Located in the premier cru village of Les Mesneux, Alice and Olivier Jaquinet are crafting sleek and sophisticated Champagne from 8 hectares spread across the Montagne de Reims. Their focus is on red grape varieties, from which the generations-old estate is crafting wines that are both generous and precise.

Jacquinet-Dumez

Aline and Olivier Jacquinet are fourth-generation winemakers in the Montagne de Reims, with a family history in the region dating back to 1935. Oliver’s grandfather, Henri Dumez, began production in the neighboring village of Sacy, and hand-delivered his freshly bottled wines to retailers and restaurants in Paris. Olivier’s parents then relocated the winery to the village of Les Mesneux, where they built a new home and cellar where operations are conducted today.

Olivier's tenure as the winemaker began in 1984, and he largely modernized the practices at the domaine and stopped selling grapes to the local cooperative. He then met his wife Aline in Reims, who came on full-time at the winery in 1996. Their two children, Diane and Agathe, have now joined the domaine and are the faces and the future of Champagne Jacquinet-Dumez.

The winery is in the process of conversion to full organics, and the majority of plantings at the domaine are Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. The style at Champagne Jacquinet-Dumez prioritizes a sophisticated freshness and drinkability that comes from the restrained use of oak during vinification and very low dosage to highlight the quality of their terroir.

Verget

Before being able to spend significant time in the Mâconnais, Jean-Marie of Guffens-Heynen was a believer, like many others, that great Chardonnay comes from the more serious appellations. He didn't have enough money to acquire vineyards at the time, so he started buying fruit and created Verget in 1990. Verget follows the same ideals as the Domaine wines – "the best wine is made using the best grapes" – and they have always only bought grapes in a very meticulous manner. Since 2006, Julien Desplans joined Jean-Marie and oversees all of the vineyards and purchases, while Jean-Marie is still supporting with the vinification. By its original approach, Verget is a laboratory of terroirs and a creator of climates that reveals all the aspects, all the nuances, and the subtleties of the same appellation. The relationships with the growers are most important, as Verget determines the vineyard management and is often doing the picking.

As with the Domaine wines, the press is a crucial part of the Verget process. Each plot is pressed and vinified separately. During pressing, the person in charge is carefully watching and tasting along the way. The wines are aged on the lees and stirred depending on each cuvée and vintage. Aging is in cement tanks, stainless vats, or barrels and often the final product is a combination. There are unique cement tanks that have an egg shape and are horizontal rather than vertical which allows for natural circulation of the lees.

Julien Desplans' Notes on the 2025 Vintage:

"In the Mâconnais region, the 2025 vintage offered us many excesses: abundant rains, an episode of hail and two heat waves of rare intensity. The rainy winter of 2024/2025 replenished water reserves, which proved essential for the rest of the season. A mild, dry spring encouraged early budbreak. Cooler weather and rain then persisted until mid-June, complicating flowering and reducing the harvest potential. In early June, hail severely damaged some of our flagship plots. Fortunately, the sun returned, accompanied by the first heatwave at the end of June, which helped to cleanse the vineyards. A more temperate July offered the vines a respite before August brought one of the longest heatwaves ever recorded. Ripening accelerated, and the berries remained small, concentrating sugar and acidity. We began the harvest on August 23rd to preserve the acidity of the sunniest grapes. They ended on September 11 after an alternation of dry and rainy days, which shaped very varied aromatic profiles with a taste quality that was always there.

Roberto & Mauro Prandi oversee the direction of their mother's eponymous winery, Rosanna Sandri. Owing to generations of hands-on work in the vineyards, the brothers imbue their work with knowledge gleaned as the first of their family to attend enological school. Those lessons served to hone their understanding of the special vineyards of the estate, further cementing the tradition of promoting sustainability, biodiversity and low-intervention in the winery.

Rosanna Sandri

In Treiso, Rosanna Sandri is the matriarch of a longtime family vineyard. Dating back to her parents, Mario and Teresina, who planted the vineyards in 1950, to Rosanna's sons, Mauro and Roberto, the vineyard has always been in the Sandris' care. With Rosanna's innate wisdom from her life's work in the vineyards alongside her parents, Mauro and Roberto's education at Alba Enological School intertwines to create a perfect blend of tradition with an eye to sustainability for the future.

The first vineyards of the Sandri family were planted in San Rocco Seno d’Elvio, near the village of Barbaresco. By the time Rosanna married her husband Franco in 1978, the vineyards totaled 2.5 hectares. Though it was by necessity in the early years due to the lean post-war years, today the family still embraces a very minimalistic mindset in both the vineyards and winery; there are no chemical additions at all, embracing biodiversity in the vineyards, eschewing the use of tractors and other mechanical tools, and allowing the wines to be fermented with native yeasts. Vinifications will occur in concrete vats without temperature control, and aging done in large wood tanks.

By the early 2000s the family had added another 1.5 hectares to the fold, maintaining the family's ideals of biodiversity, interplanting and a non-invasive protocol when it comes to pruning and planting. All together, the vineyards average 4500 vines per hectare, allowing the root structures to thrive in natural competition with the cover crops and other natural vegetation. The family feels very strongly about creating this sustainable ecosystem, and the vines thrive as a result.