CHAMPAGNE’S PLAYGROUND
The Côte des Bar is Champagne’s laboratory. Everywhere you look, growers are experimenting with new blends and techniques, often out of sheer curiosity and always with plenty of conviction.
A revival of historic grape varieties, organic and biodynamic practices, single-vineyard wines, egg-shaped tanks, amphorae, soleras—it’s all here. Even big companies get in on the fun.
The Côte des Bar is in the Aube department, which is the southernmost region for Champagne production and the biggest hemp grower in Europe. Grapes are the No. 2 crop of the Aube, and they’ve long been a major source for the producers of Reims and Epernay, especially Pinot Noir. Increasingly, however, growers are releasing their own Champagne labels.
Bar-sur-Aube and Bar-sur-Seine, including its heart of Les Riceys, are landscapes of river valleys and steep slopes that support vines planted on the same Kimmeridgian soil as Chablis. It could be part of Burgundy, and, in fact, Chablis is closer than Epernay and Reims. But this is Champagne. Confident in what they
