New Generation Vignerons are Champagne’s Future: Davy Dosnon, in Previously Marginalized Côte des Bar, is Turning Exquisite Wines Into Lusty, Bold-Flavored Champagne + Vézelay, Burgundy’s Newest Appellation, is Poised for Discovery Domaine Saint Madeleine 2022 Wines (5-Bottle Sampler Pack $199)

Ponce de León went to Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth and came up empty. Perhaps he’d have been better off focusing his sights on the Côte des Bar, where a new generation of cellar masters are currently constructing new rules over the foundation of old ones and producing elixirs worthy of an history-making expedition.

About 90 minutes by car to the south of the celebrated towns of Reims and Épernay, the Côte des Bar has historically been dismissed as a lesser Champagne region, although the grapes were indispensable in the blends of the biggest Houses. The area is solidly rural—a reminder that raising grapes is farming first and foremost. There aren’t any chalk caves in the Côte des Bar but there are some great cellars in the process of building reputations.

This week, we’ll take a look at one of them. The young artisan Davy Dosnon runs a small House in Avirey-Lingey where he embraces the philosophies of sustainable viticulture while making non-manipulated Champagne from 19 acres of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier. He is a frontrunner in the new generation that is beginning to redefine Champagne, and the liquid that flows from his cellar is invigorating enough to kickstart the soul of old Ponce de León himself.

Reframing Champagne: Wine Like Any Other

The first step in reframing Champagne is to roll back two hundred years of marketing. Ironically, when Louis XIV drank the stuff, bubbles were considered to be a defect; at the time, Champagne and Burgundy were competing to become the preeminent French producer of still Pinot Noir.

It was a battle that Champagne was destined to lose—Champagne is cooler than Burgundy, and the reds it produced were often light, thin and acidic, made from grapes that had not reached full phenolic ripeness. Whereas this may be less than optimal for table wine, it winds up being ideal for sparkling wine, whose origins were natural: Winter weather would cause the in-bottle fermentation to halt during and when things warmed in the spring, the fermentation process would start back up, delivering unexpected effervescence. Once the technical bugs were worked out in the process—primarily, how to keep the bottles from exploding—sparkling wine grew in prestige and price, becoming a favorite of the royal courts in Europe. For others, it was (and is) a special-occasion wine; the tipple of celebrations and the domain of the elite.

Honest wine strives to be as natural as possible, and a new generation in Champagne finds itself with an unexpected gift from providence: A warming climate. Winemakers like Davy Dosnon have re-emphasized the importance of the base wine; his acreage, with Kimmeridgian and Portlandian clay-limestone soils, produce particularly rich fruit, Pinot Noir especially.

Says Dosnon, “Nicolas Laugerotte, commercial manager of the domain, is my partner in this adventure and together we share the same values of excellence, precision and requirement. Our goal is to make great wines to produce great Champagnes.”

It is through this scaffold that Champagne can find a central location not only during celebrations and special occasions, but at the dinner table, as an accompaniment to a meal, and as a wine, given its intellectual due.

The Rise of the South: Previously Marginalized Côte des Bar Into the Spotlight.

(Since the Côte des Bars is the Aube’s only significant wine producing area, the two names are generally interchangeable in winemaking discussions.)

‘Aube’ translates to ‘dawn’, so it is fitting that this district is Champagne’s rising star. In part this is because of the district’s push towards a culture of artisanal, experimental, terroir-driven Champagne. Situated further south than the other four regions, it is less prone to frost and the Pinot Noirs of the Aube are rich and fruit-driven. Although the district is devoid of Grand or Premier Cru vineyards, since the 1950s, grapes grown there have formed a vital backbone of the blend produced by many of the top Champagne houses.

Perhaps the lack of a historical reputation means that the AOP has less to lose, but the overall mindset of the region encourages mavericks, which in tradition-heavy Champagne is rarely seen. It is these independent winemakers that are primarily responsible for district’s mushrooming growth, which now makes up almost a quarter of the entire Champagne region.

The vines of the Côte des Bar can be found scattered patches within two main districts, the Barséquenais, centered on Bar-sur-Seine, and the Barsuraubois, centered on Bar-sur-Aube.

