A restless innovator: Champagne Jacques Lassaigne producer profile

Emmanuel Lassaigne – vigneron inspiré

Despite his lack of formal training and his base in Montgueux, a relatively obscure corner of Champagne, Emmanuel Lassaigne is producing some of the most compelling wines in the region.

A restless innovator, he is always ready to try a new technique. According to Lassaigne, ‘most people do a blend in Champagne, to have every year the same, but it is not my goal. It would be very boring to have every year the same.’

More often than not, his experiments succeed, and the cognoscenti fight to find his wines. It was once almost necessary to be in Champagne to drink them. Now he is exporting to 40 countries, and the wines are more readily available.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 10 Jacques Lassaigne wines

‘Among the most outstanding value wines anywhere in Champagne’

Lassaigne strode out of his winery to greet us for our visit in April, and thus began one of my most memorable visits to the region as we stood overlooking the vineyards of Montgueux.

Keen to emphasise the unique character of Montgueux, he insists that it is a region apart. I suggested that while it was politically a part of the Aube département, it bore more resemblance to the Côte des Blancs. He insisted it was not a part of the Côte des Blancs. ‘It has similarly chalky soils, but the chalk is completely different’, he explains. The chalk in the Marne is from the Campanian period, while that in Montgueux is from the Turonian period, tens of millions of years earlier.

What makes Montgueux special?

Lassaigne has a point – Montgueux is distinctly different. It has a unique vantage point over the plains of ancient Troyes, where almost 1,600 years ago the Romans and the Visigoths teamed up to defeat Atilla the Hun. However, Montgueux stands apart from the rest of the Aube where it is located.

The Aube is dominated by Pinot Noir planted on Kimmeridgian marl, while Montgueux is an outcropping of Turonian chalk covered with a thin layer of clay and flint, planted to Chardonnay.

Champagne Jacques Lassaigne at a glance

Date founded: 1964

Owned by: Emmanuel Lassaigne

Annual production: 50,000 bottles

Key vineyards: Bouillerate, Clos Sainte-Sophie, La Grand Côte, Le Cotet, Les Paluets

Key wines: Autour de Minuit, Clos Sainte-Sophie, Haut Revers du Chutat, Les Vignes de Montgueux, La Colline Inspirée, Le Cotet

Vines have been grown in the region for centuries, but many vineyards were not replanted after phylloxera. The village’s vineyards were not developed to their current extent until the 1960s.

Emmanuel’s father Jacques was among the pioneers at this time, planting the lieu-dit of Le Cotet in 1964. Jacques, along with most of his neighbours, sold his grapes to the négociant houses based in Reims and Epernay.

Grapes from Montgueux quickly found buyers among the chefs de cave from the large houses, particularly Jacques Péters of Veuve Clicquot and Daniel Thibault of Charles Heidsieck. Thibault was known for comparing Montgueux to Montrachet, and loved to purchase fruit from the village.

Lassaigne points out that even today, most of the fruit from Montgueux is still sold on to the négociant houses: ‘There are 80 growers in the village; 22 make wines, but only 12 of us make wines in Montgueux.’ His own production varies from 45,000–55,000 bottles according to the vintage, with half of that total sold in France.

What style of wine does Montgueux produce?

According to Lassaigne, the tendency is for the vines of Montgueux to produce very ripe grapes – ‘showing almost exotic fruits, like melon, pineapple, and mandarin’. The wines show these tropical aromas because Montgueux is in the southern part of Champagne and because most of the vines face due south. The lieu-dit La Grande Côte typifies this kind of terroir.

To arrive at a perfect balance, Lassaigne blends the wines from different sites, using the freshness of the grapes from his east-facing vines higher on the slope in Le Cotet as an antidote, and to bring more citrus aromas of lemon and grapefruit.

According to Lassaigne, the saving grace of Montgueux is the Turonian chalk, which gives a saline minerality to the wine, ‘like the crystals of salt in a piece of aged Comté’.

Unlike some producers in Champagne, he has come to terms with the vinous side of his wines. ‘Some put the bubbles before the wine. I put the wine before the bubbles’. It is an almost Burgundian approach – he uses less yeast than most producers for the second fermentation (for the tirage) to have softer mousse and accentuate the wine-like character of his Champagne.

‘Nothing is added at all’ – Lassaigne’s winemaking philosophy

From 1970, Jacques began to hold back some bottles to sell locally, but these were still wine, not sparkling. Sparkling Champagne was not produced here until 1980.

Emmanuel joined his father in 1999, and his first solo vintage was in 2002. Although the domaine is not certified, he has continued to employ the organic methods used by his father in the vineyard. He points out that he uses no soil inputs (fertiliser, manure, or compost), herbicides, or insecticide (even organic), and all the rows are grassed over.

Lassaigne presses everything at his winery, including the grapes that he purchases. He uses an old Coquard press from the 1950s because he likes the control it gives him.

Approximately two-thirds of the juice is fermented in tank and one-third in barrels, both in large foudres and smaller casks made from local oak harvested near Troyes in the Forêt de Vauchassis.

As in the vineyards, ‘natural’ methods are used in the winery. Although he uses a small amount of sulphur under the press, no more is added during the winemaking process nor when the wine is disgorged.

In fact, nothing is added at all – the bottles are disgorged by hand to limit the loss of wine, and they are not topped up. No dosage has been added to any of the cuvées since 2012, and the wines are not filtered.

An eclectic range of cuvées

Lassaigne describes the range as having five types of cuvée. The entry point is called Les Vignes de Montgueux. This is the flagship of the house and among the most outstanding value wines anywhere in Champagne. There is also a single-vineyard, multi-vintage blend called Le Cotet; a cuvée fermented in barrel called La Colline Inspirée; a vintage cuvée fermented entirely in tank that is made every year; and a single-vineyard, barrel-fermented wine, the Clos Sainte-Sophie.

He purchases the fruit for this last wine from the Valton family, who have owned the Clos for a century. It was one of the favoured sites of Daniel Thibault, who bought all of the grapes from the 1.2-hectare vineyard. Lassaigne considers himself fortunate to purchase grapes from a third of this, which he began to vinify in 2010, making one of the best examples of a prestige cuvée from a grower.

Lassaigne loves to experiment. His description of his range is somewhat disingenuous since it ignores these experiments, which he calls ‘Cuvées Ephémères’, which can be one-offs or make periodic appearances. These are identified as ‘scenes’ belonging to different ‘acts’. Acte I refers to still wines (Coteaux Champenois), and Acte II was a series of non-vintage rosés that are now discontinued, while Acte III is a series of vintage-dated wines fermented in various types of barrel, including some purchased from natural wine producer Jean-François Ganevat in the Jura and others purchased from Cognac. Acte IV is consecrated to single-vineyard wines from the site La Grande Côte, while Acte V refers to skin contact wines.

Each of these is unique, a compelling example of the terroir of Montgueux, and a great reason to discover Champagne Jacques Lassaigne.

Champagne Jacques Lassaigne timeline

1964: Le Cotet planted

1970: Jacques Lassaigne begins to sell ‘Vin Nature de Champagne’ (precursor of Coteaux Champenois)

1980: First (sparkling) Champagnes were bottled from Le Cotet

1999: Emmanuel returns to assist his father

2002: Emmanuel’s first solo vintage

2004: First production of barrel-fermented La Colline Inspirée

2010: First vintage of the Clos Sainte-Sophie

2012: From this vintage, all the Champagnes are sold without dosage

The 10 Jacques Lassaigne Champagnes to try:

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