Sacy Soeur & Frère

Sacy Sœur & Frère is the label of Yaël and Jonathan Sacy, a sister and brother from a Champagne family that has been growing in Verzy for generations, on the Grande Montagne de Reims. Their importer describes about eighteen hectares across six villages, split into some twenty-seven identified plots, planted mostly to Pinot Noir with Chardonnay and a little Meunier, on soils running from clay-limestone to marl. Accounts differ on when they came back to the family holding, with dates from 2013 to 2018, and on when the label itself started, either 2023 or 2024.

The range is organised by plot rather than by blend, and the back labels are unusually detailed for Champagne - naming the lieu-dit, where the parcel sits on the slope, the fermentation vessel, the disgorgement date to the day, the dosage and the number of bottles drawn. The recurring formula across the range is spontaneous fermentation in barrel with the malolactic left to finish naturally, zero dosage, and bottling without fining or filtration. Verzy is rated grand cru, and the cuvées are labelled as such.

Their motto, repeated wherever they are written about, is that living soils make living wines. Organic conversion began in 2021 according to a press release issued on their behalf; one importer states an Ecocert certification in 2023, but that claim appears in only one place and the arithmetic of a conversion started in 2021 does not obviously support it. Despite farming their own land they do not bottle as récoltants-manipulants: the labels read "élaboré par Louis de Sacy à Verzy" under matriculation NM 292-013, the older family house in the same village.