A tale of two doors: the wines of Alexandre Bonnet
There's a rather charming story about Les Riceys, the picturesque church-dotted village in France that sits in Champagne yet borders on Burgundy. The story is something like this: wineries used to have two doors. One door would exit to Champagne, whilst the other exited to Burgundy. Depending on who was buying (and what the taxes were), the vintner would deploy his goods from either the Champenois door or the Burgundian door.
Eric Maillot, Alexandre Bonnet’s international development manager, knows the story well, and yet he’s resolute on where Les Riceys sits today. Says Maillot: “Aube’s winegrowers fought to have their place in Champagne recognised. The story of the two doors remains a lovely symbol of our origins and of what makes us distinctive; it does not call our Champagne identity into question.”
The wider region that surrounds Les Riceys, the Aube, has been a contested territory for generations. In 1908 the French government decided the Aube was not, in fact, part of the Champagne appellation. Growers of the Aube rebelled: by 1911 one of Riceys’ many churches found itself with a red flag atop it, and winemakers marched in the street, singing their anthem to the tune of The Internationale. It took until 1927, and many protests, for the Aube to be recognised as part of Champagne again. So it’s understandable that Maillot, whilst acknowledging Les Riceys’ debt to Burgundy, is firm in his adhesion to Champagne. It was hard won.
The inheritance of a daughter
All this history eventually brings us back to Alexandre Bonnet. The old traditions of France can be hopelessly patriarchal, and as Maillot says, often the son of a farmer inherited the productive farmland whilst his daughter would inherit the “less valuable” farmland. So it came to be that Lucian Noble’s daughter married one René Bonnet, inheriting the initial vineyards that form the core of Bonnet now forty-seven hectares.
As Maillot puts it: the patriarchal logic was wrong. The vineyards once considered less valuable are now a “precious heritage”, and it was thanks to Noble’s daughter and René Bonnet, alongside their sons Alain and Serge’s foresight that they sought to plant out those 47 hectares after phylloxera devastated much of France.
It’s important to understand here that the Aube’s vineyards were, for the bulk of the 19th century, often considered a kind of second-class citizen by their northern cousins in Champagne. The negociants were happy to buy the grapes of the Aube, of course, and the farmers of the Aube grew rich and prosperous, something Maillot recalls from his childhood: cycling through Les Riceys, the old buildings hiding discreet wealth; the three churches, something of an extravagance for a village so small.
Maillot explains that much of the Aube’s production was simply shipped north to the Marne, where it was blended into the wines of the larger Champagne houses. It was not an especially flattering arrangement for the growers. For one thing, there was little distinction made between the various villages and vineyards of the Aube (Maillot is at pains to point out, at multiple points in our conversation, that the terroir of the Aube, and of Les Riceys, varies considerably).
For another, the journey itself could be fairly unkind to the wine.
As Maillot explains, grapes and musts were frequently transported in conditions that did not sufficiently protect them. They sometimes arrived in the Marne already compromised. The resulting wines were then taken as evidence of the Aube’s inferiority. It was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It was only around seventy years ago that growers in the Côte des Bar began seriously making and marketing their own Champagne, rather than supplying the merchants further north. This change was seismic, not least because it allowed individual growers to show what their own vineyards could actually produce, resplendent in their sense of place and undamaged from an arduous journey north. Champagne in situ, if you like.
Les Riceys, in situ
This brings us to the vineyards of Bonnet. There is something rather curious about Les Riceys. Though the village sits at the centre of an enormous winegrowing area, Maillot points out that you can stand in the village and look in practically any direction without seeing a vine. Instead, you see forests. This is, we suggest, not exactly what the average drinker considers when they imagine a village in Champagne.
The vineyards themselves are spread across the surrounding hillsides, on soils made up largely of Kimmeridgian limestone and marl. These are essentially the same Jurassic geological formations that occur in Chablis.
Pinot Noir dominates the Champagnes of Les Riceys - one of the variety’s great historic cradles, and if you know anything about Pinot Noir you’ll know how infamously fickle and temperamental it can be. When you drink a Bonnet Champagne you’re reminded of that great diversity of terroir and extraordinary sense of place that’s emblematic of great Burgundian wines: there is something of that here.
Maillot takes care to eschew the “Burgundian” label per se. Whilst the practice of treating individual vineyards as distinct entities is generally associated with Burgundy (where it has been developed into something approaching a religion), he doesn’t see Alexandre Bonnet as borrowing a Burgundian philosophy.
“At Les Riceys, the name of the village alone is not enough to describe the vineyard,” he says. Here, of course, is that French obsession with place.
He gives the example of three parcels. Les Vignes Blanches faces east, Hardy faces north, and La Forêt, a particularly steep slope facing directly south, is the sunniest parcel in the domaine’s holdings. Each produces quite different grapes, even though they might be planted to the same variety.
Take La Forêt, for instance.
Maillot tells us that, a few days before responding to our questions, the vineyard manager, Benjamin Courant, had mentioned that La Forêt was one of his favourite places to work. The reason was simple. From its steep slopes, which include a small plateau halfway down, he can look over the village and much of the surrounding vineyard.
The manager told Maillot that he simply enjoys being there, and that this enjoyment makes him more attentive to the vineyard.
