To understand an estate, it’s always good to taste the winery’s entry-level Champagne. Some people refer to this wine as an estate’s “calling card”, as it is usually designed to reflect the totality of the family’s vineyards and their approach to winemaking. This Champagne very much does that for Clément, and for the villages of Congy and Coizard-Joches.

The name "Myosotis Champêtre" translates to the wild Forget-Me-Not flower. In the spring,  Aurélien’s vineyards are carpeted with these bright blue flowers, a testament to healthy, living soils  cultivated without synthetic herbicides.

This cuvée leans on the structure of red grapes, driven predominantly by Pinot Noir from the 2018 harvest. It is rounded out with a touch of Chardonnay and reserve wines.

In the glass, it is incredibly inviting. The Pinot Noir gives it a generous, broad-shouldered core of red orchard fruit—think wild strawberry and red apple skin—while the Chardonnay provides a lifted, chalky cut. Because it is finished as an Extra Brut with a minuscule 2 grams per liter of dosage, it remains bone-dry, allowing a beautiful, savory, almost earthy undertone to shine through on the finish.

This is a wine of joyful versatility. You don’t need to take it too seriously. It is open, expressive, and ready to drink right now. It is the perfect bottle to pop with a sprawling cheese and charcuterie board, roasted poultry, or simply a bowl of heavily salted potato chips on a Friday night.

Now, we zoom in. We leave the sweeping estate blend and step into a single plot of land.

"Les Cornambeaux" is a specific, tiny lieu-dit (named parcel) located in Congy. In 1961, Aurélien’s great-grandfather, Henri, planted this 0.6-hectare plot exclusively to Chardonnay. Today, those ancient vines produce tiny yields of incredibly concentrated, deeply mineral juice.

To honor the pedigree of these old vines, Aurélien treats this wine like a luxury Burgundy. He ferments it partially in 225-liter oak barrels, and  that oak is sourced locally from the forests of the Champagne-Ardenne region. He then bottles it as a vintage wine, capturing the exact snapshot of the 2018 growing season. Production is small—sometimes fewer than 1,500 bottles for the entire world. A nice chunk of them are going to our Extra Brut club members!

This is a serious, intellectual Blanc de Blancs. The 2018 vintage was warm and generous, but you wouldn't know it from the electric tension in this glass. The old vines dig deep into the chalk of the Petit Morin, providing a piercing, crystalline minerality that drives the wine.

The oak fermentation does not make the wine taste "woody"; instead, it acts as a textural frame, giving the wine a subtle creaminess, a hint of toasted almond, and a deep, almost architectural, structure. It bursts with notes of crisp pear, lemon oil, and crushed stones, finishing razor-sharp and bone-dry cut (there’s just 1 gram per liter of dosage).

Sure, go ahead and drink this one with a bowl of chips too, if you like. But it’s definitely a Champagne that can handle a more serious approach. You can think of it like a premier cru white Burgundy. Serve it in a larger wine glass, and pair it with good white wine food: think seared scallops, butter-poached lobster, or a rich, creamy crab bisque.