Charles Dufour & Françoise Martinot 'Bistrotage' B.19 Champagne 750ml

Say what you do, do what you say, runs the Dufour house motto; B.19 obliges: one village, one grape, one harvest, zero dosage, more than five years in bottle.

Françoise Martinot is the récoltant-manipulant label of Charles Dufour's mother, Françoise Martinot-Dufour, who remains its head. According to the Japanese importer Nouvelles Sélections the estate holds 3.5 hectares of Pinot Noir split between Chervey and Neuville-sur-Seine in the Aube, farmed organically and biodynamically with Ecocert certification since 2010, the same year the Dufour vines were certified. Charles does the farming and the winemaking in practice, and the Bistrotage range went on sale under this name from 2019. Sager + Wine, the UK importer, calls him a breakout name in natural wine who has bottled fruit from the family parcels under his mother's name since 2010.

B.19 is a Blanc de Noirs from the Chervey parcels alone: Pinot Noir on clay-limestone and Kimmeridgian soils, vines averaging 35 years, cropped at 40 hl/ha, with the base wine drawn entirely from the 2019 harvest. Nouvelles Sélections lists the vinification as half in stainless steel and half in 228-litre Burgundy barrels, with twelve months on the lees before bottling; Sager + Wine adds that the whole bunches fermented spontaneously, that the tirage took place in October 2020, and that disgorgement followed in June 2024. That adds up to more than five years in bottle, and the wine was released with zero dosage. Ukiuki Wine's listing records no added sulphur as well.

The label itself spells the name Bistrøtage with a slashed Ø, under a wax-dipped capsule, and the importer notes that every bottle in the Dufour cellar is riddled by hand after malolactic fermentation.

In the glass

A French wine writer quoted on Ukiuki Wine's listing describes a golden colour with a fine, abundant mousse, aromas of baked apple and fig set against toasted almond, honey and caramel, a light oxidative thread folded into the whole, and a creamy mouthfeel that gives way to a lively, savoury finish. Nouvelles Sélections, for its part, likens Charles Dufour's wines to a jazz ballad rather than a fanfare, sensual and inward-looking, and B.19 sits squarely in that register.

When to open

No producer drinking window is published. Our suggestion: disgorged in June 2024 and undosed, it is ready now and should hold for several years; serve around 10 degrees in a white-wine glass rather than a flute.

At the table

Our suggestion: a dish rather than an aperitif, as the writer quoted by Ukiuki Wine frames it; roast poultry, aged Comté or a pork terrine suit its weight.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Nouvelles Sélections (Japanese importer); Sager + Wine (UK importer); Ukiuki Wine (Japanese retailer); label photo