J. Lassalle Champagne Brut 1er Cru "Cuvée Préférence" NV

Approx. 60% Pinot Meunier, 20% Chardonnay, 20% Pinot Noir

Jules Lassalle established this family-owned Champagne house in 1942 in the village of Chigny-Les-Roses on the Montagne de Reims. A master of his craft, he established a signature style of elegant, tightly knit wines. When he passed away in 1982 his wife, Olga, and their daughter, Chantal Decelle-Lassalle, stepped in and took over the estate, upholding Jules’s high standards and progressively pushing the domaine to the next level. In 2006 Chantal’s daughter, Angéline Templier, joined the estate as winemaker. Their twenty-eight-year tradition of “une femme, un esprit, un style” (one woman, one spirit, one style) holds true today more than ever.

Champagne J. Lassalle works with all three varietals authorized in the region (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier) on sixteen hectares of vineyards, all of them premier cru. These tough, hardworking women continue to follow the vinification methods established by Jules in the forties: they use the same wooden basket press he installed in the winery over fifty years ago, pressing and vinifying the individual plots separately. It is one of the rare Champagnes that has been allowed to finish its malolactic fermentation, just like the great whites from the Côte d’Or, and all cuvées are aged extensively once in bottle—even the non-vintage cuvées, which are a minimum of five years old. This results in an astonishing complexity and depth from the beginning of their range up to the luxury cuvées.