Notes from Grand Cru Selections:

100% Pinot Noir planted in 1970 with both a north and south exposures just above Alexandre's parcel of Les Barres. The parcel has always been highly prized by the Chartogne family as the wine reflects both the warmth of the Thanetian sandy soil and the mineral quality of the limestone bedrock.

There are few producers in all of Champagne who could make a better case for terroir-driven wines than Alexandre Chartogne. A visit with him at his family estate offers a deep dive into both the largely overlooked history and geological diversity of his hometown of Merfy, just a fifteen-minute drive from Reims in the Massif de Saint-Thierry, where his family has tended vines for centuries. 

Since taking over his family's estate in 2006, Alexandre is constantly evolving, observing and questioning how to best express his individual parcels. Convinced that it is indeed the soils and subsoils, alive and preserved, which forge the identity of wine, in Champagne as much as in neighboring Burgundy, he has dug deep into historical maps and documents from his family archive, spent countless hours carefully analyzing soils of each plot to better guide his work and has never been afraid of experimentation in his cellar.