The 2016 is the first vintage of La Dune made as Blanc des Noirs – before that, Vincent used to make the Rubis de La Dune Rosé (see above) from this plot.

Vineyard: 0.28ha plot called “La Dune” in Mardeuil. Vines planted in 1955 on clay with iron, sand and silex. Certified organic and biodynamic

Making of: The grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed and pressed. The wine ferments spontaneously in neutral barrels. No malolactic fermentation, the wine rests in barrels on fine lees for about 11 months. Bottled with liqueur de tirage in the following summer, and aged on lees for about 50 months for the secondary fermentation (prise de mousse), disgorged in September 2021, and toppedup using the same wine, with a dosage of ~4g/l (extra brut).

Personality: almond paste, fresh quince, a touch of herbs on the nose, beautiful, vibrating wild natural energy in the mouth. Best to give it a little time to breathe before the service in order to let this magnificent Champagne express itself fully.

Vincent is a true terroir geek: he vinifies each of his 39 parcels separately and releases between 17 and 27 (!) different cuvées each year in order to showcase the unique personality of his highly diverse soils and expositions.
These plots are all cultivated in biodynamics, and represent a biodiversity oasis with some 90 species of plants and animals thriving; many of the plants are edible, so a little vineyard snack is never too far away!
As his vineyards are tiny (average plot size is a mere 0.1ha), there’s sometimes as little as one barrel (300 bottles) of one wine, and never more than 5,000 bottles.
Most of the wines decide not to go through malolactic fermentation – liberty that Vincent is happy to give them, as the resulting wines are balanced between richness and acidity.

Vincent went to winemaking school in Alsace in the early 1990s, along with another iconic French grower, the local trailblazer Christian Binner.