Three wines, the emblematic grape varieties of Champagne for three distinct parcels. With the debut of Les Chalmonts Extra Brut Vintage 2020, Joseph Perrier completes its Les Parcellaires collection, a project through which the Maison of Châlons‑en‑Champagne entrusts a single vineyard, a single variety and a single vintage with the task of revealing three different souls of Champagne. The new Premier Cru 100% Chardonnay joins the Pinot Noir from La Côte à Bras and the Meunier from Le Ciergelot, closing a trilogy built around the most intimate reading of the territory.
The presentation took place on 17 April, at the opening of Les Printemps de Champagne, during a lunch held directly in parcel AB302 in Cumières, where the cuvée is born — an event attended by WineCouture.
Les Chalmonts enriches Joseph Perrier’s Les Parcellaires collection
With Les Chalmonts, Joseph Perrier adds the third — though not necessarily the final — chapter to a collection created to highlight the purest expression of its terroirs. After the intensity of Pinot Noir and the generosity of Meunier, the project is completed with Chardonnay grown in Cumières, an origin less immediately associated with the white variety compared to other areas of the appellation, and precisely for this reason capable of offering a voice that is both personal and intimate.
The logic of Les Parcellaires is one of subtraction: at the centre is not blending — the foundational art of Champagne and the signature of the Maison’s Cuvée Royale Brut — but the desire to isolate essential elements. What emerges, therefore, is a parcel, a grape variety and a vintage. Each cuvée becomes a fragment of Joseph Perrier’s viticultural history and a tool for understanding how soil, exposure and variety interact in the creation of a great Champagne.
It is a complementary, not alternative, approach to the tradition of blending: while Cuvée Royale brings together the three main Champagne grapes in a comprehensive expression of the Maison’s style, Les Parcellaires separates their voices, allowing each to emerge with greater precision.
The debut in parcel AB302, where the wine is born
Presenting Les Chalmonts directly in the vineyard was not merely a scenic choice, although the “wow” effect was fully achieved. The lunch on 17 April, organised by the Fourmon family among the rows of parcel AB302 in Cumières, brought the wine back to its physical origin, transforming the launch into a direct dialogue between the glass and the landscape that generated it.
The parcel covers just 50 ares — half a hectare — overlooking the Marne, halfway up the slope with full southern exposure. Planted in 2007, it hosts exclusively Chardonnay grafted on 41B rootstock and trained using the Chablis pruning system. The clay‑limestone soil, the slope and natural ventilation favour slow, balanced ripening, while water drainage helps contain vigour and concentrate the grape’s expression.
Ground cover between the rows and mechanical soil management aim to preserve the parcel’s natural balance. Everything converges toward a precise goal: obtaining a wine capable of faithfully reading its place of origin without losing the finesse and tension that define Joseph Perrier’s style, today guided by the skilled hand of Chef de Cave Nathalie Laplaige.
Les Chalmonts 2020: a Premier Cru 100% Chardonnay from Cumières
Les Chalmonts Extra Brut Vintage 2020 comes from a single harvest and a single parcel. It is a Premier Cru 100% Chardonnay with a dosage of 3 g/L, chosen to support the wine without diminishing its freshness, fruit purity and mineral component.
Production of the first edition is extremely limited: 6,801 bottles and 224 magnums. A quantity that reflects both the small size of the parcel and the nature of the project itself — far from a logic of volume and instead built on the possibility of isolating and conveying a precise territorial identity.
The declared principle of the collection — one terroir, one grape, one vintage — finds one of its clearest formulations here: Les Chalmonts is not meant to be simply a pure Chardonnay, but the interpretation of the variety when it encounters this specific slope of Cumières, its soil, its exposure and the character of the 2020 vintage.
The 2020 vintage: between maturity and freshness
The 2020 season in Champagne was marked by varied climatic conditions. A cold winter was followed by a cool spring, which slowed flowering. A warm summer then favoured optimal grape development, while late‑season rains restored hydration to the vines.
The quality of the harvested grapes showed a balance between maturity and freshness that the Maison associates with great vintages. Harvesting began around 1 September and continued until the 16th, in a season that recorded a commercial yield of 8,000 kg/ha.
In the case of Les Chalmonts, the richness of the vintage does not translate into opulence. The wine retains a taut profile, supported by freshness and the mineral imprint of the parcel. It is precisely this combination of fruit maturity and precision that gives depth to the first edition of the cuvée and suggests its ageing potential.
