Francois Lecompte is a récoltant-manipulant (‘grower-producer’) in the village of Rilly-La-Montagne, which sits on Champagne’s famed Montagne de Reims – where most of the region’s best Pinot Noir is grown. And it’s no exaggeration to say that producers such as Lecompte – small-scale vintners who not only grow their own grapes but vinify their own wines – have become a genuine sensation in the US market, even though they collectively represent less than 10 percent of all Champagne sold here. It’s hard to beat the image of the little-engine-that-could vigneron pitting his or her tiny-production wines against behemoth grandes marques such as Veuve Clicquot or Moët & Chandon, and indeed the romance of the Grower Champagne has proved especially seductive to sommeliers. How can we resist wines with this combination of value and individuality? We can’t.

There are more than 15,000 grape growers in the Champagne region, a majority of whom sell their grapes either to local cooperatives or to one of the 40 or so larger “houses,” who represent more than two-thirds of all Champagne produced. In pitting their little-guy grower Champagnes against the big boys, many of our importer/distributor friends frame it in good-versus-evil, big-equals-bad terms, which isn’t our objective here: there’s plenty of fantastic Champagne made by the grandes marques, there just also happens to be a steady stream of “new” (to us, anyway) grower-producers coming to our shores with a compelling story to tell.

In the case of François Lecompte, that story includes a focus on exceptionally long aging in the cellar before the wines are released into the market. The estate’s signature wine is this vintage-dated Brut, which spends 7-8 years (!) aging in Lecompte’s chalky caves before it is released into the market. The result is the kind of brioche-y, textured, creamy Champagne you’d expect from such an extended period of aging on its lees (the yeast sediment left in the bottle after the wine’s secondary fermentation). The grape mix is 40% Chardonnay and 30% each Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, all grown on north-facing sites on the Montagne de Reims.

We love how this wine’s mature notes of baked apple and toasted hazelnut are supported by gripping acidity and formidable minerality. You can truly feel how the wine has added weight to its wiry frame over the years, enough, in fact, that it seems a waste to sip this as an apéritif. Get this stuff next to some hard earthy cheeses or, even better, Chef Jonathan Waxman’s signature roast chicken, and let it breathe in some copious Burgundy stems. This is serious aged wine, not a cocktail, so drink accordingly, and enjoy!