Flatiron Wines & Spirits NY

When Louis Tarlant swore never to sell a single grape to a big house there were fewer than ten independent estates in all of Champagne. Louis’ radical stance helped pave the way for today’s dynamic Champagne  rich with grower producers. 

In the late 1970s, Louis’ great-grandson, Jean-Mary, did something that seemed just as radical as blocking the roads: he started bottling Champagne with zero dosage. This was unheard of at the time. The conventional wisdom was that Champagne was too acidic to drink without the softening effect of added sugar. In fact, the French supposedly called drier Champagne “Brut” because it was the brutish English who kept asking for lower and lower dosages.  

But Jean-Mary believed that with conscientious  farming on serious terroir, they could make Champagne that was best without any dosage at all. Jean-Mary’s son, Benoît carries on the legacy. "The goal," he explains, "is to express a Champagne without the external sugar masking the land's characteristics." It really works and today zero dosage defines the Tarlant style. Ninety percent of their production is bottled without dosage, with this "Zéro" cuvée representing roughly 70% of their total output.

The first thing you will probably note when you open the wine is the bracing purity: fruit, acidity, and minerality. That’s in part thanks to the zero dosage, of course. But Benoît and his sister Mélanie, who joined the family business in 2003, make many choices to achieve that goal: the farming is organic, the wines don’t go through malolactic fermentation (a second fermentation which sometimes occurs and changes tense malic acidity into gentler lactic acid). The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered.

But for a wine called “Zero” there’s a surprising amount of orchestration. Tarlant's is in the Vallée de la Marne, not the Côte des Blancs, and their soils vary considerably: clay, sand, limestone, and flint. Rather than isolating one element, they lean into that diversity, blending 63 individual parcels to make, not a pure snapshot of a single soil, but of the Marne’s special, if variegated, terroir.  

And they don't work with just one grape, or even limit themselves to the big three (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier). They use six, including equal parts of those three blended with three of Champagne's "forgotten grapes": Pinot Blanc, Arbane, and Petit Meslier. This isn't some modern experiment; these grapes are an ancient part of Champagnois tradition and, in the Tarlant’s estimation, the 4% they represent of the final blend is an essential part of any true picture of their terroir. 

Like the Bonville, the Tarlant is 2016-focused; but unlike the Bonville, it includes about 40% reserve wines, bringing depth and additional complexity to the ripe yet nervy 16.  

The precision of those 63 individual vinifications allows them to orchestrate a panoramic view of what Vallée de la Marne terroir can be. You taste the diversity of soils, the interplay of six different grapes, the time-traveling effect of reserve wines, but it all comes together as a unified expression. Nothing obscures the land—no dosage, no malo, no filtration—but you're seeing everything that their vineyards can produce when given this level of care.

The Tarlant's complexity and zero dosage mean it can handle richer foods while staying refreshing through multiple courses. Will it be good with oysters? Yes, sure. But if you’re having a miso ramen with lots of mushrooms and a fatty piece of pork, well, a glass of the Talant will take your takeout to the next level.