Flatiron Wines & Spirits SF

Brocard Pierre Champagne Extra Brut Contrée Noire 2018 is a different story. The label looks like something more cutting edge – and it is. Thibaud Brocard took over his family’s vineyards in the then-underappreciated Côte des Bar in 2012 (after a stage in Burgundy) and turned their focus to single vintage, single vineyard, single varietal Champagnes.

Thibaud, like his neighbor Bertrand Gautherot (Vouette et Sorbée) is obsessed with the region’s limestone diversity—Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian, and Portlandian— and farms organically, avoiding chemicals and fermenting with native yeasts, all to make that terroir palpable in the glass. His Champagnes are alive, taut, and clean—wines that just happen to have bubbles.