Vazart-Coquart & Fils

The Vazarts have been picking grapes in Chouilly since 1785 and waited until 1950 to put their own name on a bottle. That is the whole temperament of the house: the northernmost Grand Cru of the Côte des Blancs, a family that counts the domaine as established in 1954, a member of the Club Trésors de Champagne, and a third generation, Jean-Pierre Vazart, who runs about 11 ha in 30 parcels across the best sites of the village, Montaigu among them, almost all of it Chardonnay with two small parcels of Pinot Noir.

Jean-Pierre keeps his base wines in stainless steel and owns no barrels, because he would rather you tasted Chouilly than the wood. Only the first pressing goes into the wine, malolactic is usually allowed, and dosage stays low, usually extra brut. From 1982 a perpetual reserve fed the non-vintage wines, 40% drawn each year and topped up with the new harvest, until 2020, when organic certification made blending in the older conventional wine impossible and the reserve was retired.

The vineyard went the same way, step by step. The house reached the top HVE level in 2012, began organic conversion in August 2017 and had its first certified vintage in 2020; the vines are now treated with infusions of meadowsweet, comfrey, valerian, willow and yarrow. Production runs to roughly 60,000 to 80,000 bottles a year.

The range goes from Brut Réserve, Extra Brut and Brut Zéro through the Spécial Club bottlings, the solera 82/xx, the terracotta-raised Terre Cuite and the vintage Millésime. The house's most distinctive habit is what it does with the vintages nobody bought: it leaves them asleep on their lees in its own cellar and disgorges them to order, so a customer can ask for a year and receive a bottle that has never moved.