NV Stephane Regnault - Champagne Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Lydien N62 (750ml)

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Stéphane Regnault’s story is a colorful one: he was an aerospace engineer in his early career, who later transitioned to the wine world and worked as a sommelier in high-end restaurants in Paris and London.

Stéphane is also a passionate jazz saxophonist, hence his beautiful labels: they are visual representations of different modes in improvisational jazz, that evoke the tone and structure of each wine.

His family’s four hectares of Chardonnay are divided equally between a few highly reputed chalky terroirs in their home village of Le Mesnil as well as the Grand Cru village of Oger.

Growing up in the Grand Cru village of Le Mesnil, Stéphane’s family used to sell all their grapes to large houses, but in 2007 after years of working in different industries Stéphane returned home determined to make his own wines, and he immediately set about making changes.  

Stéphane felt very strongly about ‘bringing life back to the vines’, and began to gradually implement organic farming. The property has now been certified organic since 2020, and Stéphane uses a number of biodynamic preparations as well: he is interested in practices that decrease sulfur and copper applications in the vineyard, and 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 site, 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. This is also pure Chardonnay. The vines are 35-50 years old on light chalky soils. Hand harvested. Fermentation and aging ⅓ in used barrels, and ⅔ in stainless steel tanks. Malolactic fermentation is neither encouraged nor blocked – it generally occurs in the barrels, but not in the tanks. Disgorged after a minimum of 30 months. 1g/L dosage, qualifies as Brut Nature.