Marie-Courtin, Efflorescence 2016

From a single parcel of vines on Kimmeridgean clay soils this striking Pinot Noir is fermented in former Chablis barrels and bottled without dosage.

Dominique Moreau was born and bought up in the champagne region. She explains that there, everyone had a piece of land and also vines- it was the norm. Her great-grandmother, Marie Courtin, farmed her land herself, using a horse, during the First World War while the menfolk were away on the front. Dominiques estate is located on land that was always been owned by her family, but they had rented it out to tenant farmers and she explains that, from the age of 18 years-old, she was always working on the land amongst vines somewhere. She worked part-time as a teacher in a professional viticulture school at the beginning of her adult working life, and spent the hours during which she was not teaching, farming vines. She took over the family estate in in 2000 when the previous tenant farmers took their retirement. She began converting her vines to organic farming in 2005.