Helen Charbaut 2022

This is our first offer from Hélène Charbaut, and I have a feeling it won’t be our last. The more I’ve learned about her as a grower, the more interesting she gets. She’s the fourth generation of her family in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and after studying viticulture and working with producers like Leclerc Briant and Péhu-Simonet, she returned to Champagne and launched her own label with the 2020 vintage but Hélène is doing things very much her own way. 

She works on a tiny scale, farms individual parcels across Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, Bisseuil and Avenay-Val-d’Or, and has become almost obsessive about understanding each site on its own. 

Charbaut introduced sheep into the vineyards as part of an eco-grazing project to manage vegetation naturally, preserve the soils and encourage biodiversity. The idea caught on with neighboring growers, and what started in her own vineyards eventually grew into a small grazing cooperative. She works with cover crops, follows the lunar calendar in parts of her vineyard work, and seems to have a real curiosity about what she can learn from each individual parcel. 

This attention to detail is what initially drew me to her wines. Today’s offer comes from 2022, a vintage that brought excellent ripeness with the best wines retaining the acidity and freshness to keep everything in balance—something Hélène captured really well in these wines. Working parcel by parcel and bottling individual varieties allows that generosity to come through without losing the character of each site and that’s what makes these three 2022s so much fun to put next to each other. One vintage, three Premier Cru Champagnes, and three very different looks at what Hélène is doing. For our first offer from the domaine, I can’t think of a better way to introduce her wines.