Another Friday night, another bonus offer bubbling over with bang for your buck! Champagne’s image as the ultimate luxury beverage has been carefully built up for centuries, but Léguillette-Romelot’s “Triolet” is a reminder that things weren’t always so. This is true farmer fizz, not just made and bottled by the same folks who farm the fruit, but hailing from a less glamorous, more humble corner of the world’s most famous sparkling wine region. Fittingly, Pinot Meunier – Pinot Noir’s less glamorous, more workman-like sibling– takes the lead here, and it sings in an exquisitely savory, stony, scintillatingly dry register. Best of all, “Triolet” is priced friendly enough to pop a bottle once a week, not just once a year. Champagne discoveries of this quality, character, and QPR don’t come around often these days. Do like us: go deep on “Triolet” so you can pull the cork on it whenever the mood strikes!
You won’t find any Premier or Grand Cru villages in the western Vallée de la Marne, where Léguillette-Romelot is located. This is Champagne’s westernmost reach, a shallow valley through which the eponymous Marne river runs, with vineyards surrounding its banks. Here, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay take a back seat to Pinot Meunier, thanks to the region’s history of late spring frosts. The Vallée de la Marne has long served as the secret insurance policy of the large Champagne houses. Meunier buds out a few weeks after Chard and Pinot Noir, meaning it often starts growing only after the threat of frost has passed. If a big house’s Montagne de Reims or Côte des Blancs fruit gets wiped out, they bring in larger volumes from the Vallée’s Meunier growers. And while Pinot Meunier still doesn’t take center stage too often, we love it when it does – its red-fruited, floral lift belies its kinship with Pinot Noir, but in a lighter frame with delicate spice tones.
Léguillette-Romelot is one of the Vallée de la Marne Ouest’s most important growers. They’re one of the few families in this humble quarter who’ve made an international reputation for themselves by bottling stunning wines under their own name. The Leguillette and Romelot clans have both farmed vines in the region since the 18th century, and were instrumental in establishing the local growers’ co-op. In 1968, André Léguillette and Marie-France Romelot married, joining the two families’ generations of knowledge. The two were trailblazers. They bottled and sold wine under their own name starting in 1973, decades before “grower Champagne” was on anyone’s radar. Laurent and Christine Léguillette took over in 2000, and have continued their family’s traditional way of doing things: certified sustainable farming, plowing with a horse, and riddling by hand.
The care, the precision, the quality packed into a bottle of “Triolet” is stunning. It’s comprised of 80% Pinot Meunier, 16% Chardonnay, and 4% Pinot Noir, almost half of which comes from the family’s perpetual reserve. The wine ages on its lees for five years – five times the length legally required for a non-vintage bottling – and a miniscule 5g/l of sugar is added at bottling. Apricot pit, just-ripe raspberry, faint rose petals, hazelnut, rye cracker, citrus peel, and brioche all commingle on the wildly expressive nose. The palate is dazzling, thrumming and resonant in its dryness, a crushed stone minerality coming through in full force on the finish. This is Champagne to savor, yes, but also Champagne to drink with abandon. It’s not often we think to open Champagne on a weeknight, but if you’re ever feeling fancy and want to elevate a simple dinner, take the fast track with “Triolet.” Cheers to Friday bonus offers!
