Blanc de Blancs Champagne

Up to the 1860s the grape now known as Chardonnay was identified together with Pinot Blanc under the general name 'Pineau Blanc', and 100% Chardonnay Champagne only flourished in the second half of the 20th century. From the beginning of the 20th century three varieties, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Meunier, were selected for their balance of sugar and acidity and their aptitude for sparkling wine. Salon's first vintage was 1905, created by Eugène-Aimé Salon from the Chardonnay of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, initially for his personal pleasure; it was not until the 1920s that he shared it with the rest of the world.

• In his 1966 book Wine, Hugh Johnson still considered 100% Chardonnay Champagnes 'new-fangled'
• Just 37 vintages of Salon were produced in the 20th century, and Salon 2015 is the house's forty-fifth vintage
• In 1971 Rémi and Henri Krug secured vineyards in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, including the walled Clos du Mesnil; the 1979 harvest was, in Krug's own account, so outstanding that the brothers made a champagne exclusively from the Clos, presented for the first time in 1986
• Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs has been produced in forty-two vintages since 1952

Champagne lies in north-eastern France: the PDO Champagne area covers municipalities in the departments of Aisne, Aube, Haute-Marne, Marne and Seine-et-Marne. The Côte des Blancs is one of Champagne's four main wine-growing sub-regions, named after its main white grape variety, Chardonnay. It extends from the north-east of the area under vine to the south-west, at right angles to the Marne Valley: a rolling landscape of slopes and hilltops 6 to 9 miles long whose chalk cliffs are particularly well suited to Chardonnay. From the villages of Chouilly, Cramant, Cuis and Oiry, a single, largely east-facing bank of Cretaceous-era chalk meanders southwards for 20km, through Avize, Oger, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Vertus. Chalk is highly porous and acts as a reservoir storing 300-400 litres of water per cubic metre, which gives the vines a steady supply of water even in the driest summers.

• Chardonnay is mainly grown in the Côte des Blancs as well as the Côte de Sézanne
• Much of the Côte faces east, meeting Chardonnay's need for early morning sun to ward off frost while avoiding fully intense southern exposures
• Chalk draws in water through capillary action, naturally regulating the vine's water consumption and helping achieve a balance of ripeness, acidity and berry aroma potential
• Champagne has a dual climate with both oceanic and continental influences and an average annual temperature of 11°C

Champagne has three main grape varieties, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier, and five other varieties are also authorised within the AOC area: Arbane, Petit Meslier, Chardonnay Rose, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris. A Blanc de Blancs blends one or more white varieties such as Chardonnay, Arbane, Petit Meslier, Pinot Blanc or Pinot Gris. Chardonnay is a robust, early-ripening variety particularly well suited to chalk outcrops such as the Côte des Blancs; it tends to yield delicately fragrant wines with floral, citrus and sometimes mineral notes, and the Comité Champagne calls it an ideal grape for wines that age well. The larger houses blend their top blanc de blancs largely from Côte des Blancs fruit, while entry-level examples tend to blend in less expensive Chardonnay from elsewhere in Champagne. How it is made: a primary fermentation in tanks turns the must into wine; the wine is then bottled with a liqueur de tirage, a mixture of still wine, sugar and yeast, and the yeast consumes the sugar, releasing alcohol and bubbles in a second fermentation. The bottles then mature in the cellars, where a steady temperature of around 12°C is crucial for the best ageing conditions. Riddling (remuage) loosens the sediment so that it collects in the neck of the bottle; done by hand, it takes 4-6 weeks and on average 25 turns per bottle. To disgorge, the bottle neck is plunged in a solution at approximately -27°C so the sediment freezes into a plug, although large bottles and certain cuvées are still disgorged by hand. Immediately after disgorgement, the bottle is topped up with a dosage liqueur, a mixture of cane sugar and wine.

• Arbane, Petit Meslier, Chardonnay Rose, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris may only account for 0.3% of the area under vine
• Chardonnay Rose was listed among the appellation's authorized grape varieties in 2025
• Maturation on lees combines yeast autolysis and slow oxidation, which give the wine tertiary aromas of maturity and fullness
• At Salon there is no oak and no malolactic fermentation, and the wine ages on lees for around a decade

Decanter names Krug's Clos du Mesnil and the house of Salon, both in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, as two of Champagne's rarest blanc de blancs. Clos du Mesnil is a 1.84-hectare vineyard overlooked by the village church and protected by walls since 1698, made only in years when Krug's Tasting Committee determines the climate reveals the purest expression of Chardonnay. Salon comes from a single one-hectare plot called 'the Salon garden' and nineteen other small plots in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs ages for ten years in the Gallo-Roman chalk cellars of Saint-Nicaise.

