Georges Remy

In 2000, after a viticulture and oenology diploma at Avize and a spell in Saint-Estèphe, Georges Remy came home to Bouzy to work alongside his parents. They were growers who sold their whole crop to the négociants. His grandfather had bottled the family's own wine from 1950, but in 1989 his father, happier in the vineyard than in the cellar, sold the winemaking equipment. The Remys count themselves vignerons since 1629.

For a decade Georges farmed the family vines and ran a vineyard-services business on the side. His first wines, in 2011, were still Coteaux Champenois reds, the kind of wine he had come to love in Bordeaux. The first Champagnes followed in 2014.

The estate now covers 5.3 hectares in Bouzy, Ambonnay, Louvois and Tauxières, mostly Pinot Noir, with vines averaging 45 years. Herbicides were banned in 2012, the move to organic farming began in 2015, and certification came in 2018. The estate has made its own compost since 2016, sows cover crops, ploughs, and is planting hedges and trees back into the landscape.

The harvest date is set by tasting the grapes, and when the year allows, ripeness is pushed further. In the cellar the wines ferment on their own yeasts, go through malolactic and spend ten months on fine lees in barrels of 228 to 500 litres. Reserve wines wait in large foudres. Most of the range goes out as brut nature.

Les Quatre Terroirs gathers all four villages in one blend. Above it sit single-parcel Champagnes such as Les Muits, a blanc de blancs from Tauxières, and Les Hauts Clos, alongside a Bouzy blanc de noirs and a still Bouzy Rouge, Les Vaudayants.

Even the replanting looks back. Every missing vine is replaced with a cutting from Les Hauts Clos, planted in 1960.