Stephane Regnault Champagne 'MixoLydien No 45' Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut NV

Certified Organic. 100% Chardonnay. Base vintage 2016, with reserve ’15 and ’14 blended. (65% 2016, 35% reserve wine). Native fermentation, with 2016 fermenting entirely in barrel. Completes malolactic. Aged on lees four years and ten months. Dosage 1 g/L. Disgorged May 2023. Taken from the single-vineyard Moulin (Grand Cru), planted in the 1970s. Moulin’s characteristics are: eastern exposure, thin topsoil supported by grass plantings, transitional horizon rich in chalk and fairly deep, subsoil of soft, fractured chalk. Work done in the vineyard taking lunar cycle into account; plant decoction used for vineyard treatments.

Regnault’s four hectares of Chardonnay are divided between a few highly-celebrated chalky terroirs in Le Mesnil, as well as the Grand Cru village Oger. Regnault takes a modern approach to the new estate wines at this domaine, identifying three specific lieu-dits to bottle separately: Chemin de Flavigny in Oger, Moulin on the border between Oger and Le Mesnil, and Hautes-Mottes in Le Mesnil. Since Stéphane returned home in 2007, the property was converted to organic farming, having been certified organic in 2020. Regnault now uses a number of biodynamic preparations as well: he mentions he’s interested in practices that allow for ‘respect of the soil and living things—an ecosystem is a whole of which the vine is only a part!’

 Each of Regnault’s three single-parcel cuvées are complex representations of the lieu-dits, multi-vintage wines on which he builds each year, as in a solera. For instance, his ‘Lydien No. 14’ was one of his first vintages, the 2014. The following cuvée is ‘Lydien No. 29,’ a blend of juice from ’14 + ’15 vintages, and so on. (Stéphane is also a jazz saxophone musician, hence the beautiful labels: visual representations of different modes in improvisational jazz. Each evokes the tone and structure of each wine.) Each drop of new wines, we are more and more impressed with how quickly (just over five or six vintages) Regnault is establishing himself as a virtuoso of his terroir.