Mailly-Champagne

Mailly-Champagne sits on the northern slopes of the Montagne de Reims, on cool parcels where Pinot Noir ripens slowly and keeps its acidity. Pinot dominates the plantings, holding the highest share of any Grand Cru on the Montagne. The village's identity is bound up with a single institution: Champagne Mailly Grand Cru, a cooperative founded in 1929 by a small group of growers during the Depression and the only major Champagne house in the region that sources exclusively from a single Grand Cru village. The original cooperative members dug a 19-metre-deep chalk cellar by hand through the winters of the early 1930s, accessed by 77 chalk steps. The cooperative's bottles are the only single-village, single-source Champagnes produced anywhere on the Montagne. Outside the cooperative, much of Mailly's fruit goes into the blends of the major Reims houses, where it has long served as a structural component.