In Champagne’s Vallée de la Marne, Benoît and Mélanie Tarlant manage their vines and their cellar the way a mad scientist runs his laboratory. A pinch of that, a dash of this; everything is done painstakingly by hand and with keen attention to every detail.

These 12th generation vignerons buck the trends of the Marne, where Pinot Meunier dominates. Instead, the Tarlants have planted half of their 13 hectares to Pinot Noir, and just under a third to Chardonnay.

Tarlant père, Jean-Mary, made waves in Champagne in the ‘70s by producing some of the region’s first Brut Nature wines, with no added dosage; the aim here is to allow the purity of the fruit to beam through the glass, without any manipulations.

With all of the extraordinary terroir, meticulous farming and winemaking techniques practices in use at Tarlant, you’d think the wines would sell for a ton of money—but no, somehow, over 12 generations, the Tarlant name has remained under the radar.

Professional Reviews

What importer Bowler Wine has to say about this wine...

50% Chardonnay/44% Pinot Noir/6% Pinot Meunier from organically farmed, hand-harvested estate vines. The vines are grown across 63 parcels in 4 villages near Oeuilly in the Vallée de la Marne and average around 40 years old. The parcels are all vinified separately. The Tarlants' "Zero" rosé isone of the rare few rosé Champagnes made by maceration of the red fruit rather than by simply adding a bit of finished red wine to a white base. The Pinot Noir is destemmed, very slowly pressed, briefly macerated; the small amount of Meunier is handled similarly; the Chardonnay is direct-pressed. The three separate wines are aged in Burgundy barrels for 6 month without malolactic fermentation and then blended after a meticulous barrel-by-barrel tasting. The final rosé blend is typically around 75% current-vintage base wine with 25% reserve wine, in this case with a base of 2017. It was bottled in July 2018 and disgorged in February 2023. Zero dosage.