Champagne Marie Courtin, Indulgence Rose 2015

Manual harvest.  70% of the grapes were de-stemmed. Three days of maceration of the grapes in stainless steel vat lined with enamel.  Grapes were crushed underfoot, according to the centuries-old traditional method of making a rosé Champagne in this area- the Côte des Bars.  Wild yeast fermentation with a pied de cuve yeast.  One racking took place after the alcoholic fermentation.  Full malolactic fermentation. Four years of ageing in the same stainless-steel vat lined with enamel.  No filtration and no fining. A small amount of Sulphur (under one centilitre per hectolitre) was added to the surface of the cap within the vat at the beginning of the maceration, in order to protect the champagne.

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.