Sometimes terroir, for all its mysticism, comes down to a person taking more care over a piece of land because they happen to find it beautiful. That in itself is rather beautiful.
Old ways
There are other changes taking place in the vineyards, particularly concerning the treatment of the soil. Alexandre Bonnet has been experimenting with cover crops, organic compost, agroforestry, orchards and flower-rich fallows, as well as reducing soil cultivation and the use of heavy machinery.
Maillot points out a fairly amusing contradiction in all this.
Following the Second World War, successive generations of farmers worked hard to introduce machinery and fertilisers, partly because the old methods involved backbreaking labour. Their children and grandchildren, having discovered rather more about the importance of soil organisms, mycorrhizal fungi, earthworms and the like, are now enthusiastically returning to some of the practices their predecessors were delighted to abandon.
As Maillot observes, the previous generation would probably find it slightly ridiculous to see people using horses to plough vineyards again.
He is careful, however, not to romanticise the past. The old growers were working with the knowledge and resources available to them. The present generation, armed with a better understanding of soil biology, is attempting something different.
“It is less a return to the past than a different way forward,” he says.
A Rosé closer to Burgundy (or: an aged Rosé? You best believe it)
Yet perhaps what's most interesting about Les Riceys is a wine which is not Champagne at all.
Les Riceys is unusual in that it possesses three different appellations: Champagne, Coteaux Champenois and Rosé des Riceys. The last is particularly peculiar, being a still rosé made entirely from Pinot Noir grown within a specifically delimited area around the village.
Now, Rosé des Riceys is not really the sort of rosé most people have in mind when they think of rosé. It’s almost a misnomer, really. Maillot adds: “As we say here, it’s rosé in name only.”, “De Rosé, il n’a que le nom”. It is considerably darker, more substantial and can age for decades (try doing that with a typical rosé and it won’t respond too kindly!)
Its production is something of an art. The grapes undergo a period of maceration, during which colour and flavour are extracted from the skins, and the winemaker must recognise a particular moment when the characteristic taste of Rosé des Riceys develops. The process is then stopped.
Maillot describes this as a matter of knowing precisely when to intervene, which is more of a learned “feeling”, rather than anything that can be taught in a book. The resulting wine can possess considerable depth and structure, with aromas of red fruit that develop into more complex, spicy and sometimes savoury characteristics as the wine matures.
He remembers one bottle in particular.
At the end of a tasting of still wines with Irvin Charpentier, the highly regarded chef de caves at Bonnet, Maillot was handed a glass of unidentified wine. It was remarkable, he recalls, and he quickly concluded that it must be a particularly fine old Pinot Noir from Burgundy.
And then, with considerable anticipation, the bottle was revealed.
It was a 1991 Rosé des Riceys from Alexandre Bonnet.
1991 had been a difficult one for Champagne, with severe frosts damaging much of the region’s production. Yet here was a wine that had survived more than thirty years with extraordinary depth and elegance.
“Imagine my surprise when we discovered the label,” Maillot recalls.
It was one of those moments that changed his understanding of what Rosé des Riceys could be.
The other vintage he mentions is 2022, although for diametrically opposite reasons.
Where 1991 had demonstrated the wine’s ability to age, 2022 demonstrated what might be possible in a particularly warm year. The grapes achieved exceptional ripeness, giving the finished wine a concentration and depth that Maillot believes points towards an interesting future for the appellation.
There’s another small, subtle irony here.
For centuries, one of Champagne’s principal problems was getting grapes sufficiently ripe. The region sits near the northern limits of commercially viable viticulture, and historically its cool climate was part of what distinguished its wines from those of Burgundy further south.
Now, with temperatures rising (something the whole region is well aware of), the problem has begun to reverse. Champagne growers are increasingly concerned with preserving freshness and acidity, particularly in warmer vintages. Yet for a still wine such as Rosé des Riceys, the same additional ripeness can be rather useful.
Maillot is conscious of the need to adapt. Beyond its various expressions of Pinot Noir, Alexandre Bonnet has been looking again at some of Champagne’s historical grape varieties, including through its Les Contrées 7 Cépages cuvée, which brings together all seven of the region’s traditionally authorised varieties.
It is an interesting direction for a domaine that has spent the better part of its history concerned with the character of a single grape.
Stewards of a story
Long before the modern appellation boundaries of Champagne and Burgundy were drawn, Les Riceys had already earned a reputation as a great wine village in its own right.
Today, the wines of Domaine Alexandre Bonnet carry that heritage forward. Les Riceys belongs to Champagne, yet its terroir speaks with a voice of its own: shaped by Kimmeridgian slopes, Pinot Noir and the careful reading of each parcel. Rosé des Riceys, a still Pinot Noir with its own appellation, is perhaps the clearest expression of that singular identity.
Maillot puts it simply: “We are, in the end, simply stewards of a story passed down through generations.”
The story of the two doors is part of that inheritance, and a fitting symbol of Les Riceys’ place at the meeting point of Champagne and Burgundy. Whichever of those fabled doors a bottle leaves through today, it carries the identity of Les Riceys.
Glengarry Wines currently stocks the full selection of Alexandre Bonnet’s Champagne, shop here and imbibe something remarkable.
