Côte des Blancs

Of Côte des Blancs' ten constituent villages, six hold Grand Cru status, the maximum 100% rating on Champagne's échelle des crus: Avize, Chouilly, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger and Oiry. That puts six of Champagne's seventeen Grand Cru communes inside this one 10-village list. Chouilly's rating is conditional: Grand Cru applies only to its Chardonnay, while the village's smaller plantings of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier are rated Premier Cru at 95%, the same tier the rest of the list occupies. Vertus, Bergères-lès-Vertus, Cuis and Grauves fill out the Premier Cru band without reaching Grand Cru status. Vertus stands apart within the group for its scale rather than its rating: at roughly 500 hectares of vines it is the largest wine-growing commune in the Marne département and the second largest in all of Champagne, behind only Les Riceys in the Aube. It also carries more Pinot Noir than the area's Chardonnay-dominated average, giving it a different varietal profile from the compact Grand Cru core to its north. Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, one of the six Grand Cru villages, is where two houses built single-village reputations without ever sourcing outside it. Eugène-Aimé Salon, a Paris furrier turned vigneron, made his first vintage there in 1905 for his own table and formally founded the house in 1911; Salon has since released a vintage in only about four years out of every ten, always Chardonnay, always from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Nearby lies Clos du Mesnil, a 1.84-hectare walled plot whose surrounding wall carries an inscription dated 1698, naming the builders who raised it and the grower who planted the vines. Krug bought vineyards in the village in 1971, including this walled parcel, replanted it, and found that its warmer, enclosed microclimate produced fruit distinct enough from its other Le Mesnil-sur-Oger purchases to bottle separately. The first vintage, 1979, was released in 1986 as Krug Clos du Mesnil, the house's first single-vineyard Champagne.