Champagne pairs with the holiday season like Frank Sinatra and mistletoe. Although the Grand Maisons like Veuve Clicquot and Perrier-Jouet are familiar on the holiday shelves, I look to Grower Champagnes for the immense quality and their incredible price point for the majesty found in the bottle.
So, what are Grower Champagnes exactly? To have this teensy acronym on the label, the wine must be owned, farmed and produced by the same estate. A Grand Maison sources its grapes from a hundred to even a thousand different farmers. So, what is the benefit of that in the glass? Well, a Grower Champagne is almost always a focused snapshot of a single Champagne appellation and sometimes even a single vineyard, which reveals a focused sense of place or terroir in the glass.
Another practice among most Grower Champagnes is their dedication to extended lees aging, which reveals that magical, rising brioche aroma that we all crave from great Champagne. The appellation requirement for a non-vintage Champagne is 15 months. It also means that these producers invested almost two additional years of aging these wines in cellar before releasing them to the market.
What an investment of time and money! I like to say that Grower Champagnes are the wine equivalent of a farm-to-table experience. They are also akin to auteur filmmakers where every choice is deeply pondered by the creator.
If you have never experienced a Grower Champagne, here are some of our favorite family producers that we currently have on offer. Wines are aged sur lie for three years, 21 months longer than appellation requirement, then receive 3 grams of dosage. Ambrosie, French for nectar of the gods, is an apt name for this Grand Cru bottling of effervescent joy. Aromas of red berries, fresh white flowers and herbs unfold with a nuanced golden toast, laced with bright citrus and chalk on the palate for a silky yet concentrated Champagne that is simply dazzling.
