La Haute Lemblé

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 the Champenois establishment had long dismissed as peripheral. La Haute Lemblé, planted in 2002, is among his youngest lieux-dits, situated in the Vallée de l'Ource on Kimmeridgian clay-limestone soils — the same geological formation that defines Chablis — roughly 20 km from the Burgundy border. That marine-fossil bedrock drives the wine's signature saline tension and chalky mineral spine.

Vinification is deliberately austere: hand-harvested, foot-trodden fruit; only first-pressing cuvée juice; indigenous yeast fermentation in stainless steel with no oak contact at any stage; malolactic fermentation completed; unfined and unfiltered. Yields are held at an extreme 20–30 hl/ha — under a third of the regional norm — concentrating the Pinot Noir to a density unusual for the appellation. Tirage is dosed to target just ~4 bars of pressure versus the standard 6, producing a mousse so soft and integrated that Bouchard recommends serving in a Burgundy glass, not a flute.

The special feature here is structural: zero dosage on a wine of this concentration means every gram of residual perception comes from the fruit and terroir alone, with no sugar correction. The result is a vinous, saline Champagne that drinks closer to a still white Burgundy than to any conventional fizz.