Elise Dechannes Champagne Liberté 2018 750ml

One 228-litre barrel and 262 bottles a year: Liberté is the smallest sparkling cuvée in the Élise Dechannes cellar, and its name means exactly what it says.

Élise Dechannes farms five hectares in Les Riceys, the southernmost village of Champagne, where her family has grown grapes since 1905. She took over in 2008, leaving a banking career to set up as a récoltant-manipulant, moved the estate to organic farming in 2015 (Ecocert certified 2018) and to biodynamics in 2019 (Demeter 2021). Her Japanese importer Nouvelles Sélections records the cellar habits behind every cuvée: no destemming, fermentation on native yeasts as a rule, and dosage, where any is used, from concentrated grape must.

Liberté is a blanc de noirs from Pinot Noir grown on the thick Kimmeridgian marl that Les Riceys shares with Chablis, from vines averaging fifty years of age. Where the estate's Essentielle is raised in steel and the two Absolue cuvées in sandstone and terracotta amphorae, Liberté is fermented and raised in a single 228-litre barrel, then rests three years in bottle before release. The importer lists the output at 262 bottles a year, which is to say one barrel, and the 2018 was sold in Japan as a Brut Nature.

Dechannes explains the switch to organic farming in personal terms. After her divorce she was raising two children alone on the income of those five hectares and decided the vines had to be looked after better, against the loud objections of her father. She says the soil turned soft and alive once the sprays stopped, the vines became more resistant to disease, and the same father now helps in the vineyard every day, whistling through the hardest jobs.

In the glass

We could not verify a published critic note for the 2018, so we defer to the grower. Dechannes describes her Les Riceys fruit as carrying a generous saline minerality from the Kimmeridgian soils and says she works in steel, amphora and barrel to show that site in different ways; Liberté is the barrel version. In the importer's notes, sandstone amphora brings freshness and length and terracotta a rounder palate, while the barrel is the vessel she reserves for this cuvée alone, with three years on lees and no dosage on this release.

When to open

Our suggestion: the wine was released after three years in bottle and the 2018 is now several years past that, so open it without further waiting; serve at 10 to 12 °C in a white-wine glass rather than a flute.

At the table

Our suggestion: roast poultry, a whole baked fish or aged Comté; this is a blanc de noirs with the weight for a main course.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Nouvelles Sélections (Japanese importer); Umemura; Chai Yoshizawa