
NV
Region
France › Champagne › Vallée de la Marne › Chavot › Champagne AOC
Type
white · traditional · sparkling · brut
Grapes
Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir
Alcohol
12.5%
Volume
750 mL
Disgorged
2024-10
Gorgeous, and more expressive than I expected from the calling-card brut. Black raspberry, dried apricot and baked pear, juicy citrus zest, white flowers and fresh brioche, all over chalky minerality. It opens zesty - lemon, tart green apple, stone fruit - then turns savoury, umami and roasted almond with a saline edge. Dry, focused and long. The 2020-based release was a solid everyday pour; this one reaches higher.
Ultradition is Laherte's calling card, the non-vintage brut that introduces the house and its home village of Chavot. It is Meunier-led - Meunier to the fore, with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir behind it - drawn from selected parcels across seven or so villages of the Coteaux Sud d'Épernay, the Côte des Blancs and the Vallée de la Marne. The backbone is a single base vintage rounded out with a large share of reserve wine, on the order of forty percent, held on its lees from earlier years. It is not the perpetual solera that feeds the Les 7 cuvée, just a deep, conventional reserve.
It is built the way Aurélien builds everything: spontaneous fermentation, mostly in wood (barrels, foudres and old wooden vats) with a little concrete, malolactic only partly let through, and ageing on the fine lees. The dosage sits low, six to eight grams, so it lands as a brut that is barely sweetened. Direct and fruit-driven, Meunier-juicy, with citrus, a little brioche and a chalky-saline edge - the everyday face of the estate, terroir before power. The name reads as 'ultra' plus 'tradition', though the domaine has never spelled it out.