Pierre Péters – Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs

If you're lucky enough to call yourself an experienced Champagne drinker, you're likely already familiar with the greatness that is Pierre Péters. But those just getting into grower Champagne or new to Champagne altogether will find that their Cuvée de Réserve may be the best introduction to the world of fine bubbly, grower or otherwise.

We'll be covering grower Champagne and Champagne overall in greater detail in the near future, but in general, grower Champagne can be defined as wines from the region of Champagne that are crafted and marketed by the same producer that farmed the grapes. This is in contrast to the maisons, or houses, of Champagne—including Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, and Pol Roger, to name a few—which purchase most or all of the grapes that are blended together to create the majority of their final products.

With the grapes for the best grower wines typically coming from either a single vineyard at the smallest or a single village or handful of adjacent villages within Champagne at the largest, these wines will usually provide a greater sense of terroir, the catchall term for sense of place that includes factors such as the soil, climate, and elevation of the vineyard areas.

Growers also tend to have far greater control over the entire winemaking process from start to finish, from maintaining the vines and harvesting the grapes to the creation of the wines, including blending, aging, and bottling. This results in a more significant ability overall to craft and fine-tune the wines, whereas many larger producers blend together wines from vines not under their management, often leaving them with less control and ability to influence the final wine.

This combination of both locational specificity and viticultural and winemaking control allows for grower-producers to create some of the highest-quality, most unique, and, importantly, most delicious wines that are made today in Champagne, exemplified in the Cuvée de Réserve bottling from Pierre Péters described below.

That said, it is imperative to note that there are, in fact, incredible house Champagnes all along the price gamut. The highest level of these include well-known options such as Dom Pérignon and Louis Roederer's Cristal, as well as smaller-production bottlings like Krug's Clos du Mesnil, which, much like a grower bottling, is made of grapes from a single, walled plot of Chardonnay vines within Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, the village where Pierre Péters is based.

At lower price-points, nonvintage house offerings from Pol Roger and Louis Roederer, among others, are quite stellar and are an excellent introduction to the wines of Champagne, as well.

Additionally, houses will often have greater consistency year to year than growers, as they are able to blend from a greater selection of grapes and vineyard areas and typically have more extensive reserves of older wines for nonvintage blends. These factors allow houses to create a more similar product each year, whether for single-vintage or nonvintage wines.

But enough of the details of grower Champagne: there will be plenty of time later on to learn more about that. For now, read on to get a look at this special wine from Pierre Péters, and to see why you should be drinking it.

Pierre Péters Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs – $64

Of the few thousand growers who produce their own wines in the Champagne region, Pierre Péters, now headed by fourth-generation Rodolphe Péters, is one of the icons of the "grower movement." The estate is regarded as a leader at the forefront of the rise in grower-producers, and you'd be hard-pressed to go wrong with any of its wines.

Based in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger within the Côte des Blancs, the area of Champagne known for producing some of the highest-quality Chardonnay on its chalky soils, the estate originally began producing its own wines in 1919. Expanding over the years, it is now in possession of a number of vineyards in several villages, predominantly within the Côte des Blancs.

The Cuvée de Réserve, Peters's "entry-level" wine, if you can call it that, is crafted with fruit from a selection of the estate's vineyard holdings in the Grand Cru villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Cramant, Avize, and Oger. This bottling is also nonvintage, indicating that it is a blend of various vintage years, with the older reserve wines aging in a solera system to give the wine a deeper, aged character and reducing vintage variations from year to year.

Following partial malolactic fermentation, it is then aged for at least two years in the bottle on the lees, rounding out its flavors and giving it pronounced notes of pastries and cream.

Flawlessly crafted, with a citrusy acidity, creamy texture, hints of both sweetness and salinity, and a resoundingly pleasant chalkiness that is present in most of Pierre Péters's wines, this is an exquisite example of Champagne that is perfect for drinking on its own, as an aperitif leading into a meal, or even paired with a wide variety of foods. It is a beautiful representation of the Côte des Blancs, grower Champagne, and Champagne in general.

Find it on Wine-Searcher: Pierre Péters Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs