Pierre Baillette

Périne Baillette is the third generation in charge of the Baillette cellar, an incredibly talented young winemaker creating pure, vinous champagnes. Aside from dad, she has the ear of another rock star winemaker within her own house: Alexandre Chartogne, of Chartogne-Taillet in Merfy. The roots of that family are dug deeper in the winemaking world than just about anyone in all of Champagne - not to mention that Alex was tutored by Anselme Selosse before making his own name known. Périne Baillette is at the helm of the 3rd-generation estate in the village of Trois-Puits, just a few miles south of Reims where the famous Champenois chalk is firmly on display. Périne's style is rather traditional, applying the maximum care in the vineyard (aided by horse friends named Tarzan and Saumur), and a light touch in the cellar - the wines are not the reductive style of many of the Grand Marques, but slightly oxidative in method, meaning the wines are actually stunning shortly off the cork.

Her vineyards outside of the home village consist of Rilly la Montagne and Verzenay, the latter a birthday present parcel from Monsieur Chartogne. In the cellar, everything is done naturally and by gravity - natural yeasts, and the wines are allowed to go through the malo-lactic conversion naturally. There isn't even any sulfur added until bottling, which is applied sparingly at that. With such natural texture and breadth, the dosage can be quite low with none of the wines having more than 5 g/l added at bottling.