Helping to forge the region’s new identity is a crew of younger grower/producers, many of whom have traveled abroad and trained in other winemaking regions. As a result, they tend to focus more on individuality; single-variety, single-vintage, and single-vineyard Champagnes from the Côte des Bar are quite common. Not only that, but land remains relatively inexpensive, which encourages experimentation. Even though many of Côte des Bar’s Champagnes are 100% Pinot Noir, styles can differ markedly from producer to producer, bottling to bottling and, of course, vintage to vintage.

Champagne Dosnon
Turning Exquisite Wines Into Precise and Meditative Champagne

Half an hour north of Chablis, in and around the villages of Avirey and Lingey, Davy Dosnon tends a patchwork of vines intermixed with forest and fields of grain. Having been born and raised among these rolling hills, he is descended from growers who spent centuries identifying the rockiest and most suitable places to grow vines. In fact, he preserves many of their tools and records in his cellar.

Davy Dosnon, Champagne Dosnon

Davy studied viticulture in Dijon and worked in top Burgundy wine houses before moving back to the village of Lingey, intending to reassemble his family’s vineyards. Here the terroir is starkly different from northern Champagne and its famed chalky soils; in the Aube the terroir is closer to that of Chablis—clay over Kimmeridgian and Portlandian limestone, soils produce wines of great delineation, power and purity.

Central to Dosnon’s modus operandi is fermenting entirely in former Puligny-Montrachet barrels. Dosages are very low (if any) and the wines benefit from the restraint. None are fined or filtered.

Oak in Champagne remains controversial; when done at all, it must be done gently, without drawing attention to itself. In Dosnan’s cellar, it is meant to add creaminess, complexity and weight, not tannins.

Viticulture: Intentional and Careful Farming

“We practice sustainable viticulture in order to meet the quality requirements of the House,” says Davy Dosnon. “The plots are thus grassed to promote microbial life in the soil; the soils are scratched and plowed for aeration and no chemical fertilizers are added. The House also uses the permanent Cordon de Royat pruning sizes for Pinot Noir and Chablis sizes for Chardonnay. This short pruning allows for a better control of yield. Topping and high trimming are also carried out in June to control the vigor of the plants. We always hand-harvest, seeking bunches with optimum maturity.”

Dosnon uses a traditional vertical press for crushing, pointing out that this configuration reduces the movements of the bunch to a strict minimum during extraction and allows finer, less stained and perfectly clear juices to be obtained.

Not Losing Sight of Terroir for the Trees: Comfortable Disposition of Oak Integration

Having trained in Burgundy and seen the synergy between wood and grape, Dosnon is convinced that there is no more beautiful setting for a Grand Vin de Champagne than an oak barrel: “Only wood allows micro-exchanges between the wine and the oxygen in the atmosphere, which promotes the natural evolution of Champagne and gives them their complexity.”

His vinifications, therefore, are carried out largely en barrique, followed by optimum aging ‘with the aim of producing complex and rounded Champagnes while preserving their finesse and purity through low dosage.’

Most of the wines vinified and aged in 228-liter Burgundy oak barrels, mainly from Puligny-Montrachet. The barrels are at least 5 years old and do not transmit any tannin or wood taste to the wine.

“After tasting and analysis,” Dosnon explains, “we proceed to a selection between the wines which will be vinified in wood and those which will be vinified in vats but always in ultra-minority proportions when the years require it.”

* And now for something completely different: 

Just as vineyards are known for terroir, so do the oak trees used to make barrels reflect their place of origin. The Argonne forest, for example, contains countless hillocks with unique exposures, and these expositions are said to bring different aromas to the wood. Some produce fruit notes, some minerality; some contain more tannin than others. If this sounds a lot like grape descriptors, it is no wonder. There is an almost mystical collaboration between the product of vines and of forests that is as old as winemaking itself.

Maturation:The Right Upbringing to Achieve Complexity and Fullness

“Great Champagne wines need time to mature,” says Davy Dosnon. “Only when they have reached the perfect balance of freshness and fullness will they be ready to drink. The optimum aging period varies depending on the different vintages that we produce, but never being less than 20 months and up to 10 years in the cellar for our vintages.

