Dhondt-Grellet

"One of the finest producers of contemporary Champagne is Adrien Dhondt, whose cellars are located in Flavigny, a village that isn’t even planted with vines. This small estate came into being in 1986, when Adrien’s father, Éric Dhondt, married his mother, Édith Grellet. The Dhondts were Belgian farmers in origin, and Adrien's grandfather had purchased vines in the Sézannais in 1972; the Grellets, by contrast, are natives of Cuis and Cramant. Today, the domaine farms seven hectares, and the vinous, intensely characterful Champagnes that Adrien has been producing since he took the reins in 2012 have earned the estate a celebrity disproportionate to its modest scale.

A self-taught person whose methods are informed by his own experiments and the work of vignerons he admires in Burgundy and Champagne, he believes in living soils and grapes harvested at full maturity. He employs no synthetic products of any kind, cultivating his soils and increasingly raising the trellising to deliver bigger canopies and experimenting with algae treatments against mildew to reduce the use of copper. Dhondt prunes short and debuds severely to limit yields and produce ripe, concentrated fruit at harvest time, a commitment that’s immediately evident in the glass.

While they each have a distinctive personality, all of the bottlings are concentrated and vinous, with their expressive fruit tones framed by a complex patina from sur lie maturation in barrel. And though they’re finished with minimal dosage (all of the wines are bottled with less than three grams of dosage), these are generous, expansive Champagnes that are delicious on their own but equally suggestive of aging potential. Today, Dhondt numbers among most exciting vignerons in the region, and readers who share the admiration for Champagne’s ongoing artisanal wine-growing movement will want to seek out a few bottles with urgency." - Kristaps Karklins, robertparker.com