• Champagne Salon is run alongside its sister house, Champagne Delamotte
• When Krug decides against making a Clos du Mesnil, the wine may instead go into the blends of Krug Grande Cuvée or Krug Rosé
• Decanter credits the Chétillon vineyard in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger with catapulting Pierre Péters' Les Chétillons to a fame few grower Champagnes attained during the 2000s
• Decanter's 2024 Côte des Blancs report lists Agrapart, Corbon, De Sousa and Jacques Selosse among the key producers of Avize

AOC Champagne is reserved for white or rosé sparkling wines, and white Champagne is made from a blend of white and black grapes, from white grapes only (blanc de blancs) or from black grapes only (blanc de noirs). The 'grand cru' and 'premier cru' mentions attach to communes: 'grand cru' applies to wines from grapes harvested in 17 named Marne communes and 'premier cru' to those 17 plus 42 further communes. The Decree of 1 July 1952 introduced the terms, and when the INAO scrapped the Champagne cru scale in 2010, communes that had held a 'grand cru' or 'premier cru' designation could retain it. Wines reach consumers only after at least fifteen months of ageing from tirage, and vintage wines after at least thirty-six months. The wines are made exclusively by secondary fermentation in glass bottles.

• Any harvesting method that does not allow whole bunches to be picked is forbidden, and the grapes are transported whole to the press; Champagne is made from hand-harvested grapes
• A grape variety may be named on the label only if all the grapes used to make the base wines were of that variety
• A Champagne brut contains less than 12 grams of sugar per litre, and a brut nature less than 3 grams per litre with no added sugar
• In practice the statutory timeframe is nearly always longer: 2-3 years for non-vintage wines and 4-10 years for vintage Champagne

The Comité Champagne's wine trail around Épernay stops at Chouilly, with its Garden of Vines open-air museum; Cramant, with a panoramic look-out over the vineyards; and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, a key destination in the Côte des Blancs growing area, with the Clos Saint-Vincent vineyard and views over the historic Clos du Mesnil. The six villages of Avize, Chouilly, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger and Oiry are all included in the Champagne Trail driving tour, and the Côte des Blancs section is manageable in a day or two.

• Épernay, where the trail begins, is 40 minutes from Reims, and its Avenue de Champagne is lined with Champagne Houses
• From Le Mont Aimé, near Bergères-lès-Vertus, visitors look out over the Champagne plains and the Côte des Blancs with its chalky soils
• The Champagne Trail driving tour covers more than 400km of signposted ways across the region
• The harvest used to start in September, but with climate change picking dates are starting increasingly earlier

Primary sources (Comité Champagne, INAO and the European Union): https://www.champagne.fr/en/champagne-tasting/type-of-champagne/blanc-de-blancs, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/a-great-blended-wine/champagne-and-its-grape-varieties, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/a-great-blended-wine/the-champagne-region, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/the-champagne-terroir/champagne-and-its-soil, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/the-champagne-terroir/champagne-and-its-climate, https://www.inao.gouv.fr/produit/champagne-21054, https://www.champagne.fr/en/champagne-frequently-asked-questions?nid=608, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/how-champagne-is-made/dosage, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/how-champagne-is-made/maturation, https://www.champagne.fr/en/visit-champagne/the-champagne-region/champagne-wine-trails/epernay-and-its-region, https://www.champagne.fr/en/champagne-frequently-asked-questions, https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/eambrosia-api/api/v1/attachments/8209, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019R0033, https://www.champagne.fr/en/glossary, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/how-champagne-is-made/bottling-and-second-fermentation, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/how-champagne-is-made/riddling, https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/how-champagne-is-made/disgorgement, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/C/2024/7445/oj/eng. Producer sources (own sites, for each producer's own facts): https://www.krug.com/en-us/krug-clos-du-mesnil, https://www.champagne-salon.fr/en, https://www.taittinger.com/en/champagnes/comtes-de-champagne-blanc-de-blancs. Secondary sources: https://www.decanter.com/premium/champagne-report-2024-latest-releases-from-the-cote-des-blancs-533753/, https://www.decanter.com/wine/champagne/why-le-mesnil-sur-oger-yields-champagnes-of-mythical-renown/, https://www.decanter.com/wine-travel/france/cote-des-blancs-wineries-to-visit-417753/. Last verified 2026-11-09