Avize

Avize occupies the centre of the Côte des Blancs, on east-facing slopes where clay, sand and silt sit over Campanian chalk. The village has a status no other Grand Cru can match: it is the home of Avize Viti Campus, the only practical viticulture school in the entire Champagne appellation. Opened as a wine school in 1927 after a bequest from the Puisard family, the institution has trained roughly 80% of working Champagne professionals across the region, with winemakers, oenologists, technicians and apprentices all passing through Avize at some point in their careers. The village is also widely considered the philosophical heart of the modern grower-Champagne movement, and several of its small estates rank among the most influential names in contemporary Champagne. The Chardonnay grown here sits stylistically somewhere between Cramant's roundness and Le Mesnil's austerity.