Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay

Food pairings: A superb aperitif, and even better with fresh oysters or white fish, which bring out its salinity.

Winemaking: Origines is the estate's Meunier-led calling card, a blend of Meunier and Chardonnay built half on the wine of the year and half on a perpetual reserve, a blend of earlier vintages refreshed every year. The grapes are harvested by hand, and Antonin Michel takes a hands-off approach in the cellar: the non-vintage wines are raised in stainless steel and concrete, kept at cool temperatures and go through malolactic fermentation, for Champagne of great purity and vivacity. Like all the estate's wines, it is bottled Extra Brut, with a very low dosage.

Vineyards and terroir: The family's small vineyard lies in the Coteaux Sud d'Épernay, spread across Moussy, Vinay, Brugny-Vaudancourt and Saint-Martin-d'Ablois, a corner of Champagne with a patchwork of chalk, clay, flint and marl subsoils. The vines are farmed organically with biodynamic influences: the soils are worked, some with a horse, no herbicides are used, mating disruption replaces insecticides, and most of the vines are massal selections kept to low yields.

Family and history: The estate comes from Antonin Michel's mother's side: his great-great-grandfather founded Wirth et Fils, which stopped producing when his grandfather Alain retired in 1999. In 2000 his mother Nathalie, a university biology professor, revived it as Wirth-Michel. On his father's side, Antonin's grandfather was José Michel, one of the pioneers of serious Meunier in Moussy. After wine-business studies and time at Leclerc Briant and with Olivier Lamy in Burgundy, Antonin took over in 2019, and he now makes the wines of both family houses.

In the pictures: The town hall and church of Moussy, the Wirth-Michel village south of Épernay (photo: G.Garitan, 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0). A winter street scene in Moussy, with the church of neighbouring Chavot on the hill behind (photo: G.Garitan, 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0).