Region & History

South of Épernay, a slope runs all the way to Vertus where almost nothing but Chardonnay grows. This is the Côte des Blancs, home of Blanc de Blancs, Champagne made exclusively from white grapes. Around 3,100 hectares of vines lie here, with roughly 95 percent planted to Chardonnay.

Six villages hold Grand Cru rank: Chouilly, Oiry, Cramant, Avize, Oger, and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. In Champagne, this rank applies to entire communes, not to individual sites as in Burgundy. The Premier Cru villages of the Côte include Vertus, Cuis, and Grauves. Behind this lies the former pricing scale known as the Échelle des Crus, abandoned in the late 2000s. The rank designations remained.

In the middle of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger lies a plot enclosed by a wall dating from 1698, the Clos du Mesnil. It measures 1.84 hectares and is planted entirely to Chardonnay. The house of Krug, founded in Reims in 1843 by Johann-Joseph Krug from Mainz, bought it in 1971. According to the house, the 1979 harvest turned out so well that brothers Rémi and Henri Krug bottled a Champagne from this clos alone for the first time. It was introduced in 1986.

Salon is also based in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. According to the house, Eugène-Aimé Salon began making a Champagne from Chardonnay alone starting with the 1905 vintage, though the house cites 1911 as its founding year. Today the brand belongs to the Laurent-Perrier group.

Alongside the big names stands a movement of small growers who don't sell their grapes to houses but make their own Champagne. You can spot them on the label by the initials RM, récoltant-manipulant. Anselme Selosse took over his father Jacques's estate in Avize in 1980 and is considered one of the first to bring white Burgundy methods to Champagne. In 2023, the Comité Champagne counted 16,200 growers, 370 houses, and 130 cooperatives across the whole region.