Champagne Andre Robert, 'Les Vignes de Montigny', Extra Brut

My time as the Krug Champagne ambassador for the U.S. market taught me a lot — and it set my expectations for Champagne dangerously high. I tasted what is arguably the greatest producer on earth, or at least top three on anyone’s list, every single day. When you live at that altitude long enough, your internal calibration shifts. It’s like driving a seriously built car: the moment you drop into something ordinary, you feel every imperfection. That’s why today’s Champagne genuinely caught me off guard. I expected something normal. Instead, I found a wine built like a prestige bottling — all muscle, precision, and control — without the prestige price. The aromas land exactly where my tastes live, the mouthfeel is downright luxurious while staying completely dry, and the quality comes not from sweetness, but from incredible fruit. One smell alone tells you immediately: this is serious Champagne from special parcels. Domaine André Robert is one of those quietly serious grower Champagnes that real sommeliers whisper about — a family estate anchored in Mesnil-sur-Oger in the Côte des Blancs, where Chardonnay crackles with chalk and nervous energy. But their cuvée Les Vignes de Montigny is their beautiful detour — a Champagne that comes not from their home dirt, but from two quiet little hillside parcels of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier tucked into the Vallée de la Marne, about thirty minutes northwest of their cellar. This cuvée is built entirely on the superb 2020 vintage — the final act in Champagne’s rare modern trilogy after 2018 and 2019 — yet André Robert still releases it as a non-vintage, the way they always do. It drinks with quiet authority — the kind of Champagne that doesn’t need to announce itself to command attention.

Champagne is not one uniform vineyard — it is a mosaic of five major sub-regions, each with its own geological fingerprint: the Montagne de Reims, Côte des Blancs, Vallée de la Marne, Côte de Sézanne, and the Aube. The Vallée de la Marne is Champagne’s great engine of fruit and texture. It follows the curve of the river and is defined by mixed soils of clay, marl, sand, and pockets of limestone — a dramatic contrast to the pure chalk of the Côte des Blancs, and a zone far more exposed to spring frost and Atlantic-influenced weather. This is exactly why Pinot Meunier is so widely planted here: it buds later than Pinot Noir, dramatically reducing frost risk, and it ripens earlier — often safely before the most dangerous fall storms roll in from the west. It is the grape of survival and precision in a marginal climate. Pinot Noir also excels here, delivering structure, red-fruit depth, and quiet power when grown on the right slopes. Wines from this zone lean generous, expressive, and textural — yet when farmed carefully, they retain remarkable freshness and tension. It’s the part of Champagne that gives the region its soul and its generosity.

The story of Domaine André Robert is, at its core, a family story — one that stretches back more than a century in Mesnil-sur-Oger. Henri Robert (1881–1948) returned from the aftermath of the First World War to farm the vines en foule — shoulder to shoulder with his neighbors, when survival depended on cooperation. In the 1930s, he helped form the village’s first winemakers’ association, pooling presses and resources so small growers could claim their own independence. After the Second World War, his son André Robert (born 1925) took over, still working the vineyards with horses. In 1960, he bought the family house with its deep 19th-century chalk cellars, and by 1962, he was bottling Champagne under his own name — the moment the domaine truly became itself. Bertrand Robert took the reins in 1981, joined by Colette in 1990, pushing the estate into its modern era. Their daughter Claire arrived in 2013, followed by her husband Jean-Baptiste Denizart in 2016, and since 2019, the two have quietly run the entire show. While the domaine is famed for Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs from Mesnil, Les Vignes de Montigny applies that same discipline to Pinot fruit from a different stretch of Champagne. The blend is 50% Pinot Noir and 50% Pinot Meunier, hand-harvested, gently pressed, carefully vinified, and aged long on lees to build texture the honest way — without sugar. Final dosage sits at just 2.5 g/L, firmly Extra Brut, where purity, energy, and place do the talking.

In the glass, the color lands exactly where great Pinot-based Champagne should: a pale copper-pink with flashes of rose-gold at the rim — that delicate, lifted hue that speaks to Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir without ever turning overtly rosé. Aromatically, it’s all precision and poise: wild strawberry, red apple skin, blood orange, lemon oil, and fine brioche. The palate is driven by a creamy, refined mousse and electric acidity, with layered red fruit and a subtle saline-chalk finish that keeps pulling you back for the next sip. It’s luxurious without weight, intense without excess. As an aperitif, it’s effortlessly impressive — the kind of bottle that will impress even your most discerning Champagne-drinking friends. At the table, it shines with oysters, crudo, sushi, roast chicken, pork dishes that love acidity, and soft, creamy cheeses. Serve in all-purpose stems, not flutes — this is a Champagne built for architecture, not just bubbles.