Bérêche et Fils, Brut Réserve, NV

It’s been nearly two decades since growers began to dominate the headlines in Champagne.

Yet, over that period, surprisingly few growers have managed to separate themselves from the pack—by virtue of their genius or their gift for making Champagne of unique expressiveness. Two that have are the brothers, Raphaël and Vincent Bérêche.

In fact, many authorities feel that Champagne Bérêche et Fils has now taken its place among the region’s finest producers, house or grower. Antonio Galloni calls Raphaël and Vincent’s Champagnes “among the very best readers will come across,” adding that he buys the wines “whenever I see them.” John Gilman writes simply that Bérêche is “at the top of its game and producing some of the finest wines in all of Champagne!

This old domaine was founded in 1847. Yet, it has been the innovative work of young Raphaël and Vincent Bérêche that has made this one of the most talked about Champagne houses, first among France’s sommeliers, cavistes and connoisseurs and now their counterparts in the United States.

Building on a strong foundation of traditional Champagne making learned from their father Jean-Pierre, the brothers became two of the region’s most insatiably curious vignerons. To that end, their portfolio not only includes an extraordinarily vibrant NV Brut Réserve, but several micro-cuvées brilliantly conceived to express different aspects of terroir, vintage and grape variety.

Key to the fantastic complexity of the Bérêche Champagnes are the number of different terroirs that make up the estate’s holdings. Their holdings can be found, for example, in their home village of Ludes on the chalky Montagne de Reims, in Ormes, in the Petite Montagne de Reims and Mareuil le Port, in the western Vallée de la Marne.

These are augmented by small plots in Trépail on the eastern slope of the Montagne de Reims, from 2012, the estate’s first Grand Cru site, a tiny parcel in Mailly and in 2013 a half-hectare in Rilly la Montagne, just west of Ludes. Apart from the Brut Réserve, Raphaël and Vincent experiment tirelessly with the character of these very different terroirs, creating a range of cuvées prized for their originality.

To ensure that the soil and, consequently the fruit, is as healthy as possible, Bérêche stopped all use of chemical herbicides in 2003, returning to manual working of their vineyards as in the past, and they are moving toward biodynamic farming in all their parcels.

Ten full-time employees tend the vines, an extraordinary number given that the estate’s holdings are only nine hectares. This ensures that the labor-intensive farming of each site is done perfectly. And this dedication to the quality of the matière première is enhanced by Vincent’s establishment of an extremely precise protocol for all vineyard work.

The Bérêche sites are planted in roughly equal proportions of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier which, combined with the wide variety of terroirs, provides a great range of blending possibilities.

And Raphaël’s and Vincent’s skillful barrel aging and use of cork closures, rather than crown caps, for the secondary fermentation makes the most of this site-derived complexity, in a compellingly expressive, complex and refined range of cuvées.