Christophe Mignon comes from a long line of farmers in the hamlet of Le-Mesnil-le-Huttier, about 13 miles west of Épernay in the Vallée de la Marne. 

But being part of an ancient tradition doesn’t mean you can’t experiment and try to find something new. Mignon has done plenty of that and developed his own approach to viticulture, sometimes called "the Mignon Method," which combines biodynamics, phytotherapy, homeopathy, and geobiology. He follows the lunar calendar for everything related to water, oxygen, and gas, both in the vineyard and the cellar. He has even designed his own tools, including custom tractor blades and a homeopathy machine that dilutes copper with valerian root and garlic. 

But this isn’t experimentation for its own sake. He likens nature to a Rubik's cube, always presenting new challenges, and he revels in finding solutions. There's a bit of the mad scientist in Mignon, but it's all in service of one goal: letting the terroir speak.

"ADN" is French for DNA, and each wine in the series isolates a single grape variety to reveal its essence. A 100% Chardonnay cuvée may be an outlier for a Pinot Meunier specialist, but it shows what Mignon's methods – and skills – can do with any grape. The soils here are about two feet of clay-limestone topsoil over chalk and limestone tuffeau. The wine is fermented and aged in large oak foudres, with no dosage and minimal sulfur.

The result is striking, intensely vinous, with the feel of a still Chardonnay with a bit of mousse. It is a wine that conveys the limestone site in a flat-out delicious Chardonnay framing: laser-focused and mineral with citrus peel, white flowers, lemon confit, and marzipan notes. It isn’t a wine we expect from Vallée de la Marne, but it is exactly the kind of surprise that makes Champagne so endlessly fascinating. You may want to drink it on its own, a sort of wine of contemplation. We certainly do! But don’t be afraid to pair it with a shellfish-forward dinner or even risotto – that vinous quality makes it a natural for elevated pairings.

Vincent Lagille’s family has been making wine in Treslon since 1818, but Vincent is part of the new guard, a generation of growers inspired by producers like Mignon. The village is in the Vallée de l'Ardre – about 15 miles from Mignon, and a traditional transition area between the Montagne de Reims and Valle de la Marne. The family is devoted to that terroir. 

Vincent joined his sister Maud at the domaine in 2012 and has been driving the family toward more progressive farming and winemaking ever since. The turning point came in 2017 when, in his words, “I had a click... It became crystal clear. I wanted local wines. Wines that tell about our roots. Family roots, but also cultural roots. For this, I wanted the terroir to be able to express itself, for the vine to be able to draw deep into the soil." 

The Au Fil du Temps is Lagille’s vintage wine, and it takes a different approach than Mignon's ADN. Where Mignon isolates variety, here Lagille isolates the year, blending whatever combination of grapes and plots best capture what 2020 tasted like in the village of Treslon. This village focus is also an ever-so-slightly zoomed out approach to terroir than Lagille takes with his single-site bottling. In Vincent’s words, again: “Here the elaboration process has been ‘overturned.’ The vintage Champagnes tell the story of a terroir, Treslon, of a single year, but are most of the time the result of a blend of grape varieties.”

The 2020 Fil du Temp is a blend of 55% Pinot Noir, 35% Meunier, and 10% Chardonnay. The dosage is low at 3 g/L – less extreme than Mignon's zero dosage, but still low enough to stay out of the way of the Lagille’s pure terroir and vintage expression (and firmly in Extra Brut territory). The result is a wine crunchy with mineral but generous with 2020 fruit. Elegant and balanced enough for an aperitif, it is also complex enough to elevate a wintry meal, like scallops and roasted parsnip.