Roses de Jeanne Cote de Bechalin

When Cédric Bouchard founded Roses de Jeanne in 2000, he became the first grower in the Aube to bottle a single-vineyard, single-vintage Champagne — a Burgundian parcellaire logic applied to a region historically dismissed as peripheral. The Côte de Béchalin is that philosophy distilled to its most austere form.

The Côte des Bar sits on Kimmeridgian clay-limestone — the same marine-fossil bedrock that defines Chablis, roughly 20 km from the Burgundy border — delivering the saline, chalky tension that runs through every Bouchard wine. Yields are held to an extreme 20–30 hl/ha, less than a third of the regional norm, concentrating the fruit to a density unusual for Champagne.

Vinification is uncompromising: first-pressing juice only (tailles discarded), indigenous yeast fermentation in stainless steel with no oak contact at any stage, malolactic fermentation completed, then approximately 10 months on lees in cuve before tirage. Second fermentation targets just ≈3.75–4.25 bars — against the appellation standard of 6 — via a reduced liqueur de tirage of ~15 g/l, producing a mousse so soft and integrated it dissolves into the wine's body. Bottled unfined, unfiltered, zero dosage.

The deliberate suppression of pressure is the technical transgression that defines this house: Bouchard recommends serving in a Burgundy glass, not a flute, and even light decanting — instructions that no conventional Champagne producer would sanction.

As a non-vintage release, Côte de Béchalin draws on the concentrated, vinous character that Bouchard's extreme viticulture produces across harvests; the up-to-three-year sur lattes aging adds autolytic depth without obscuring the Kimmeridgian mineral spine. Drink now through 5+ years.