Rémi Leroy grew up in Meurville, a small village in the Côte des Bar, Champagne’s southern tip. He went all the way to Bordeaux, however, to train as an oenologist and agricultural engineer before coming home to take over his family's 9.5 hectares in 2006. Before Rémi, the family had always sold their fruit to the big houses, as most Aube growers did and many still do. While the Aube has never been famous like the Montagne de Reims or the Côte des Blancs, it has always been a key part of Champagne’s traditional blending of sites. 

But Remi had other plans and began holding some of his favorite sites back to bottle himself. His vines are on Kimmeridgian soil, the classic limestone signature of nearby Chablis (as well as parts of Sancerre). 

Rémi leans into the terroir’s vinous potential. He farms for complete ripeness. He handles the harvested fruit as gently as possible in his gravity-fed cellar. His approach is more Burgundian in technique than classically Champagne. And this “Champagne wine” focus continues through malolactic fermentations and even into aging in used Burgundy barrels (from Hubert Lamy and Thomas Pico, no less). There’s long lees aging and no fining or filtration to find all the natural texture possible. 

The result is a wine ripe enough to be complete and completely balanced with almost no dosage (this disgorgement has just 2g/L). It has texture and complexity. And while it is vintage focused (the Burgundian approach, again) there is a dollop of reserve wine from a solera (15% of the final wine), which brings complexity and makes the wine immediately drinkable. 2022 was beautiful, with ripeness and acidity in balance, and you taste it here: the wine has the body of a white burgundy with the lift and saline finish that the Kimmeridgian imparts.

Verzenay is one of Champagne's most famous villages and one of the three original Grand Crus (along with Cramant and Aÿ). North-facing, cool, chalky underfoot. And overwhelmingly planted to Pinot Noir. But a specific, cool-climate Pinot Noir with firm spine and cooler profile.

It is, in other words, a peculiar place to make a Blanc de Blancs.

But that's what David Pehu has done. He's the fourth generation of the family and, like Leroy in Bordeaux, studied oenology in Burgundy before beginning work in Champagne. His Burgundian formation has shaped everything since. 

The estate's flagship range is called Fins Lieux, "fine places," and his motto for it is direct: one vintage, one variety, one place. Each Fins Lieux cuvée is a single-parcel, single-vintage, single-grape wine. He numbers each one and this, Fins Lieux #6, is 100% Chardonnay from a parcel in Verzenay called Les Basses Correttes.

The cellar work is, as you would expect, Burgundian including, again, used Burgundy barrels (20% for this wine, the rest is vinified and aged in stainless to preserve freshness and cut). Fermentation is with indigenous yeasts. Dosage is kept to a minimum(1.5g/L). Unlike Leroy, Pehu allows no malolactic fermentation, preserving the taut fruit and driving malic acidity. They both work to make vinous Champagne; they just have slightly different views of what that means

But one thing it always means is dedicated farming, which was essential in 2016, a very challenging vintage. There were spring frosts, early summer rain and mildew, and then record-low sunshine through midsummer. It could have been a disaster and was for some. But a heatwave in August saved the vintage in Pehu’s northern Montagne de Reims. The result is a unique and stunning Chardonnay from a Pinot Noir site in a Pinot Noir vintage. Vinous Media’s Antonio Galloni called it “such a gorgeous and distinctive Champagne—a real archetype of Verzenay.” That’s an amazing statement (not just for the high praise) but because it gets to the heart of what David is doing: making a true terroir wine of Verzenay.