Collection: Côte des Bar

It is here that another AOC exists, namely that of Les Riceys — the largest commune in Champagne, where one can produce sparkling wines, still wines, and rosé from the same grapes.

Pinot Noir accounts for 86% of the plantings, producing full-bodied and supple wines with ripe fruit, if only because the temperature is higher there and the soil is different, designated by two geological periods: the Kimmeridgian and the Portlandian (the Jurassic period from 150 million years ago) — the former having formed a fossil-rich clay-limestone soil, the latter deep marl deposits.

This soil is our salt and pepper, as Gautherot puts it — the champion of terroir expression whose cult wines from Domaine Vouette & Sorbée have become impossible to find due to demand.

The region is located southeast of Troyes, the former capital of the county and once the center of the Champagne fairs, which at the time did not focus on wine, but on spices, textiles, and metals.

It represents a quarter of all Champagne viticulture and has long been agricultural land where farmers also produced grapes that they sold either to merchants or to the local cooperative.

Fleury and Drappier are the houses that crafted their own wine and which, thanks to their early reflections on biodynamics, sowed the seeds of what the Côte des Bar is today: an emerging mass of nature-conscious young talents who grew up in the 2000s with the desire to work the grapes themselves that otherwise paid their rent.

The vineyards here are scattered and not aligned as they are in the Marne, like pearls on a necklace. The journey from the Marne to those in the Aube covers nearly 100 km of road through monotonous farmland, also called the "humid Champagne."

The region can be divided into two sub-regions: the Barséquanais and the Bar-sur-Aubois — the former counting several renowned champagne producers.

History tells us that Pinot Noir replaced Gamay, which has since disappeared, under the will of the Church and the Duke of Champagne to compete with the red wines of Burgundy at court. They planted Morillon Noir, the original name of the variety — two other grape varieties with historical significance here are Pinot Blanc — "blanc vrai," as it is called in the region, and Arbane, which most often goes into blends.