Epinette de Champagne 2021
100% ChardonnaySparkling0 g/L · Extra-BrutHVENatural
Single-parcel blanc de blancs from Chardonnay planted in 1982 in Les Bas Russelets, the same vineyard as the Pinot Noir cuvée of that name. Five-hundred-litre oak, forty months on cork, no dosage.
Fermented in oak with indigenous yeasts, aged on the lees with spontaneous malolactic fermentation. Disgorgement liqueur made from the house’s own barrel-aged wines and cane sugar. No filtration, fining, cold stabilisation or chaptalisation.
- Country
- France
- Region
- Champagne
- Sub-region
- Vallée de la Marne
- Village
- Damery (autre cru)
- Lieu-dit
- Les Bas Russelets
- Planted
- 1982, massal selection
- Soil
- Calcareous
- Aspect
- South
- Viticulture
- Benjamin Choppin works every parcel himself, in the vines daily through the season, and harvests by hand, parcel by parcel, the way a Burgundian would. One rule governs the domaine: respect for the living. No herbicide or insecticide is used; the only composts are certified organic; and the plots are bordered by trees, meadows and flowering strips to keep the biodiversity around the vines. HVE-certified since 2018, farmed along organic lines without seeking certification.
- Vintage
- 2021
- Vessel
- 500 L oak barrels
- On the lees
- 40 months
- Dosage
- 0 g/L · Extra-Brut
- Sulfur
- Minimal — a small addition for stability in transit
- Filtration
- Unfiltered, unfined, no cold stabilisation
- Vinification
- Each parcel is pressed and vinified separately. Fermentation is spontaneous, on indigenous yeasts, in oak casks of 225 to 600 litres from the Tonnellerie de Champagne, followed by a spontaneous malolactic and a long élevage on the lees. Nothing is fined, filtered, cold-stabilised or chaptalised. The disgorgement liqueur is the house's own barrel-aged wine and cane sugar; dosage runs from zero to one gram, and sulfur is kept to a small addition for stability in transit.
- Case
- 6
2021 in Champagne
The hardest year in a generation: severe frost in early April, then a cool, wet summer with relentless mildew pressure and hail in places. The crop was the smallest in decades and some growers lost most of it. What survived was picked in mid-September at classic ripeness — wines of tension and line, closer to the Champagne of the 1990s than to the sunny years around it.
The 2021 Epinette de Champagne
Notes to follow.
DomTheSomm note
Notes to follow.