One of the Grande Marques of Champagne, Bollinger has a long history in Aÿ dating back to 1829 when it was founded by Athanase de Villermont, Joseph Bollinger, and Paul Renaudin. The House makes some of the most full-bodied, rich and powerful style Champagne, with a Pinot-dominant style, use of barrel aging and being slightly oxidative. Their champagnes strike a beautiful balance between the intensity from Pinot Noirs and the freshness of Chardonnays. They have an impressive range to offer from their portfolio and the La Grande Annee is one of the more widely popular from the selection. The La Grande...

La Closerie was established in 1987 by Jérôme Prévost, who inherited the 2 ha vineyards from his grandmother which is known as Les Béguines. Jérôme's grandmother didn’t cultivate the vines herself but rented them out instead. Jérôme then worked on the vines himself as he took over, and sold his grapes out to the negoce, but a few years later, he considered producing his own wines. As he did not have any winemaking experience, he decided to work at Jacques Selosse under Anselme Selosse as a trainee. With Anselme's encouragement, he started working on his own wines from 1998 and released...

Founded in 1859 in Vertus, Côte des Blancs, Duval-Leroy is 100% family-owned and is one of the last champagne houses to be totally independent at this size. They have large vineyard holdings (200 hectares) in which they have a presence in all villages that are classified as ‘Grand Cru’ of the Côte des Blancs and have notable holdings in the ‘Grands Noirs’ of the Montagne de Reims as well. Carol Duval-Leroy has been in charge of the family business since 1991 and her three sons Julien, Charles and Louis have now come on board to perpetuate the house spirit. Their...

Louis Roederer Philippe Starck Brut Nature is one of the best bargains in the market among all Champagne collaborations with artists and which is only produced in fantastic vintages. The creation of this champagne stemmed from the intuition of Louis Roederer's CEO Frédéric Rouzaud, which Philippe Starck developed the idea, and Cellar Master, Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, made their vision a reality. It started with a few descriptors - "honest", "minimal", "diagonal", and "modern", and Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon brought these words to life and decided that the champagne shall be "a fresh wine from clay soils in a sunny year" and that was how Brut...