After a Champagne’s second, in-bottle fermentation, the lees remain inside the bottle until disgorgement. This phase of development is often overlooked as essential for the wine’s intended character to emerge, but as seen in Houses without the capital to invest in long-term lees aging, much of the potential quality is lost.

Technically, non-vintage Champagne must be aged on its lees for a minimum of one year, while vintage Champagne demands three years. These are minimums, of course, and prestige cuvées may be left for a decade or more prior to the removal of lees sediment.

Monovarietal Expression: Flying Solo

As much as Champagne makers love exotic, multi-layered blends, monovarietal wines (or with blanc de noirs that ‘fly duo’, two varieties) have an equally strong tradition in the region. Blanc de Blancs is a term found only in Champagne and used to refer to champagne produced entirely from white grapes, most commonly Chardonnay. Pinot Blanc and Arbane can also be used, as well as a number of other varieties permitted by appellation, but these are less common. This makes Blanc de Blancs different from the majority of Champagnes that are a traditional blend of white and red grapes with colorless juice such as Pinot Noir and Meunier. It is also different from Blanc de Noirs champagne, which is produced exclusively from Pinot Noir and Meunier.

Champagne Dosnon ‘Récolte Blanche’, Côte-des-Bar Blanc-de-Blancs Brut ($84) 
100% Chardonnay from vines around 25 years old; hand harvested, pressed manually and fermented in 20% new 228-liter Oak barrels; and used Puligny-Montrachet barrels, second and third fill. The wine spends two years minimum sur latte with 20% reserve wine aged in barrel; 5 grams dosage. Dosnon’s love of Côte-des-Bar Chardonnay allows for a small quantity of this wine to be made; it shows pinpoint minerality and stone fruit with a floral underpinning. Disgorged January 2023.

Champagne Dosnon ‘Récolte Noire’, Côte-des-Bar Blanc-de-Noirs Brut ($68)
100% oak-fermented Pinot Noir with a minimum of two years aging in the bottle and a dosage around 5 grams. The wine is filled with crushed red berry notes, ground spice and graphite are layered with hints of lemon zest and chamomile. Disgorged July 2022.

Blended: In Pursuit of Complexity and Completeness

A common misconception holds that base Champagne (the still vin clairs that have not yet undergone the steps that transform it in the final blended and bottled product) are neutral and low in alcohol and flavor. This notion does a disservice to the way fruit ripens in northerly climates like Champagne, where a grape can obtain physiological ripeness without developing sufficient sugar to produce high-alcohol wine. And ripe grapes of the noble varieties do not produce neutral wine!

Before it becomes a bubbly bauble, a certain criterion should be established under which to consider Champagne a serious wine—namely, is it capable of reflecting the terroir from which it originated? Another misconception insists that a blended wine cannot express a place of origin, and any sense of individuality must arise from the winemaking process.

But Champagne is not necessarily beholden to the classic French definition of terroir. Although more single vineyard and village-specific Champagnes are made now than ever before, the identity of a wine may be the complexity and completeness that comes from blends. A balanced and opulent blend is always a better bet than a terroir-driven but clumsy selection and many modern chefs du cave are looking at even narrower distinctions than vineyard sites, using parcels within that vineyard to express specific desired characteristics.

Rather than being a dilution of terroir, this is evidence of how highly terroir is regarded.

Champagne Dosnon ‘Récolte Brute’, Côte-des-Bar Brut ($77)
A muscular blend of Pinot Noir (70%) and Chardonnay (30%) grown on the Kimmeridgian soils; a low dosage (5 grams) and at least 3 years of aging in bottle before disgorgement produces a Champagne with rich poached-pear notes over buttered toast, white flowers and vanilla with firm acidity and chalky minerality. Disgorged June 2022.

