Efflorescence, Marie Courtin

Region: Champagne, France

Vintage: 2015

Grapes: Pinot Noir, Blanc de Noirs

Wine type: Sparkling

Alcohol: 12%

About: Dominique Moreau was born and bought up in the champagne region. She explains that there, everyone had a piece of land and also vines- it was the norm. Her great-grandmother, Marie Courtin, farmed her land herself, using a horse during the First World War while the menfolk were away on the front. Dominique’s estate is located on land that has always been owned by her family, but they had rented it out to tenant farmers. From the age of eighteen years-old she was working on the land amongst vines. She worked part-time as a teacher in a professional viticulture school and spent the hours when she was not teaching, farming vines. She took over the family estate in 2000 when the previous tenant farmers took their retirement. She began converting her vines to organic farming in 2005.

A Blanc de Noirs with beautiful depth which has notes of tart white cherries and lemon and chalky minerality, herbs and crisp stone fruits.