This is a whole grower estate in one glass: Chromatique draws on every site Stephane Regnault farms in the Grand Cru villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oger, which makes it the natural way into one of the Côte des Blancs' most interesting small producers. Regnault is an accomplished jazz musician who names his wines after musical modes. Chromatique refers to the chromatic scale, the one that uses all the notes, and the wine does the same, blending vines from low, very chalky slopes in Le Mesnil with fruit from Oger's richer soils across all three of his lieu-dits. It's his youngest cuvée, 100% Chardonnay, raised partly in wood and partly in steel, with a large share of perpetual reserve that gives the young base some depth. His path here was anything but direct. He was an aerospace engineer in Paris and a sommelier in London, then came home to Le Mesnil, learned from growers like Benoit Tarlant and Flavien Nowack, stopped selling grapes to the co-op and converted to certified organic farming. His first release only came in 2018, after more than ten years of trials. If his single-parcel wines are the solos, this is the whole band, from a grower whose motto is that better wine matters more than more wine.