Product Notes
Location: France, Champagne, Montagne de Reims
Winemaker: Benoît Marguet
Grapes: 77% Chardonnay, 23%Pinot Noir
Soil: chalk with varying degrees of topsoil
Winemaking: fermented and aged neutral oak with native yeasts and full malolactic. Long lees aging.
Bottled: July 23, 2020
Disgorged: April 2022
Dosage: 0g/L
From Peter Liem’s Champagne: “One of the most rapidly rising stars in the Montagne de Reims, Benoît Marguet focuses exclusively on organic and biodynamic viticulture, farming a total of 8 hectares in Ambonnay and 2 hectares in Bouzy. He purchases a little fruit as well, but only from vineyards that are either organic or certified to be in conversion to organics. Since 2009, Marguet has been plowing his vineyards by horse, and he now owns two horses that work his entire 10 hectares of vines. Marguet has been increasingly refining his methods in both the vineyards and the cellar, working according to natural rhythms and sensibilities, and the effects of this have been palpable in the wines. There’s a texture and dimension of flavour in Marguet’s champagnes that are unlike any others, and a vitality about the fruit that makes them feel not just organic but truly alive. His nonvintage extra brut is a cuvée of two-thirds pinot noir and one-third chardonnay called Shaman—the base year is included on the label…the Shaman Rosé follows the same system and is also dosed as an extra brut but its made from a majority of chardonnay. Marguet vinifies all his parcels separately, introducing a Burgundian-like system of Cru Selections (single-village champagnes) made in good years and Lieux-Dits (single-vineyard champagnes), made in the best years.”