Meeting Emmanuel Lassaigne at the vineyard in Montgueux was one the highlights of my trips to France in 2006. I was really impressed by the vineyards and winery, it really is a special place. On a hill overlooking the City of Troyes, Montgueux is a small village completely different to villages around the Cote de Blanc to the north. You get the feeling that you have reached a place untouched by the commercial and extravagant set ups that you see around Epernay. You can’t help but feel highly impressed when you find a winemaking family like this. The respect to the vineyard and the traditional way of making the Champagnes show in the results.

Vines facing the ancient city of Troyes - the former capitol of the Champagne region

Emmanuel is so passionate about the Champagne he makes, you can’t fail to be impressed by the amount of time and the attention to detail that go into the process. The prise de mousse phase, this adds the fine bubbles to the still wine, can take anywhere between 1 - 3 months, some producers will reduce this time to 1 month, the result being a more gassy wine with less concentrated bubbles. Emmanuel takes more than 3 months to ensure a much smoother and concentrated mousse. On top of this he also uses a two phase process for producing the mousse, in between phases the wine is returned to the barrel. This adds time and cost to the process but makes for a much higher quality product. Emmanuel also uses very low doses of sulphites in the Champagnes, 20 mg/l in the final bottling is very low when you consider that the limit for white wines is 210mg/l, as per EU law.

No modern factory equipment here, just the original press