2022 Etienne Calsac Coteaux Champenois ‘Photogramme’, Champagne, France

This still wine sees seven months of skin-contact prior to bottling. The leaf on the front label is a cyanotype of an Arbane leaf. All farmed orginally Organic. 50% Pinot Blanc, 43% Petit Meslier, 7% Arbanne. The Coteaux Champenoise is a still version of the Revenants using the same grape mix from the same plot. In 2010, just as he was beginning to produce his own Champagne, Etienne planted a little less than half a hectare of his familys vineyards in the Cte de Sezanne with the forgotten Champagne grapes: Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meslier, and Arbane. The vineyard in which he planted, called Les Fours (French for the ovens), is located in the town of Montgenost and is south facing and sits on sandy topsoil with chalk beneath the sand. This combination allows for earlier ripening, something thats key with a grape like Arbane.

Think Cote des Blancs but slightly warmer. He pressed it at the same time as the Revenants into one 350 liter neutral barrel. He then put in 30 kg of individual whole berries into the barrel with the pressed juice and let it ferment for about 7 months before racking off into bottle where its bottled unfined and unfiltered with no SO2 added.