Bruno Paillard

Bruno Paillard is that rare thing in Champagne: a new house. Founded in 1981 - the first new Maison in nearly a century - when Bruno Paillard, twenty-seven years old, sold his vintage Jaguar to pay for the first barrels. The family had been courtiers (wine brokers) in Bouzy and Verzenay since 1704, so Bruno knew the region from the broker's side. He just wanted his own name on bottles instead.

The first years were rented cellars and bought fruit; serious vineyard acquisition began in 1994 with three hectares of Grand Cru Chardonnay in Oger. Today the house owns thirty-two hectares, twelve of them Grand Cru across Oger, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Chouilly, Cramant, Verzenay, Mailly, and Bouzy, which covers roughly a third of the house's needs - the rest comes from long-term contracts with growers across more than thirty villages. Annual production is around 500,000 bottles, small by négociant standards and deliberately so.

Bruno's daughter Alice Paillard joined the Maison in 2007 and was named CEO in 2018. Bruno remains chairman of Lanson-BCC, the Champagne group whose predecessor (Boizel Chanoine Champagne) he co-founded in 1991 and which took its current form after the 2006 merger with Lanson; today it brings together Lanson, Besserat de Bellefon, Chanoine Frères, Boizel, Philipponnat, De Venoge, Maison Burtin, and Domaine Alexandre Bonnet. Day-to-day at Maison Bruno Paillard runs through Alice now.

The style is unusually disciplined for a négociant-manipulant. Long aging on lees - three years minimum for the entry cuvée, twice the legal requirement. Consistently low dosage. Partial oak vinification for the top cuvées. And since 1983, disgorgement dates on every single bottle - Bruno Paillard was the first Champagne producer to do this systematically, and it took the rest of the region a long time to follow.

The key cuvées:

• Première Cuvée Extra Brut - the flagship NV, roughly 45% Pinot Noir, 33% Chardonnay, 22% Meunier
• Rosé Première Cuvée
• Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru NV
• Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru NV
• Dosage: Zéro - Extra Brut
• Cuvée 72 - multi-vintage built on the 1985-started perpetual reserve
• Assemblage - vintage blend
• Blanc de Blancs vintage
• N.P.U. (Nec Plus Ultra) - the flagship prestige cuvée, only released in the finest vintages (1990, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009 so far). Roughly 50/50 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from six or seven Grand Crus depending on the vintage. Ten months of oak fermentation, ten or more years on lees, late-disgorged. The house's most serious statement, released only when the vintage earns it.

The house style is aerodynamic rather than vinous - precise, saline, built around chalk purity rather than oak weight. Which is not the fashionable register right now, but is what Bruno Paillard set out to make in 1981 and has never moved away from.