In Bordeaux, the Rothschild family is wine royalty, individually owning multiple châteaux – most notably Lafite-Rothschild and Mouton-Rothschild – and being winegrowers there for almost two centuries. But when it comes to making wine in the Champagne region, the Rothschilds are probably considered as nouveau riche by that region’s bubbly old guard.
After all, the family’s three branches, collectively known as the Barons de Rothschild, have only been making Champagne in the Marne Valley since 2005, not that many years older than the current vintage-dated of the region’s icons. Moreover, like many accomplished outsiders trying their hands at something new, the Barons have their own ideas about how things should be done, often at variance with what the locals are used to doing.
For example, take Chardonnay, the least-planted of the three primary grapes used in Champagne. “From the beginning, the Rothschild family wanted to emphasize Chardonnay,” as Guillaume Lété—Barons’ cellar master—told me in a recent Zoom interview. “So, 70% of our grapes are Chardonnay,” which the Barons regard as the ideal variety for wine aging.
“As a result, we don’t make a Blanc de Noirs, although we do make a Champagne Rosé,” Lété explains, but says it more in the manner of a box that needed to be checked rather than something he is notably enthusiastic about producing. So…is a Blanc de Noirs in the offing? “Perhaps one day we will consider one,” he concedes, in a never-say-never manner.
Then there is the matter of reserves – the wines Champagne houses store from each vintage to age in tanks, barrels, occasionally even in bottles, to gradually add back to their non-vintage releases. In isn’t surprising that a startup such as Barons would emphasize building up its reserve stocks over the last few vintages as a way of catching up, but when I ask the question, Lété emphasizes that it isn’t a temporary ramp-up. Instead, having 40 percent reserves in any non-vintage release is the Rothschild standard, much of it kept in a solera-like system where wine of a current vintage is added to a common pool of previous vintages as some is taken out.
Moreover, every Rothschild sparkler must have 5% oak-aged wine, a practice Lété started. But what sets the Rothschilds apart is their emphasis on accessing smaller and fewer vineyards – terroirs – rather than blending wines from a much larger pool of vineyards.
When the Barons – one family owns Mouton, one Lafite, and one Clarke as their lead châteaux – decided to make Champagne, they chose not to take the easy route of buying an existing producer and then personalizing the acquired property.
Instead, they bought some vineyards and set up purchasing arrangements with about 20 growers. While that may sound like a lot, if you know about traditional Champagne, you know most houses buy from dozens and dozens of different growers strewn across the vast Champagne region, all part of the fact that Champagne always built its reputation on blending – blending many properties, blending grape varieties, blending vintages (reserves), and blending tank-cosseted wines with barrel-kissed wines.
Since the Rothschilds have already limited their blending goals by emphasizing one grape – Chardonnay – while lessening others, why limit themselves further to blending grapes from less than two dozen vineyards?
Before Lété could answer, Marie Dumas, communication and market manager and Lété’s colleague, jumped in. “With us, it’s all about terroir, even in Champagne!”
Granted, Champagne has always valued terroir, but in the macro sense rather than the micro view. Somewhere in every conversation with a Champenois, homage is paid to the limestone of the vast Kimmeridgian underground that permeates the areas. Additionally, Champagne has designated vast areas as places where Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, even Pinot Meunier, will grow the best Champagne grapes. Within these, various plots are further designated Grand Cru or Premier Cru by village – 17 of them – and then rated. Those rated at 100% cover around 3,000 hectares or about 7,400 acres, less than 10% of the Champagne total.
A few years ago, there was also an upsurge of “terroirism” with the importation into the U.S. of a wave of “grower Champagnes,” which is to say, releases from one farmer who chooses not to sell all, or any, of her grapes to the big houses but to produce her own bubbly. Today, however, that wave seems to be waning rather than waxing.
On top of that, a few iconic Champagne houses in recent years have been producing their own single-plot wines, such as Krug’s Clos du Mesnil, a stunning wine from a 4.5-acre vineyard that I visited a few years back and whose wines I have tasted – admittedly, very occasionally, as a bottle costs about $2,150.
These terroir-oriented wines remain the rare exceptions and not the rule, but Barons de Rothschild comes close to being almost a total exception. More than 90% of the house’s grapes are sourced from villages with vineyards designated as Grands Crus and Premiers Crus from the Côte des Blancs and the Montagne de Reims.
Additionally, though the decision was made years ago, late in 2024 Barons upped the terroir ante by releasing its 2018 Triptypque, its first bottling using 100% Grand Cru grapes from only three villages – Avize on the Cote du Blancs and from Ambonnay and Aÿ on the Montagne de Reims. Moreover, the grapes came from a mere 80 ares (an “are” being a traditional measure of 1/100 of a hectare), or slightly under 2 acres in total. The introduction of Triptyque is what the Barons are calling a “bold approach to vintage Champagne, the link between terroir and precision winemaking.” The latter is made possible in part by the opening of a new cellar.
Finally, I ask Lété if he and the Rothschilds would every consider producing a still wine, or Coteaux Champenois, from the Champagne region? After all, the Rothschilds do have a track record of producing quality table wines, even if not from Chardonnay or Pinot Noir.
“We have no plans, but we are monitoring a one-hectare plot in Ambonnay that might possibly work,” Lété says. “We are learning more about its terroir.”
And since we are back to terroirs, there is one more question we should consider – what does carbonation do, if anything, to the influence terroir has on a wine? We know that bubbles can somewhat mask the taste differentiation between grape varieties. Does carbonation lessen the effect terroir has on a wine as well?
As with most things in wine, there are few absolutes. In recent weeks, I have had the opportunity to taste several great Champagnes, including those produced by the Barons, and in a few instances have also had the opportunity to discuss with a few cellar masters their often different approaches, their different philosophies, in making great Champagnes. Sometimes, I can taste the philosophy, sometimes not.
Either way, I am very happy that Lété and the Barons have given me another way of looking at the bubbles before they deliciously disappear from my glass.