Bourgeois-Diaz Trois Cépages 3C Extra Brut | Champagne

The house is in Crouttes-sur-Marne, in the Marne valley west of Épernay. That strip is meunier country: the variety dominates plantings on clay, marl and sandy soils, buds later than pinot noir and ripens earlier.

Jérôme Bourgeois took over from his parents in 2001 and works with Charlotte. Six point eight hectares: three and a half of meunier, two of pinot noir and one point three of chardonnay. The vines average about forty years, on clay and chalk.

That is where their defining decision lies. Meunier takes up more than half their vineyard, when across Champagne as a whole it is around 32%, against 38% pinot noir and 30% chardonnay. And the trade has always treated it as the cheap variety, the one blended in to bring a cuvée's cost down alongside the other two. Giving it most of the estate runs against the appellation's own price hierarchy.

Since 2009 they have used no pesticides and since 2014 they have held organic and Demeter biodynamic certification. In the cellar, spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeast, minimal sulphur or none, and wines neither fined nor filtered.

Their three-variety cuvée brings together all three grapes of the house.