Vertus at 09:20 on a June morning smells of cut grass, mown between the rows and left where it fell. Vertus is the southernmost of the big villages on the Côte des Blancs, the slope of Chardonnay that runs south from Épernay, and it is the corner of Champagne, in the north-east of France, that I would choose if I could visit only one. Arthur Larmandier met us at the gate of Larmandier-Bernier holding a spade, which turned out to be for me. He wanted me to see how far the topsoil went before the chalk began: about the length of the blade. Most of what matters about this estate, and about grower champagne, follows from that.
Two families, one estate in Vertus#
The name is two families. Philippe Larmandier and Elisabeth Bernier married in 1971 and joined their vines; their son Pierre took charge in 1988 and runs the estate with his wife Sophie, and their son Arthur works alongside them. About 18 hectares, spread over Vertus, Cramant, Chouilly, Oger and Avize, almost all of it premier or grand cru. The two small letters on the label read RM, récoltant-manipulant: a grower who bottles only what he grows.
Vertus itself is a premier cru, one of the biggest villages on the Côte, with real Pinot Noir on its warmer slopes as well as Chardonnay.
I came to it through a bottle, as usual. A colleague in Brno opened a Longitude for me some years ago, and I wrote “chalk, not sugar” on the back of a menu. I have been trying to say it better ever since.
Biodynamics on the Côte des Blancs chalk#
Pierre Larmandier went organic in 1992 and biodynamic in 1999, early for Champagne. The ground here is Campanian chalk, 100 to 300 metres of it, under a thin skin of topsoil that much of the region long kept bare with herbicide. The Larmandiers plough it, let grass and flowers grow between the rows, and use compost and the biodynamic preparations, horn manure and horn silica. What this does and does not mean is in biodynamic wine without mysticism; Vertus is where I go to test the argument.
Arthur’s version, as we walked up through Chardonnay just coming into flower, was practical. Roots that must go down into the chalk find water in a dry August and take their time about ripening, and ripe grapes need less added later. The vines were trained low, the ground between them full of clover and a hum of insects you do not hear in every vineyard on this slope.
Foudres, wild yeasts and the question of dosage#
The cellar was 11 °C and smelled of oak and bread. Pierre joined us there. The juice ferments on its own yeasts, the ones that came in on the grapes, in oak foudres, the big oval casks that hold several thousand litres, in barrels and in steel. The oak is there to breathe, not to be tasted. The wine builds texture slowly, goes into bottle for the second fermentation and stays on its lees well past the minimum the law asks of a non-vintage champagne, 15 months in bottle, 12 of them on the yeast. Filtration is kept to a minimum.
Then comes dosage, the spoon of sugar added after the yeast is removed. Brut allows up to 12 grams per litre, extra brut six, brut nature under three and nothing added. Here dosage is low across the range, and Terre de Vertus has none at all.
“The sugar is a correction,” Pierre said, tilting a glass against the cellar light. “If the grape was ripe when we picked it, there is nothing to correct. The decision is made in the vineyard, in September, not here.”
For the record, a brut is not wrong. A house blending forty villages into one reliable wine is solving a different problem, and I say so on tour with both glasses in front of me.
Latitude, Longitude and the map on the label#
The two main wines are named for coordinates. Latitude is a blanc de blancs extra brut from the south-facing slopes of Vertus, parcels on one line of latitude; it is the rounder, more generous wine. Longitude is a premier cru blanc de blancs extra brut from villages on one line of longitude, north to south through Vertus, Oger, Avize and Cramant; it is the chalkier, straighter one. Same grape, same cellar, same dosage. The difference is where the sun hits the slope.
Above them, Terre de Vertus is a single vintage from Vertus with no dosage, the estate’s clearest statement. Vieille Vigne du Levant is a vintage grand cru from old vines in Cramant, on the side that takes the morning sun; it used to be called Vieille Vigne de Cramant. Les Chemins d’Avize comes from the Avize parcels, and a Rosé de Saignée from Vertus Pinot Noir is bled off the skins after a short maceration: dark for a champagne, better with food than before it.
One glass: Longitude#
We tasted six wines at a stone table in the cellar, Arthur naming parcel and dosage before the village.
Terre de Vertus followed, without dosage. The first sip is austere; the second is not, and by the third the absence of sugar reads as clarity. Sophie came in for the last two glasses, and Arthur asked what Moravian sparkling wine tastes like. Riesling and Pinot Blanc, traditional method, 30 minutes from my door, and I promised to bring a bottle.
Lunch in Vertus: jambon de Reims and Chaource#
We ate in the village. Jambon de Reims first, ham pressed with parsley, beside the Latitude, whose rounder fruit suited the pork better than the Longitude. Then, since June here can still be 14 °C at midday, a potée champenoise, the cabbage and pork stew of the harvest pickers. Cheese: a Chaource, white and chalky at the centre, the closest thing to the wine on a plate, and a Langres with its orange rind, which took the Rosé de Saignée. A biscuit rose from Reims to finish, dipped in the last glass, as the locals do.
Larmandier-Bernier on tour#
On my Burgundy and Champagne classics tour Vertus is the morning of day two. We sleep in Épernay, 25 minutes north, and arrive at 09:30; the estate receives visitors by appointment on weekday mornings, which I arrange well ahead. The day before, we have been down a grande maison’s chalk pit in Reims, so the group arrives with the house half of the argument in the glass. Vertus supplies the other half.
Guests coming off the Jura and Beaujolais natural wine week, where most cellars add little or nothing, sometimes ask if Champagne has an address for them. This is it: biodynamic vines, wild yeasts, old oak, no sugar to hide behind. It is not natural wine by the movement’s strict definition, and I do not call it that. It is farming taken seriously and then left alone.
Bring a layer for the cellar, shoes for the chalk track and an appetite for lunch. Do not bring a spade. They have one.
