Champagne Spotlight | Nicolas Maillart, Écueil

A tiny part of the wine market as a whole (as explored in Charles Lea’s blog here), grower Champagne has a disproportionate share of characterful, remarkable wines, thanks to the passionate vignerons behind the wines. We’re shining a spotlight on our portfolio of grower champagnes this year, each month highlighting a different producer – this month: Nicolas Maillart.

When I first joined Lea & Sandeman, not even four years ago, Larmandier Bernier’s magnificent Vieilles Vignes du Levant 2011 was £80 a bottle – I drank a lot of it. I wish I’d drunk more.

Now, you’re lucky to pick it up for £120 A lesson in how interest is fundamentally shifting away from more ‘mass produced’, branded Champagne and toward these tiny, ‘Burgundian-style’ growers, but also in picking up cases of these wines just as critical mass begins to build.

So, you might ask if you’ve read on this far, what am I drinking lots of now, and what might be the ‘next big thing’?

Nicolas Maillart, the 10th generation of his family to farm in the Montagne de Reims (Champagne’s spiritual home for Pinot Noir, most famous for the village of Ambonnay), is making staggeringly good Champagne and, I constantly find myself reaching for their 2018 Blanc de Noirs ‘Montchenot’.

This is a single-vineyard wine, grown on the slopes in his mother’s home village, for which it is named. Only a few thousand bottles are made, Nicolas ripens his grapes often up to 2 weeks longer than the expected norm and he vinifies and matures exclusively in old oak barrels.

This creates a truly vinous Champagne, capable of great age, but also absolutely delicious right now.

This 2018, an outstanding vintage, has recently been awarded 95 points from Vinous – the third best score for any 2018 Champagne released so far.