Montagne de Reims, Champagne
Montagne de Reims is the most powerful-tasting corner of Champagne — and despite the dramatic name, it isn't really a mountain at all. It's a series of hills forming a horseshoe shape south and west of the city of Reims, topped out at only around 290 to 350 metres, with vineyards wrapping around a forested, table-flat plateau rather than climbing anything resembling an alpine peak. It's also, somewhat surprisingly given how strongly it's associated with one grape, more varied than people give it credit for.
Champagne's first vineyards date back to around the 5th century in the Roman era, and for centuries the region made still wine, not sparkling. Dom Pérignon, the Benedictine monk and cellar master at Hautvillers, is often credited with inventing Champagne, though that's something of a myth — what he actually did was refine blending across vineyards and adopt stronger bottles that could survive the pressure of a second fermentation, laying groundwork that turned the region's reputation upside down over the following centuries.
What Montagne de Reims is best known for today is power. Vines here are predominantly Pinot Noir, except in a small cluster of villages — Trépail, Villers-Marmery, Billy-le-Grand, and Vaudemange, sometimes nicknamed the "Perle Blanche" — which grow almost exclusively Chardonnay instead, on east-facing slopes with chalk soils similar to the famous Côte des Blancs further south. Ten of Champagne's seventeen Grand Cru villages sit within Montagne de Reims, including the celebrated names of Ambonnay, Bouzy, Verzenay, Verzy, Louvois, Mailly, Puisieulx, and Beaumont-sur-Vesle. Ambonnay and Bouzy in the south produce richly structured, full-bodied Pinot Noir, sometimes with a touch more spice from clay-influenced soils in Ambonnay's case, while the cooler north face, around villages like Verzenay and Mailly, ripens later and yields tauter, more energetic Pinot Noir that's become increasingly prized as the climate warms.
The region isn't only about Pinot Noir, though. Pinot Meunier is genuinely worth seeking out from the cooler, chalkier sites around Ludes, Chigny-les-Roses, and Rilly-la-Montagne — an unusually serious showcase for a grape more often treated as a workhorse blending component elsewhere. And the Trépail and Villers-Marmery Chardonnays have been described by Champagne Palmer's own cellar team as the "Meursault to the Chassagne" of the Côte des Blancs — fuller, richer, and still relatively under-the-radar compared to their famous southern neighbors.
In this collection you'll find structured, full-bodied Pinot Noir-led Champagnes from the great southern villages alongside more elegant, mineral-driven bottlings from the cooler north face — a great way to taste how dramatically Champagne can change depending on which side of the hill the grapes grew on
