Denis Salomon

Champagne Denis Salomon is a family estate in Vandières, on the right bank of the Vallée de la Marne (Marne 51). The family has been rooted in the village for around 150 years. Albert, the great-great-grandfather, came from Savoie, married a vigneron's daughter in 1875 and became mayor of the commune in 1925. His son Georges inherited a plot of land and, on returning from the First World War, installed the village's first electric press. Georges's son Adrien came back from five years of wartime imprisonment near the Polish border to find his father's equipment no longer usable, and worked as a vigneron-coopérateur instead. The brand itself dates to 1974, when Adrien's son Denis set up with his wife Odile on two hectares. They grew to five, left the cooperative system after the 1984 harvest, and in 1996 took the Vigneron Indépendant de France label.

Nicolas Salomon, the fifth generation, returned to the estate in 2004 and has been reshaping it since. The domaine farms 4.8 hectares split into 23 parcels across six Marne villages, the oldest vines running to about 55 years, for roughly 40,000 bottles a year. Farming moved to a reasoned, lower-input register: Nicolas began working the soil on the Bauchet Thomas parcel and added others year by year, and the estate now carries both Haute Valeur Environnementale and Viticulture Durable en Champagne certification.

The cellar changed just as much. Nicolas replaced the large tanks with small ones so he could vinify parcel by parcel, or by block of parcels, in what he calls a more Burgundian way. From the 2012 harvest the house stopped malolactic fermentation altogether, for fresher and more tense wines. In 2013 - the year his daughter Vitalie was born - barrel vinification began, with oak from a single source, the Tonnellerie de Champagne. In 2017 the automatic press was replaced by a traditional Champenois press, which he considers gentler and more precise.

The range splits between parcel wines and blends. Le Clos Barret is the showpiece, assembling the three main Champagne varieties with the four old ones - Arbane, Petit Meslier, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris - at 267 bottles for the 2017 vintage; Bauchet Thomas (Meunier) and Marot l'Échelle (Pinot Noir) are the other parcellaires. On the blend side, Histoire de Famille is the all-Meunier house cuvée, built on a perpetual reserve running since 2005, next to Ma Vallée Éclairée (Meunier and Chardonnay), Les Blancs de la Pente (Chardonnay), Rosé de Meunier, Saignée de Meunier, Terre Amoureuse (Pinot Noir and Meunier) and La Belle Année. Vitalie, named for Nicolas's daughter, is made in 433 numbered bottles. There is also a still Meunier red, La Justice.