Champagne Pertois-Moriset
Champagne Pertois-Moriset was born in 1951 with the marriage of Yves Pertois and Janine Moriset, each of them offspring of vigneron families in Champagne’s Côte des Blancs that go back several generations. Is is now their granddaughter Cécile and her husband Vincent Bauchet who have taken over the estate and turned it into one of the most exciting new producers in the region.
This is not a tiny operation - Pertois-Moriset has 45.69 acres of vines, a whopping 29.64 acres of which are Grand Cru Chardonnay in the legendary villages of Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger, Cramant and Chouilly - Champagne’s “High Rent District”. (Grapes from here are the most sought-after and most expensive in Champagne, if not the world.) Despite their impressive holdings, it seems the estate historically steered a middle-of-the-road course, with old-school wines that were fine but not outstanding.
Enter Vincent et Cécile, who have poured massive resources into the estate. They’ve built a state of the art new winery and barrel cellar, a huge new bottle cellar, and have doubled the workforce in the vineyards to improve quality and work organically. They have the region’s first all-electric tractors (the Tesla of the vineyards?), a lovely modern tasting facility, and have completely re-thought and re-vamped their entire production from the ground up.
As of 2018 the new Pertois-Moriset has essentially nothing to do with what came before - it’s a whole new ballgame. New cuvées, new winemaking protocols, new labels, new bottles, even. Most importantly, a new level of quality in the wines that I found absolutely irresistible. We’re honored to be the very first importer anywhere on the planet to introduce the all-new Champagne Pertois-Moriset.
Since we started our import adventures in 2005, I’ve been looking for a great, emerging producer in the Côte des Blancs, and found it a daunting task. The sky-high prices that growers there get for their grapes leads many of them to take the easier road and sell all their fruit to the big negociants, thus there have been fewer cutting-edge, dynamic producers there. It only took me 12 years, but with Vincent and Cécile, I’ve found it. Game on!