Chartogne Taillet, 'Cuvee Saint Anne' Extra Brut NV

Notes from Grand Cru Selections: Ste. Anne is a village wine, which strives to be a lesson on how the different terroir expressions of Merfy can work together. Generally 50% Chardonnay, 45% Pinot Noir and 5% Pinot Meunier from vines around 35 years old grown on sandstone, clay and chalk. Dosage: 2.75g/L. Base Vintage: 2022. There are few producers in all of Champagne who could make a better case for terroir-driven wines than Alexandre Chartogne. A visit with him at his family estate offers a deep dive into both the largely overlooked history and geological diversity of his hometown of Merfy, just a fifteen-minute drive from Reims in the Massif de Saint-Thierry, where his family has tended vines for centuries.  Since taking over his family's estate in 2006, Alexandre is constantly evolving, observing and questioning how to best express his individual parcels. Convinced that it is indeed the soils and subsoils, alive and preserved, which forge the identity of wine, in Champagne as much as in neighboring Burgundy, he has dug deep into historical maps and documents from his family archive, spent countless hours carefully analyzing soils of each plot to better guide his work and has never been afraid of experimentation in his cellar.