Louise Brison
The Champagne House Louise Brison is located in the village of Noé-les-Mallets in the Côte des Bar, the southernmost part of the Champagne region. The Burgundy region starts only 7 kilometers away, so we are closer to Chablis than to Reims.
Louise Brison is headed by the ambitious winemaker Delphine Brulez. She proudly continuates the family business founded by her grandmother Louise in 1900. Delphine works with great respect for nature and the terroir and does everything in her power to pass on strong, healthy vines to the next generation. Delphine has been working organically since 2012 and in 2020 she received official organic certification for her 15 hectares of vineyards in the Côte des Bar. The soils in this part of the Champagne are much older than further up north and contain - just like the soils in Chablis - a lot of marl and clay.
Delphine uses only pinot noir (70% of the crop) and chardonnay (30% of the crop) for its champagnes. She intervenes as little as possible in the vineyard and lets nature run its course as much as she can in order to create the greatest possible biodiversity in the vineyard. If the soil is full of life, it can give the vines everything they need and they will be less prone to disease, according to Delphine's philosophy.
In the cellar, too, Delphine interferes with the natural process as little as possible. Each vineyard plot is vinified separately to let the terroir speak as clearly as possible. Vinification takes place in used barrels that are on average 8 years old. The low degree of oxidation provides additional complexity, layering and also ripening potential.
So, no reserve wines are blended with it. All Louise Brison wines are vintage champagnes and therefore a unique representation of the harvest. In Champagne, by law every home must release at least 1 non-vintage champagne. Obviously, this does not fit in Delphine's philosophy and that is why she mentions the vintage in small print on the back label of her rosé champagne bottle.
In all Louise Brison champagnes, the dosage is particularly low. Best of Wines offers 3 different champagnes from this house:
- A l'Aube de la Côte des Bar - A blend of 50% chardonnay and 50% pinot noir
- Chardonnay de la Côte des Bar - A blanc de blancs made from 100% chardonnay
- Rosé de la Côte des Bar: made from 100% pinot noir from the family's oldest plot still planted by Delphine's grandfather.
We also have available her Coteaux Champenois En Val des Saults from pinot noir.
Since Delphine only makes vintage champagne, she also wants to reflect this in her labels. Louise Brison's labels are therefore a timeline marked in gold. The circle in the middle is a combined representation of what happened that year and the characteristics of the wine. An artistic interpretation of the vintage and the wine that is thus different each year. This image is also found on the muselet of the wine.
Delphine maintains an extra long bottle maturation period before releasing her champagnes. Her blanc de blancs, for example, undergoes no less than 7 years of bottle aging before disgorging. Delphine's champagnes are characterized on the one hand by a beautiful minerality and freshness that can also be found in good Chablis and on the other hand a deep, complex layering that ensures that the champagnes of Louise Brison can continue to develop in the bottle for years to come. In addition to all recent vintages, we also offer some library vintages of Louise Brison Champagne, such as the vintages 1997 and 1999 to 2004 of the classic blend and of the blanc de blancs 'Cuvée Tendresse' the vintages 2001 and 2003.