Tasting Les Chalmonts Extra Brut Vintage 2020
Benjamin Fourmon, president and CEO of the Maison and representative of the sixth generation, summarises the meaning of the project:
“The Cuvée Les Chalmonts is the purest expression of our Chardonnay from Cumières: a single‑parcel wine, precise and finely chiselled, where the freshness of the terroir meets the elegance of time.”
Les Chalmonts is a wine with two dimensions: on one side the geographical precision of the parcel, on the other the time needed for the material to gain complexity and definition. Not a static photograph of the vineyard, but an interpretation destined to evolve.
In the glass, Les Chalmonts shows a lightly sustained golden hue, anticipating a profile that combines brightness and depth. The nose is elegant and mineral, initially articulated on notes of dried flowers, citrus and white fruits, with juicy pear particularly evident.
The palate entry is lively but not sharp. Freshness supports a flavourful, well‑balanced core, while the fruit expands toward more exotic, candy‑like hints. In the background emerges a nuance of dried grain bouquet, adding complexity and accompanying the development of the sip.
The finish retains drive and definition, supported by subtle citrus and grapefruit accents. The result is a Champagne capable of holding together tension and gourmandise, precision and aromatic openness: a reading of Chardonnay that does not renounce the maturity of the vintage but arranges it around freshness and minerality.
For pairing suggestions, the Maison recommends serving it with farm‑raised poultry accompanied by light cream and lemon zest, or with aged Parmigiano risotto with confit lemon — two combinations that complement its creamy component without losing harmony with its citrus freshness.
The Napoleonic cadastre becomes part of the story
The identity of the Cumières parcel also appears in the cuvée’s visual presentation. The bottle is wrapped in tissue paper reproducing the Napoleonic cadastral map, with the outline of Les Chalmonts highlighted and superimposed on the modern AB302 reference.
The current vineyard layout derives from a land consolidation carried out between 1968 and 1980, when several small portions were merged into a larger plot. The reference to the historical cadastre is therefore not merely decorative: it reconstructs the agricultural genealogy of the site and shows how the viticultural landscape is the result of a long relationship between land, ownership and human work.
In this perspective, as with predecessors La Côte à Bras and Le Ciergelot, the AB302 indication on the label gains additional meaning: not just a technical coordinate, but the geographical signature of a wine that seeks to make its origin visible even before being served.
Joseph Perrier: the last Maison of Châlons‑en‑Champagne
Joseph Perrier, today led by Benjamin Fourmon, is the last Champagne house based in Châlons‑en‑Champagne, where it was founded in 1825 by François‑Alexandre and Joseph Perrier. Family continuity is one of the pillars of its identity and has accompanied the Maison through two centuries of history — from recognition as supplier to the British royal family to the recent renewal of its range and hospitality spaces.
The estate vineyard covers 24 hectares, mostly on slopes along the Marne. Grapes are hand‑harvested and the vineyards are certified Viticulture Durable en Champagne and Haute Valeur Environnementale 3, within an approach the Maison describes as rooted in biodiversity and listening to nature.
The wines are aged in five kilometres of cellars carved into ancient Gallo‑Roman chalk quarries beneath the Petit‑Fagnières hill. The 84 light shafts and natural humidity and temperature conditions create the ideal environment for long bottle ageing, completing the relationship between place and time that Les Chalmonts brings to the forefront.
Les Parcellaires: three cuvées expressing Champagne’s plurality
With the arrival of Les Chalmonts, the Les Parcellaires collection reaches its first complete form, though not necessarily its final one. La Côte à Bras entrusted Pinot Noir with a first interpretation of the territory; Le Ciergelot explored the expressive potential of Meunier; Les Chalmonts refines the picture through Chardonnay from Cumières.
The goal was not simply to arrange the three main Champagne grapes in sequence, but to observe how each changes voice when tied to a specific parcel and a single vintage. The three bottles thus build a sensory map defined not by administrative boundaries but by differences in soil, exposure, ripening and varietal identity.
Distributed in Italy by Banfi, Les Chalmonts arrives on the market not to close a journey but to clearly indicate the direction taken by Joseph Perrier: telling the story of Champagne not only through the continuity of its style, but by immersing itself ever more deeply in the most vocated places that shape it. Because when a wine is born from half a hectare of vineyard and succeeds in conveying its character, the parcel itself becomes an essential part of the narrative.
