100% Pinot Meunier

Food pairings: A perfect aperitif with oysters, light seafood or charcuterie and salty appetizers; it is also lovely with fish, shellfish, fresh cheeses and brunch fare.

Winemaking: Although labelled without a vintage, each release comes from a single harvest. The wine is fermented with ambient yeasts and aged on its fine lees in 600-litre barrels, without malolactic fermentation and with no intervention until bottling, and it is not filtered. It then rests about two years on its lees in bottle and receives an Extra Brut dosage of just 2 g/L. The house rests its Champagnes at least six months after disgorgement before release.

Vineyards and terroir: "The quintessence of our Meuniers of Moussy", in the Coteaux Sud d'Épernay. The fruit comes from three massal-selection plots planted by the family's first generation of growers: "Les Marlaines" and "Les Bas Pouilleux" (both 1955) and "Les Hauts Pouilleux" (1964). The silty soils hold flint and millstone, over a subsoil of Campanian chalk. The vines are farmed without chemical herbicides or insecticides, with organic practices, biodynamic influences and some horse ploughing.

Family and history: Five generations have succeeded one another since the estate was founded by Raoul Bouché. When Alain Wirth stopped making wine in 1999, his daughter Nathalie Michel, a biology professor, chose to keep the family domaine, made her first wine in 2000 and renamed it Wirth-Michel. Her son Antonin Michel, grandson on his father's side of the Meunier pioneer José Michel, studied wine business, trained at Leclerc Briant and with Olivier Lamy in Burgundy, and came home to take over the estate in January 2019.

In the pictures: The hilltop church of Chavot among the vines, with the village of Moussy below (photo: Monalixa, 2009, CC BY-SA 3.0). The town hall and church of Moussy (photo: G.Garitan, 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0).