Millésime Premier Cru

The house's vintage cuvée from Ecueil, a Premier Cru village on the Montagne de Reims, and the 2018 back label spells the wine out: 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, all from 2018, bottled for its second fermentation in March 2019 (the importer sticker dates the tirage to 7 March), disgorged in March 2026, so seven years on the lees, and dosed extra brut at 3 g/l. The estate publishes no sheet for the 2018; its general cellar page describes hand-picked fruit brought to the press in 50 kg crates, an 8,000 kg pneumatic press yielding 41 hl of cuvée and 10 hl of taille, some 36 hours of settling in small temperature-controlled steel tanks, fermentation there, and a minimum of four years on lees for the Millésime, which its sheet for the 2016 raises to seven. That 2016 sheet, also 60/40, adds that the Chardonnay portion skipped malolactic and that 15% was aged six months in oak barrels; whether the 2018 was made the same way the house does not say. The vineyard is clay-limestone and sand on the slopes and mid-slopes of the Montagne de Reims, farmed under HVE and Viticulture Durable en Champagne certification. 2018 was the year the Union des Maisons de Champagne called a campaign at full tilt: the hottest summer in the appellation's records and a general, continuous drought, a harvest ban brought forward and published on 18 August, exceptionally clean fruit, total acidity down to about 4.1 g/l by the last samplings, and generosity in both quality and quantity. 12.5% on the label.