Franck Bonville "Blanc de Blancs Brut Grand Cru" Champagne, France NV

FROM ROSENTHAL:

THE WINE: With their flagship Blanc de Blancs, Bonville aims for a blend of finesse, precision, and the regal breadth Chardonnay in these great sites can achieve. In that spirit, the vineyard sources, proportions of reserve wines, and dosage levels can change from year to year. Our current bottling blends 70% from the 2020 harvest with 30% from the 2019 harvest, from various holdings in the grand crus Avize and Oger; it was disgorged after two years of lees aging and given a dosage—determined through blind tasting trials—of 8.3 grams per liter. Reading much drier on the palate than the dosage might suggest, this offers pretty notes of white flowers atop ample but refined fruit and an underlying impression of gunflint.

THE PRODUCER: The Franck Bonville estate in Avize has been producing wine from their holdings in Avize, Oger, and Le Mesnil sur Oger for four generations, and today Olivier Bonville, along with his son-in-law Ferdinand Ruelle-Dudel, are guiding the 15-hectare domaine toward ever more precise and distinctive renderings of these terroirs.

The great terroirs of Champagne’s Côte des Blancs give birth to wines of well-deserved renown, and it is here—on the slopes of grand crus like Avize, Cramant, Le Mesnil sur Oger, and Oger—that Chardonnay (comprising 95% of the total vineyard area) achieves an unparalleled combination of finesse, power, and longevity. Of course, much of the fruit from these hallowed villages finds its way into the blends of the big houses, where their distinct characters are subsumed within the consistency-above-all nature of these massively scaled products. Thankfully, as in other subregions of Champagne, a growing number of vignerons are producing increasingly terroir-dominant wines, prioritizing the individuality of each cru and the variability of each growing season.

The Franck Bonville estate in Avize has been producing wine from their holdings in Avize, Oger, and Le Mesnil sur Oger for four generations, and today Olivier Bonville, along with his son-in-law Ferdinand Ruelle-Dudel, are guiding the 15-hectare domaine toward ever more precise and distinctive renderings of these terroirs. Currently certified Haute Valeur Environnementale, they have eschewed the use of chemical herbicides and pesticides for over a decade now, and they are currently converting their 77 assorted parcels to fully organic viticulture bit by bit.