Domaine Alice & Quentin Beaufort

Alice and Quentin Beaufort come to us from seriously good wine stock and have continued the esteemed work of Quentin’s predecessors, the Champagne producers Andre and Jacques Beaufort. It is important to note that the Beauforts had also introduced organic viticulture to the estate in 1971, which makes one of the earliest adopters in the appellation and has definitely had a positive effect on the work that Alice and Quentin have gone on to do. Quentin joined his father Jacques at the family domain as the winemaker, before branching out on his own.

Quentin is based in the village of Polisy, in the Aube and produces Champagne under his eponymous label, but in 2007 he was offered  vineyards in the Châtillonnais region, just south of the Aube. They did so with a 1.5 hectare vineyard in the North-Easterly tip of Burgundy’s Côte d'Or at Prusly-sur-Once. Technically, the two sparkling wines they make here - Le Petit Beaufort and Le Petit Beaufort Grand Charme - fall into the Crémant de Bourgogne appellation. Despite sitting just outside of the Champagne boundaries, the terroir here is almost identical to that of the family-run domain at Polisy, just 23 kilometres north of them. Whilst producing such Champagne-esque wines, it does also allow them to be more free in their winemaking approach.

What Alice and Quentin have created is really as artisan as it gets; every bottle is disgorged by hand (our order was entirely disgorged this way one week before collection). The wines have zero dosage which really helps the terroir sing and that vital, razor-sharp poise to shine.