Champagne Remi Leroy Rose de Saignee Les Crots

When Rémi Leroy returned to his family's Côte des Bar estate in 2006 after completing a Masters in Oenology at Bordeaux, he made a deliberate choice to vinify every parcel separately — a Burgundian discipline almost unheard of at this scale in the Aube. Les Crots is a saignée rosé, meaning colour and structure come from skin contact with Pinot Noir rather than from blending in still red wine — a technically demanding route that demands riper, more carefully selected fruit. The vineyards sit across Meurville, Bergères, and Fontaine on Kimmeridgian clay-limestone (Jurassic), the same geological seam that defines Chablis, delivering a saline, chiselled mineral tension that distinguishes Aube fruit from the chalk-driven Marne. Grapes are pressed on a PAI horizontal Coquard press, with must moved entirely by gravity to limit oxidation and SO₂ intervention; fermentation proceeds with indigenous yeasts in used Burgundian barrels sourced from Hubert Lamy (St-Aubin) and Thomas Pico (Chablis), 300–400 L. Full malolactic fermentation is carried through, and the wine rests on lees well beyond appellation minimums before disgorgement. What sets this expression apart is the saignée method itself: in a region where rosé de assemblage dominates, Leroy's skin-contact approach extracts genuine structural tannin and depth of colour from the 2018 growing season. The 2018 vintage delivered exceptional ripeness and natural concentration across the Aube, lending the wine a generous, fruit-forward core balanced by the site's inherent limestone tension; drink now through 2028.