Champagne Chavost Assemblage Brut Nature

In 2019, chef de caves Fabian Daviaux — great-grandson of a founding member of this 70-family cooperative — persuaded every grower in Chavot-Courcourt to convert to organic viticulture simultaneously, then stripped the winemaking back to nothing: no added sulphites at any stage, no dosage, no fining, no filtration, no chaptalization. For a cooperative, this is almost without precedent in Champagne AOC.

The 22 plots sit at the geographic junction of the Côte des Blancs and the Vallée de la Marne, where clay-limestone soils with chalky-limestone patches at an unclassified village elevation deliver both textural weight and the fine mineral tension that holds the wine together in the absence of dosage sugar. Vines average 35–60 years old; only 100% first-press cuvée juice is used — taille excluded entirely.

Base wines undergo spontaneous alcoholic fermentation at 17°C and spontaneous malolactic fermentation at 20°C, both with indigenous microflora, in thermoregulated stainless steel. Second fermentation proceeds in bottle without added liqueur de tirage sugar. Lees aging runs a minimum of approximately 20 months, building autolytic depth without the toasty richness of house-style Champagne.

The flagship blend — 47% Chardonnay / 47% Pinot Meunier / 6% Pinot Noir — gives Meunier equal billing with Chardonnay, a deliberate inversion of grande maison hierarchy that delivers red-fruit generosity and mid-palate texture the acid-only structure of Brut Nature would otherwise lack. Total SO₂ runs 6–18 mg/L naturally occurring — a fraction of the legal Brut Nature ceiling of 30 mg/L.