Bérêche Brut Réserve Champagne NV

For us, Raphaël and Vincent Bérêche represent the pinnacle of the grower-producer movement, and their Brut Réserve NV is the perfect place to start your obsession.

This isn’t your average, formulaic big house non-vintage. It’s a soulful, precision-engineered expression of the Montagne de Reims and the Vallée de Marne. The brothers are obsessive about the details: they work the soils manually, ferment in oak barrels, and use a perpetual reserve system that dates back decades to add a layer of wisdom and weight you rarely find at this price point.

The Brut Reserve is a blend of roughly equal parts Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier, but it drinks with the complexity of a much more expensive vintage bottle. Nectarine, orange zest, and toasted brioche on the nose with ample and dense texture but immediately reined in by a chalky, mineral finish and a very fine, persistent mousse.