AGING

The minerality is enrobed in non-tannic sweetness from the Burgundian casks for a period ranging from 9 to 18 months. The aging has a greater influence on the Heurtebise than for other wines from neighbouring plots. 

THE PLOTS 

These vines are situated on a sandstone soil, less permeable than the neighbouring chalk or "Tuf" soils. This impacts the vines, which adapt to excess water or dryness. Heurtebise is, as its name suggests, a plot located on a windy plateau. The work of the wine grower on this plot is to adapt the plant's response to climatic variations. In a wet year, I favour high foliage and aeration of the foliage in order to consume the soil's water via the plants' evapotranspiration and the wind. 

Ground cover can also play an important role in limiting the availability of nutrients to the plants. Conversely, in a dry year, we pinch back the foliage, to limit the rapid absorption of water from the soil. Although this plot is situated on a very gentle slope, we may need to work the soil everywhere (adjacent to and within the rows), so water rises from the subsoil when needed.

ABOUT US

In the 7th century, the villages' wine growers, situated in Merfy, drew on the heritage of the Benedictine monks from the abbey of Saint Thierry. Generation after generation, Merfy's wine growers, together with the abbey, shaped the viticultural landscapes of our hillsides, meticulously separating each plot according to its geological origins, soils, subsoils, etc. Names were subsequently inscribed on maps of the village, and these became the "lieu-dits," which today nourish the roots of the vines growing there.

A FAMILY HERITAGE

The traces of the wine growers in our family go back to 1490, with Nicolas Taillet, and Fiacre Taillet in 1540. By 1700, a second Fiacre Taillet, an erudite wine grower, was writing his memoirs recounting his lifework, as well as all the important events of the village, the family and his profession. The Chartogne-Taillet family continues this tradition of writing and savoir-faire inherited from this legacy of wine growing.

A SAVOIR-FAIRE & PASSION

Understanding, by way of the saltiness, the textures, the lengths and the tastes, that wine's origins, from which soil and subsoil the vine has drawn its strength and its knowledge. We are the guarantors of this knowledge, to be passed on from one generation to another, from one bottle to the next. Today, our gestures are guided by this transmitted know-how, and we adapt the Benedictines' winemaking practices to the new effervescence of the Champagne region.