Le Jour LJ20, Non Dosé Premier Cru

A Champagne from a single plot, a single grape variety and zero grams of dosage: here Cyril Bonnet puts Pinot Meunier alone in the spotlight. In the glass it is relatively pale, with a nutty shimmer veering toward copper. The nose is distinctly nutty, with hazelnut, nougat and nut paste, carrying a warm, toasty depth, followed by pale rolling tobacco, grapefruit, wet flint and a touch of linoleum.

The Premier Cru site "Le Jour" lies in Vrigny in the Montagne de Reims, on clay-loam soil over limestone. It is the estate's oldest and largest Meunier plot; for this cuvée only a particularly old core area of around 0.2 hectares, with vines about 65 years old, is selected. Bonnet-Ponson is based in Chamery, farms 10.5 hectares across around 50 parcels, and traces its history back to 1862, when Grégoire Bonnet became the village's first récoltant-manipulant.

Pure Pinot Meunier. In the 2020 vintage, only the cuvée and first pressing were used; fermentation happened spontaneously, and the wine was aged for nine months, mostly in 400-litre barrels of varying age. Neither fined nor filtered, with no added sulphur, aged dry at 12.0% ABV.

The attack is saline and sinewy, with creamy nut paste and crème pâtissière, followed by milk chocolate and café au lait, turning toward spicy, austere notes of tobacco. Dried red apple meets mace and a touch of red pepper. The phenolics grip well, with the mousse glittering finely in the background.

In total, only around 1,500 to 2,000 bottles were produced. The vineyards have been farmed organically since 2013, with ground cover, agroforestry approaches and phytotherapy.