Michel Gonet, "Les Hautes Mottes", Les Mesnil sur Oger 2018

LA MAISON: MICHEL GONET
Michel Gonet is one of the Côte des Blancs' most historically significant growing families — vignerons since the early 1800s, with some 40 hectares planted almost entirely to Chardonnay across three villages: Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Vindey on the Sézannais hillsides, and Montgueux near Troyes, often nicknamed "the Montrachet of Champagne" for its chalk. Michel Gonet himself expanded the family's cellars in Avize and reshaped its winemaking through the 1970s; today the house is entering a new chapter under mother-and-daughter team Diane and Sophie Gonet, alongside a new chef de cave, Antoine Gomérieux — long admired for the quality of its vineyard holdings, if historically understated in how it presented them.
 
THE CHAMPAGNE: LES HAUTES MOTTES 2018
Les Hautes Mottes is where that quiet reputation is finally being given its due. The wine is a genuine three-way collaboration: the Gonet family's fruit, from a single historic parcel of old-vine Chardonnay in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger sitting directly alongside Pierre Péters's famed Les Chétillons and La Croix Collard, worked with Rajat Parr — the celebrated former sommelier turned winemaker behind Sandhi and Domaine de la Côte in California — and Marco Pelletier, owner of Paris's Vantre and vigneron at Bordeaux's Domaine de Galouchey. The 2018 is the third vintage from the partnership, and it wears its influences openly: even the barrels, coopered by Damy, were chosen with the help of Burgundian legend Jean-Marc Roulot, who now sends the team his old Meursault casks.
100% Chardonnay, fermented for twelve months in those barrels, the wine then undergoes natural winter stabilisation outdoors before resting a full five years on its lees. It's finished as a Brut Nature — zero dosage — a decision that puts the pure chalk of Les Hautes Mottes front and centre, with nothing added to soften or round it out.