Champagne’s Servants Join the Masters(2)
And so the Aube served primarily as a faceless source of grapes. While a small amount of Champagne has always been made here, the grapes mostly traveled 80 miles or so north, through the flat farmland that separates the Côte des Bar from the production areas of the Marne.
In Épernay, I met with an executive at one of the grand marques and told him I was heading to the Côte des Bar the next day. “Oh?” he asked. “They make Champagne there?” Well-worn mockery, perhaps, but an indication that grudging appreciation from the Champagne establishment is not so easy to come by.
Many producers in the south still feel the sting of northern scorn, and it is a driving force.
“Always, we were second class,” said Emmanuel Lassaigne, whose Champagne house, Jacques Lassaigne, is in Montgueux, a small village west of Troyes. “People in the Marne will still say, ‘The Aube is no good.’ ”
The vineyards of Montgueux, largely on an imposing south-facing hillside, are distinct from the Côte des Bar, and are one of the few places in the Aube that emphasize chardonnay. In Montgueux, achieving sufficient ripeness is rarely a problem. Indeed, the exotic, tropical fruit flavors of Montgueux chardonnay are highly unusual for Champagne. Mr. Lassaigne’s aim is to capture the aromas and flavors of this singular terroir.
“My job is to say, ‘Montgueux is good,’ ” he said. “It’s not better, but it’s absolutely not worse.”
His nonvintage blanc de blancs Les Vignes de Montgueux is very much its own Champagne, with light aromas of tropical fruit and flowers. It feels broad yet is dry and refreshing. His vintage blanc de blancs are a step up in elegance, with more mineral flavors yet still with the distinctive Montgueux fruit.
Foremost, perhaps, among the region’s new stars is Cédric Bouchard, whose single-vineyard Champagnes are exquisitely delicate and subtle, gently expressive of their terroir. His dark, tussled hair and piercing olive green eyes give him the brooding look of a young philosopher. Indeed, his uncompromising winemaking might be called highly philosophical.
“I’m only interested in the wine, the grape, the parcel and the terroir,” he said. “It’s got to have emotion to it; otherwise, it’s going to the négociants.”
Mr. Bouchard’s father grew grapes and made a small amount of his own Champagne, but as a young man Mr. Bouchard left for Paris, where he worked in a wine shop. There, he said, he discovered the wines of vignerons he described as working naturally, and decided that he, too, wanted to make wine. He returned to the Aube only because his father offered him land.
Right away, he proved himself independent. “Whatever my father did, I did the opposite,” he said. “Spiritually, I’m the first generation because it’s my own style and philosophy. I think my father is proud of the wines, but he would never admit it directly.”
Mr. Bouchard tries to be as natural in his approach as possible, even rejecting the use of horses in his vineyards, which he now plows by hand. In that sense, he said, he is lucky to have only small parcels.
Another rising star in the Côte des Bar, Bertrand Gautherot, named his label Vouette & Sorbée, after the two vineyards he farms biodynamically. His family grew grains and grapes and raised animals around the town of Buxières-sur-Arce. As a young man he left, to design lipsticks, but the call of agriculture was great, and he soon returned.
“We were not in the business of Champagne,” he said. “We were more farmers than winemakers.”
Mr. Gautherot, too, focused on farming, selling off all his grapes to cooperatives or the big houses. Among his good friends were superb grower-producers from the north, like Anselme Selosse and Jérôme Prévost, who he said urged him to begin making his own wines.
