Champagne CH Piconnet
Champagne, the place, presents some truly mind-boggling numbers. Consider these: Across more than 35,000 hectares, 319 villages, 280,000 parcels, and more than 19,000 growers, we can find finished wine from nearly 1000 different wineries and winemakers. That's nuts. Over the years we've probably tasted wine from 200 of them, in order to have ultimately chosen the 20 we work with. And that means that we’ve barely yet touched 20% of the whole lot! (which also suggests that there's a lot more work to do!)
This is why over the years we’ve come to rely on some people "in the know"- some passionate locals, if you will, that live and breathe Champagne during the weeks of the year that we’re not out there poking around.
One of our "go to" guys is Pierre-Yves, the sometimes grumpy but always forthcoming proprietor of 520 Wines in Epernay. He seems to be the first to know about what's hot and new, and popping in on him guarantees that we’ll always at least be second on some of his new discoveries (he introduced us to Étienne Sandrin a few years back). And so it was, that on a sunny Saturday morning in November 2022, we finished some food shopping at the lovely covered market in Épernay and wandered 100 meters down the road to see Pierre-Yves, and check out what he was pouring.
He nodded bonjour upon our arrival and simply pointed to the husky young man at the tasting table, gesturing a little thumbs up. And from there, the affable, endearing Clément Piconnet took over.
Clément poured us a range of wines that went from: "Huh, that's pretty damn good, all the way through to, WOW, this is fantastic! And following the tasting, I just couldn't mince words with him and posed the question right away. "Do you have an importer in the US?" Ne rien, he replied. Perfect. Let's get to work!
We departed the wine shop, with an appointment to see Clément and Agathe (his wife) in Neuville-sur-Seine a week later, and properly enjoyed a few of his bottles over the course of our week at our Airbnb in Épernay. It was a little bit of a Piconnet show the whole time, and every retaste proved at least one thing--we weren't wrong!
Clement’s vineyards in the Aube region of Champagne are some of the most beautiful for Pinot Noir in our portfolio. His range of Blanc de Noirs, Rosé, and a few gorgeous Blanc de Blancs (some made with Pinot Blanc!) will graces these pages for years to come!