardonnay, and the parcels here are old averaging about 32 years. Arnaud also has a small parcel of Pinot Noir in the village of Verzy....

By Monica Sabbatucci When thinking of bottles in the sea, you’d expect they might contain some cryptic message from the past, but what if you found bottles that contained liquid gold or long-lost champagne? Not just any champagne; perfectly preserved and aged champagne that has lived at the bottom of the sea for decades, some even centuries. Such treasure troves have existed and subsequently produced some of the most expensive bottles of bubbly in the world. These discoveries have also led to a new and innovative process of winemaking, ocean-ageing!   1907 Shipwrecked Heidsieck In 1916, Nicholas II Tsar of Russia, commissioned a...