MONTCHENOT

2018 Blanc de Noirs Extra Brut 1er Cru Villers Allerand Nicolas Maillart

Grapes Pinot Noir
Colour White
Origin France, Champagne
Classification 1er Cru
ABV 12.5%

100% Pinot Noir from a single village and from parcels on the same slope. Vinified in barrels, natural malo, unfiltered, unfined. Zero dosage. Disgorged August 2022. 8,305 bottles. Smells like orange pudding – yummy nose. Marmalade notes and rhubarb jelly. Wonderful stuff. Silk and hemp plaid. Delicious dustiness, terracotta and souk spices and the scent of dry-summer sunset. This is so good! It draws on the mouth, tugs, taunts, persists. You could fall in love with a wine like this. Drinking range: 2024 - 2030 Rating: 17 Serena Sutcliffe MW (May 2024)


Alternatively, we may well have some bottles in one of our shops - why not give us a call on 0207 244 0522 or send an email to: sales@leaandsandeman.co.uk.

Or, check the RELATED PRODUCTS below for different vintages or wines of a similar style.


The 2018 Extra Brut Montchenot is a pure Pinot Noir from the eponymous hamlet near Villers Allerand, vinified in oak. Cream suffused with lemon freshness meets much mellower Red Delicious apple flesh on the nose. The palate comes with a light-footed ease that seems cloud-like, expansive, yet anchored in salty soil. A slight but pleasant phenolic bitterness accentuates the saltiness even more and beds it on a mid-palate that combines deep chalk and salty, raw sourdough. The mousse is superfine. A lovely rendition of pure Pinot Noir. Zero dosage. Disgorged: August, 2022. Drinking range: 2023 - 2035 Rating: 95 Anne Krebiehl MW, Vinous.com (Nov 2023)

Champagne Nicolas Maillart

Nicolas Maillart is the tenth generation of his family to own vines on these northern slopes of the Montagne de Reims, the land of Pinot Noir. The vineyard is all either 1er Cru or Grand Cru. The family can trace vine owning back to the neighbouring village of Chamery in 1753. The current domaine has about a quarter each in Bouzy and Ecueil, (where the winery is), and the rest in Villers Allerand. Most of the vineyard is well-positioned in mid-slope and it is planted with 70% Pinot Noir and 15% each of Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay, and the majority is selection massale rather than clones. In Villers Allerand they also have small parcels of the much rarer Petit Meslier, which is grown in the colder corners. Meunier is on the plateau, while the chalky slopes are reserved for the Pinot Noir. In Bouzy it's Chardonnay on the plain or the sandstone, and again Pinot Noir on the slopes.

There is some complication in the inheritance and ownership, since the vines belong to three different companies representing three branches of the family. Eight hectares are in the principal company, and this was what he started with in 2003. In 2008 they added the produce of another and the final part came in in 2013, with the four hectares in Bouzy. Nicolas' father had organised all this in advance, so when it came to the building of the winery, it was all done to take the whole 15 hectares. As a result of his 'buying' the produce of the land owned by the other branches of the family, Nicolas is classified as a négociant-manipulant (NM) when in reality he is managing the entire domaine as if it was his own. Well, nearly. The domaine was set on course to organic certification, but it would seem that not all the extended family were prepared to take the risk, so he has pulled back from that, but the vines are managed as organically as possible with only organic fertiliser, no weed killers, ploughing between the vines and so on. They are certified HVE3 and 'sustainable viticulture'. Nicolas now thinks this is probably the right direction – he’s a pragmatist and a balanced approach in which most of the work is done in an organic manner, with recourse to other treatments if necessary, may mean he can use less copper, for example. Organic, he says, is one way to go, but it’s not the only one, and respect for the grapes is the crucial thing.

Nicolas picks late, (five days to two weeks after the official date), seeking the best maturity he can get. This means normally achieving a natural 11% potential alcohol – he even got to 10.85 in 2021. Less than 10% of the wines do malo – he does nothing to provoke it and the cellar is cold, despite using low levels of SO2. All the wines are in barrel, he now has 400. He buys a few new every year and some are up to fifteen years old. They are all monitored carefully and kept full apart from one month of the year. He says that stainless steel tends to accentuate some aromas and dull other aspects of the wine, whereas barrels tend to round them out, giving more complexity, and more amplitude in the mouth. In particular the tailles (the last juices from the press) are much more interesting in barrel. He’s now very wedded to the barrels, even if he might try some larger ones, but he’s not interested in trying ceramic or glass. He’s very particular that wine should age in the container it’s made in – he does not like wines made in tank and then aged in barrel ‘the birth of a wine is when it’s really constructed’ – so his wines are straight into barrel after a one or one and a half day débourbage and nothing is ever filtered – ‘unfiltered wines last longer’.

The range can really be taken as two parts, one in which Nicolas is seeking 'balance', as he does in all aspects of the vineyard management and the winemaking, so that these are blends that express the whole diversity of his vineyard, and the much smaller cuvées parcellaires which are specific vineyards and the wines are trying to express that particular plot, much like Burgundy Premier Cru or Grand Cru. For all the wines Nicolas is keen to stress that they are wines first, and even the bottle shape is mean to reinforce this way of looking at them.

This wine isn't currently part of a mixed case, but you can always browse our full selection of mixed cases here.
  • For full delivery details see our Delivery page.
  • We offer free nationwide* delivery for all orders over £150 with our own vans. We also offer an express delivery service for an additional charge.
  • Order & Collect from any of our 5 London shops. Order by Midnight for collection the next working day from 11am.
  • Private wine storage: we offer a full In Bond and Duty Paid private wine storage service - find out more here.

ORDER     COLLECT

ORDER ONLINE AND COLLECT FROM ONE OF OUR SHOPS