Champagne Dosnon ‘Récolte Rosé’, Côte-des-Bar Rosé Brut ($87)
95% Pinot Noir and 5% Meunier. Meunier is not common in the Côte-des-Bar, but Dosnon feels that it adds spice and fruit to the party. The base wine fermented and aged in used Puligny-Montrachet barrels and a minimum of 2 years aging in bottle with a dosage of 5 grams (the same as Récolte Noire). The wine  bears all the hallmarks of the Donson style—a pure, focused, intensely mineral backbone with a clear, spicy, red-fruit and orange peel lift to the flavors. Disgorged September 2021.

Champagne Dosnon ‘Alliae’, (Harvest 2010) Côte-des-Bar Brut-Nature ($147)
50% Pinot Noir and 50% Chardonnay that undergoes a ten month vinification/aging process in used oak barrels, then 55 months of aging on slats. Dosnon’s choice of zero dosage for this cuvée is intended to allow the expression of the richness and liveliness of the fruit unencumbered by sugar. The silky palate is full of complexity and nuance and showcases pear, apricot and chalky minerality. Disgorged January 2016.

The New Reality: 2009 Signals Champagne’s Paradigm Shift

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon of Champagne Louis Roederer has been tracking climate change in Champagne since the year 2000. He reports, “Our archives covering harvests over the past 60 years show that since 1995 Champagne has returned to maturity levels which are, on average, in excess of 10 natural degrees of alcohol, with acidity levels around 7 to 8 gram/liter. These levels are close to those traditionally seen for great vintages including 1945, 1947 and 1959, but today’s yields are sometimes three to four times higher.”

Harvest dates in the vineyards of Champagne are among the marks used to measure climate change in general. Since 1989 (the end of a cool temperature cycle) harvest dates have crawled gradually backwards and the 2007 harvest started on August 20. By comparison, in 1945, the harvest commenced on September 8 and the 1947 harvest started on September 2, whilst harvests in the late 1980s were in early October. Harvest dates have grown earlier in each of recent years as means of controlling grape characteristics. Winemakers have been relying on newer techniques to obtain fresher wines as the raw material becomes riper. They are careful to manage malolactic fermentation, sometimes doing only partial MLF or halting it altogether.

Vintage 2009 represents the paradigm shift sweeping the region; in ways, a return to the golden years. It began with a cold winter, but a mild spring, and although early summer saw variable weather, August and September brought ample sunshine and warmth contributing to fine grape health. Harvest was pushed back until September 8, and the grapes, in general, displayed high sugar content and soft acidity. Potential alcohol crept up to 10.3% while acidity remained at 7.5 gram/liter at a pH of 3.08.

2009 produced a voluminous crop (12,280 kilogram/hectare) and the wines are generous that showed impressively even as vin clair. It is an apt example of a vintage of the current era, when retaining freshness is more of a challenge than attaining ripeness.

Champagne Dosnon ‘Millésime’, 2009 Côte-des-Bar Blanc-de-Blancs Brut-Nature ($289)
100% Chardonnay aged in 228-liter casks for ten months followed by ten years aging on the less. A truly amazing wine with a buoyant personality filled with perfume of lemon custard, honeysuckle, fresh brioche, a hint of almond and juicy pear. The wine is fully mature yet retains all the dynamism and freshness of its youth. Disgorged January 2018, Zéro dosage.

Notebook …

Champenois Radicalism: The Emergence of Vignerons and Micronégociants

First, a somewhat inconvenient truth: If asked what the term ‘négociant’ means, the honest answer is ‘nothing.’ Some négociant buy grapes, some mature wine, and some simply put their name on the label. Some, like Olivier Leflaive, dislike the term entirely: “I see myself as a winemaker, not a négociant, as I make the wine, from the beginning of vinification through to bottling.”

More than half of Burgundy is made by négociants whose average size is ten times that of the average domain. In Champagne, it is a different story; complicated local economics, long in thrall to massive companies, is shifting its prestige dynamics toward individual vignerons. The most earth-shattering paradigm shift in this approach is seen in the emergence of artisan styles in a region where uniformity has long been the key to success.

Into this swirl of radical rethinking comes the micronégociant. The name refers not only to their size (generally much smaller than the traditional négociant) but to the fact that many purchase grapes while continuing to farm them. Says Jean-Hervé Chiquet of Jacquesson, who farms 69 acres and purchases fruit from seven more: “We’re vignerons who buy a lot of grapes or we’re négociants who grow a lot of grapes. You decide.”

