APRIL 2025
Dear Extra Brut Friends,
With Extra Brut, our mission is simple: to explore Champagne in all its regional and stylistic diversity, from the famous villages to the hidden gems, from vintage expressions to perpetual reserves, from minimalist grower wines to revamped heritage houses.
This month’s selections offer a perfect case study in contrast and cohesion. Both wines are based on equal parts Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Meunier — a rare symmetry in a region where blends are often tilted toward one grape or another. That balance is no accident. In both cases, it reflects a conscious choice to create a Champagne that doesn’t lean too far in any one direction — a wine where structure, lift, and charm all coexist.
The contrast, this month, comes from producers with two radically different histories. Leclerc-Briant is a boutique House based in Épernay in the Vallée de la Marne, while Perseval-Farge is a tiny grower in the lesser-known Premier Cru village of Chamery in the Petite Montagne de Reims. Together, these wines show just how varied and compelling “balanced” Champagne can be.
Cheers,
Your Friends at Flatiron Wines
P.S. Have a question or comment you'd like to share?
EXTRA BRUT PICK NO. 1
This vintage Champagne comes from the historic house of Leclerc-Briant, located in Épernay. Epernay, as you may know, is one of top commercial centers of Champagne. A quick look at a map of Champagne’s wine regions, and you will see why: it is located precisely where the three greatest regions of Champagne, the Côte des Blanc, the Montagne de Reims and the Vallée de la Marne, intersect. From here, a great négociant like Leclerc-Briant can easily access – and supervise the farming of – vineyards in all three regions.
Leclerc-Briant has been many things over the years — a traditional négociant house, an early pioneer of biodynamic viticulture, and now, under the stewardship of winemaker Hervé Jestin, a leading name in Champagne’s next wave of sustainability-driven, terroir-conscious producers.
The 2019 vintage is a turning point for the house: expressive, elegant, and focused, but with the quiet power that only a top vintage Champagne can deliver. It’s composed of 40% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, and 20% Meunier, all organically farmed. Fermentation takes place partly in oak, adding texture and spice, and the wine ages for more than three years on the lees before disgorgement. Grapes are sourced from all three of the regions that converge on Epernay, including some owned directly by Leclerc-Briant.
As you might expect, this blending enhances the balance of the wine and ensures that you get many of the different nuances that great Champagne provides: baked apple, lemon cream, brioche, chalk and the like. It’s structured but supple, with a persistent finish and just enough dosage (4.5 g/L) to round things out without softening the edges.
This is a Champagne that speaks to what a small, dynamic House is capable of.
EXTRA BRUT PICK NO. 2
For our second wine, we drill down into a single region, the Montagne de Reims. But not the Montagne. The “Mountain” usually refers to a wide hill just south of Reims that is surrounded by vineyards on its north, east and south sides. Go just to the west of this hill, and you come across a smaller, lesser known hill. It’s the little mountain, the “Petite Montagne de Reims”. It’s a great, out-of-the way area for producing Champagnes from all three grape varieties.
And this is precisely what they do at Perseval-Farge, in the Premier Cru village of Chamery. Benoist Perseval comes from a five-generation family of grape growers, but it is Benoist who has joined the revolution by adopting organic farming and precision winemaking.
The Brut Réserve is a multi-vintage blend of roughly equal parts Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Meunier — all from estate vines — with reserve wines going back to 2012 and extended aging on the lees (around 48 months). Like the first wine, the dosage is 4 g/L
Again, you’ll find a balanced wine that shows off many of the things that you love about Champagne. But here the emphasis is more on cut and minerality.
The lemon cream of the Leclerc-Briant presents more like lemon zest in this wine. And so on. You’ll find that the finish is long and mouthwatering, with a saline edge that makes it endlessly food-friendly.
Chamery may not be a household name, but this wine makes a strong case for its distinctive terroir: more sunlight than the Côte des Blancs, more limestone than the Vallée de la Marne, and an ideal zone for growing all three major Champagne grapes in harmony.
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GROWER CHAMPAGNE
A guide to the best bubbles in the world and what makes them different from the Grandes Marques
Champagne is the world’s most famous sparkling wine. Hailing from the Champagne regions of France, its biggest names are among the biggest names in wine: Moet, Dom Perignon, Veuve Clicquot, Cristal.
But there’s another side to Champagne: a universe of small-scale producers preserving ancient family farming traditions and bottling wines you’ve never heard of.
These are the Grower Champagnes.
