Bérêche's Campania Remensis is a consistently fascinating rosé Champagne, in a category fraught with uninspiring wines. The 2017 base is 60% Pinot Noir, 30% Chardonnay, 5% Pinot Meunier with 5% still red wine from Ormes on the western side of the Montagne de Reims. Fermented in oak. Aged under cork and hand disgorged. The 2017 base boasts a pale salmon peach robe and fine bead.Pomegranate, wild strawberry, currant leaf, and salted plum on the nose. The palate is brisk and fresh with rosehip, wild berry, crushed herbs over a salty core, and long, chalky finish. This is a touch more svelte than some years, but it more than makes up for this with energy and brio.

This old domaine was founded in 1847. Yet, it has been the innovative work of young Raphaël and Vincent Bérêche that has made this one of the most talked about Champagne houses among France’s sommeliers, cavistes and connoisseurs. With lavish praise from Peter Liem and Antonio Galloni, the same is beginning to happen the United States.

Building on a strong foundation of traditional Champagne making learned from their father, Raphaël and Vincent are two of the region’s most insatiably curious vignerons. To that end, their portfolio not only includes an extraordinarily vibrant NV Brut Réserve, but several micro-cuvées brilliantly conceived to express different aspects of terroir, vintage and grape variety.

To ensure that the soil and, consequently the fruit, is as healthy as possible, Bérêche stopped all use of chemical herbicides in 2003, returning to the manual working of their vineyards as in the past, and are moving toward biodynamic farming of all their parcels.

Ten full-time employees tend the vines, an extraordinary number given that the estate’s holdings are only nine hectares. This ensures that the labor-intensive farming of each site is done perfectly. And this dedication to the quality of the matière première is enhanced by Vincent’s establishment of an extremely precise protocol for all vineyard work.

The Bérêche sites are planted in roughly equal proportions of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier which, combined with the wide variety of terroirs, provides a great range of blending possibilities.

And Raphaël’s and Vincent’s skillful barrel aging and use of cork closures, rather than crown caps, for the secondary fermentation makes the most of this grape variety and site derived complexity, in a compellingly expressive, complex and refined range of cuvées.