In Champagne, where a prime hectare (2.5 acres) of vineyard may cost over a million euros, few banks will lend a young grower the money to buy land, but a micronégociant can purchase barrels here and there—a typical entry route for newcomers who did not inherit an estate, or for those who want to extend a small family domain.

Drawing The Boundaries of The Champagne Region

To be Champagne is to be an aristocrat. Your origins may be humble and your feet may be in the dirt; your hands are scarred from pruning and your back aches from moving barrels. But your head is always in the stars.

As such, the struggle to preserve its identity has been at the heart of Champagne’s self-confidence. Although the Champagne controlled designation of origin (AOC) wasn’t recognized until 1936, defense of the designation by its producers goes back much further. Since the first bubble burst in the first glass of sparkling wine in Hautvillers Abbey, producers in Champagne have maintained that their terroirs are unique to the region and any other wine that bears the name is a pretender to their effervescent throne.

Having been defined and delimited by laws passed in 1927, the geography of Champagne is easily explained in a paragraph, but it takes a lifetime to understand it.

Ninety-three miles east of Paris, Champagne’s production zone spreads across 319 villages and encompasses roughly 85,000 acres. 17 of those villages have a legal entitlement to Grand Cru ranking, while 42 may label their bottles ‘Premier Cru.’ Four main growing areas (Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne, the Côte des Blancs and the Côte des Bar) encompass nearly 280,000 individual plots of vines, each measuring a little over one thousand square feet.

The lauded wine writer Peter Liem expands the number of sub-regions from four to seven, dividing the Vallée de la Marne into the Grand Vallée and the Vallée de la Marne; adding the Coteaux Sud d’Épernay and combining the disparate zones between the heart of Champagne and Côte de Bar into a single sub-zone.

Courtesy of Wine Scholar Guild

Lying beyond even Liem’s overview is a permutation of particulars; there are nearly as many micro-terroirs in Champagne as there are vineyard plots. Climate, subsoil and elevation are immutable; the talent, philosophies and techniques of the growers and producers are not. Ideally, every plot is worked according to its individual profile to establish a stamp of origin, creating unique wines that compliment or contrast when final cuvées are created.

Champagne is predominantly made up of relatively flat countryside where cereal grain is the agricultural mainstay. Gently undulating hills are higher and more pronounced in the north, near the Ardennes, and in the south, an area known as the Plateau de Langres, and the most renowned vineyards lie on the chalky hills to the southwest of Reims and around the town of Épernay. Moderately steep terrain creates ideal vineyard sites by combining the superb drainage characteristic of chalky soils with excellent sun exposure, especially on south and east facing slopes.

… Yet another reason why this tiny slice of northern France, a mere 132 square miles, remains both elite and precious.

RECENT ARRIVAL

Vézelay: The Latest Burgundy Village to Rise to Appellation Status, Claiming Its Distinctiveness.

The creation of a new appellation is red-letter day in Burgundy—even if the region has been making wine for two thousand years. In November 2017, Vézelay was formerly recognized as a Village-level appellation to cover still white wines produced within the villages of Vézelay, including Asquins, Saint-Père, and Tharoiseau. It extends across 600 acres, although most of it is currently unplanted, making it an exciting new region in Burgundy ripe for discovery, both for wine lovers and wine makers.

Among the modern-day Vézelay pioneers are Alexandre and Blandine Corguillé, who in 2016 bought a fallow southeast-facing hillside and set out to create Domaine Sainte Madeleine. They planted Chardonnay—the region’s sole allowable variety (the small amount of Pinot grown there is released as Bourgogne Rouge—and in 2020 released their first vintage.

We are fortunate to represent their electrifying portfolio—a great introduction into the rarest of beasts: A yet (relatively) unknown Burgundian appellation whose wines have all the hallmarks of top-shelf quality and yet still remain in the realm of the affordable.

