Top 10 Champagnes

A vintage grower Champagne built mostly on Meunier, Champagne's perennial understudy and the grape Lelarge-Pugeot has made its cause. Les Vignes de Gueux comes from two parcels in Gueux, a village just 2 km north of the family's Premier Cru home of Vrigny on the Montagne de Reims. One is Le Linguet, a southeast-facing plot of Pinot Noir on sand. The other is Le Patenais, which faces east and holds Meunier (plus four rows of Chardonnay) on sandy loam and clay. The 2016 was fermented with native yeasts, kept low in sulfur and finished at just 2 g/L dosage, so you taste the fruit and the place, not sugar. The Lelarges have tended vines in Vrigny since 1799, and today the estate is certified organic and Demeter biodynamic, using cover crops, composts, teas and a horse for the plowing. We've raved about these Champagnes for years, and this is the bottle to grab if you want to see what Meunier can do from a single vintage and a single village.

The Clouets were once official printers to the royal court of Louis XV at Versailles, which explains the ornately gilded labels, but the Champagne inside earns its keep. This rose is 100% Pinot Noir from the family's Grand Cru holdings in Bouzy and Ambonnay, blended with a splash of still Bouzy red for its delicate salmon color. Bouzy is one of the warmest villages in the Montagne de Reims, giving opulent, red-fruited Pinot that Clouet reins in with bright acidity and minerality. Ornate on the outside, seriously grown-up within.

This is Agraparts' entry-level wine. And what an introduction it is! Although you may not get the site-specific flavor elements that come from their terroir bottlings, you definitely get to taste the winemakers style.

Bollinger is one of our favorite houses in Champagne — and, famously, the longtime Champagne of James Bond. Special Cuvée is where the legend starts: a Pinot Noir-driven blend built for richness and depth, with a deep library of reserve wines and long time on the lees doing the heavy lifting. This is Champagne with broad shoulders — toasty, structured, and serious, but never heavy. It's the house pour that made Bollinger a benchmark. Pop it for a celebration or, better yet, for no reason at all.

North-facing vineyards used to be a liability in Champagne. In a warming region they have quietly become an asset, and Carres du Midi is the argument: one north-facing parcel in the village of Mardeuil, in the Marne Valley, planted to Pinot Noir back in 1969 and farmed by Marianne Gamet, the fourth generation here. Slower ripening means more tension, and Gamet doesn't sand any of it down - the wine is fermented and aged in demi-muids, spends 36 months on the lees, and goes out at zero dosage, with no sugar to hide behind. What you get is a Blanc de Noirs with genuine weight and a chalky, savory core, closer to a serious still white with bubbles than to an aperitif fizz. Grower Champagne for people who want the Pinot Noir to actually taste like Pinot Noir.

A single-parcel, single-vintage Champagne from a grower who farms every one of his own vines — the kind of bottle that shows you what one patch of the Montagne de Reims actually tastes like. Didier Bertrand and Chantal Delespierre run this family estate as an RM grower-producer, meaning everything in the bottle comes off their own 24 acres, all of it in Premier Cru villages and most of it around Chamery. The house style is built for tension rather than richness: gentle pressing in a traditional wooden basket press, and malolactic conversion generally avoided so the acidity stays bright and the aromatics stay sharp. Part of the estate is fully organic, with the rest in conversion. It's bottled Extra Brut, so there's almost nothing sweet propping it up — this is Champagne as a wine, and it drinks best from a proper wine glass rather than a flute.

Grower Champagne from the Cote des Bar, in the village of Celles-sur-Ource, where fourth-generation vigneron Julien Prelat farms seven hectares on Kimmeridgian soils, the same fossil-rich marl and limestone you find in Chablis. Les Vignes Basses is 100 percent Meunier, vinified in steel, held on the lees at least 28 months, with no malolactic and a very low dosage that makes it an Extra Brut. The result is a dry, mineral, single-grape Champagne with a salty edge from those seashell soils. This bottling is built on the 2022 base. A characterful grower fizz for the table or the toast.

Grower Champagne from the Cote des Bar, in the village of Celles-sur-Ource, where fourth-generation vigneron Julien Prelat farms seven hectares on Kimmeridgian soils, the same fossil-rich marl and limestone you find in Chablis. Les Vignes Basses is 100 percent Meunier, vinified in steel, held on the lees at least 28 months, with no malolactic and a very low dosage that makes it an Extra Brut. The result is a dry, mineral, single-grape Champagne with a salty edge from those seashell soils. This bottling is built on the 2022 base. A characterful grower fizz for the table or the toast.

If you like your Champagne dry and laser-focused, this all-Chardonnay Extra Brut from the premier cru village of Vertus is the kind of grower bottle that makes the big-house names look a little lazy. Brothers Charles-Henry and Emmanuel Fourny are the fifth generation of a family that has made wine in Vertus, in the Côte des Blancs, since 1856. They farm sustainably (the estate is HVE-certified) and pick by hand, and this cuvée comes from vines on chalk and limestone. The Fournys' signature is the blend: they mix wine that went through malolactic with wine that didn't, so you get some roundness without losing the cut. This is serious Champagne with no fuss attached, and it shows its best at the dinner table, not just for a toast.

Rémi Leroy farms a small estate in the Côte des Bar, the southern outpost of Champagne that sits closer to Chablis than to Reims — and increasingly draws the attention of drinkers chasing grower-Champagne with a sense of place. Trained as both an oenologist and an agricultural engineer, Rémi farms his roughly nine hectares organically, with a focus on biodiversity and minimal intervention in the cellar. (And no — no relation to the Domaine Leroy in Burgundy.) The Extra Brut is roughly 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay, a mirror of his vineyard holdings, with the 2022 vintage as the base. Aged 18 to 20 months on the lees in a mix of stainless steel and used Burgundian barrels, with just 3 grams of dosage, it's a serious, low-intervention Champagne at a price that still feels possible.