Domaine Sainte Madeleine

Alexandre and Blandine Corguillé
An Energetic New Producer Makes Vézelay’s Case
(2022 Five-Bottle Sampler Pack $199)

The landscapes surrounding Vézelay have been described as timeless, comforting, and quintessentially pastoral, but the focal point may be the Basilica of Sainte Madeleine. The Romanesque shrine has drawn pilgrims from all over Europe for centuries. As such, it is a fitting source-name for Alexandre and Blandine Corguillé’s winery, Domaine Sainte Madeleine, which is beginning to attract the devotion of wine pilgrims in search of thrilling new Burgundies to explore.

The couple’s adventure began in 2016 when they purchased a ten-acre hillside called Côte de Chauffour from the Diocese of Sens-Auxerre and planted the regions star grape, Chardonnay. They soon acquired another three acres of 30-year-old Chardonnay vines in Asquins and four more acres in the village of Saint-Père in the lieu-dit known as Les Saulniers. Their end game, they maintain, is 12 acres of planted vineyard.

Blandine and Alexandre Corguillé

None of this is haphazard, of course; the couple’s goals are straightforward and precise. Says Alexandre, “For our Chardonnay plantings, I use 50% clones and 50% selection massale from a grower in Savoie who was recommended by Domaine Raveneau. By the end of 2023, the entire estate will be certified organic.”

Blandine doubles-down on the family’s commitment to organics: “We pay close attention to plant material, sourcing from a producer in Savoie who also supplies Domaine Raveneau with Chardonnay plants. The grapes are hand-picked and sorted before being pressed in whole bunches. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentations take place naturally, with the wine aging in stainless steel vats and only a very little SO2 is added at bottling.”

The Corguillés makes a village Vézelay and small releases of Vézelay Les Saulniers, Bourgogne Blanc Côte de Chauffour, and two wines from Le Clos—a Vézelay Blanc and Bourgogne Rouge. While the vines in Côte de Chauffour remain young, and although there has been a century-long gap since wine was last made from this site, it is widely recognized as one of Vézelay’s top terroirs.

 1  Domaine Sainte Madeleine, 2022 Vézelay ($38) Blanc
A crisp, mineral-driven Chardonnay showing notes of lemon, white peach and yellow fruit.

 2  Domaine Sainte Madeleine, 2022 Vézelay ‘Les Sauniers’ ($44) Blanc
Les Saulniers is a parcel of 33-year-old-vines situated mid-slope on a hill crowned by forest southwest of the village of Saint-Père. It is not only Alexandre’s hope, but his expectation that this plot of land will be granted Premier Cru status in the years ahead. This precise and focused wine is hand-harvested, whole-cluster direct pressed and natural yeast fermented in stainless steel tanks. It displays bright aromatics, apple, pear and citrus in the mid-palate and finishes with mouthwatering acidity.

 3  Domaine Sainte Madeleine, 2022 Vézelay ‘Le Clos’ ($44) Blanc
Le Clos is situated on the steep southern slopes of the hilltop village of Vézelay. Alexandre and Blandine have a small parcel of 48-year-old Chardonnay vines planted in Les Clos’ rocky, clay-limestone soils. The wine shows hints of honeysuckle and lemon-balm with a lingering saline finish.

 4  Domaine Sainte Madeleine ‘Le Clos’, 2022 Bourgogne Rouge ($45)
Made from Pinot Noir vines approaching their fiftieth birthday; the oldest in the region. The grapes are hand-harvested and allowed to macerate for two weeks in wooden vats before fermentation on ambient yeasts. The wine ages for 10 months in second and third-year French oak barrels and displays rich Pinot character; racy and refreshing acidity behind cherry notes and a long, mineral-driven finish.

 5  Domaine Sainte Madeleine ‘La Côte de Chauffour’, 2022 Bourgogne Blanc ($36)
La Côte de Chauffour is the site that originally attracted Alexandre and Blandine Corguillé to Vézelay; it was fallow when they purchased it, so the vines they planted are still young. Currently classified as ‘Bourgogne Blanc,’ it is the expectation of the couple that in time, the lieu-dit will be recognized with an official AOP Vézelay stamp. For now, it shows balanced, fresh acidity and stony minerality behind sunny notes of apricot and pineapple.

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Posted on 2024.09.05 in France, Champagne, Wine-Aid Packages