Champagne Follet-Ramillon
Champagne Follet-Ramillon
【Respect for terroir, and painstaking, natural winemaking】
A family house founded in 1955 in the village of Belval-sous-Châtillon, in the Vallée de la Marne, thirty kilometres from both Reims and Épernay.
Joël, of the third generation, works hand in hand with his son Nicolas, an oenologist of the fourth, and Nicolas's younger brother Jérémie, the three of them intent on carrying the house further still.
Nicolas studied alongside Bérêche and Benoît Lahaye, then went on refining his craft, spending eighteen years as a consultant winemaker and gathering knowledge in South Africa, Belgium, Italy, Germany, the United States, Sweden and Norway.
Having specialised for years in sparkling wine from warm climates, he understands the question of a warming world better than most; the Comité Champagne turns to him for advice, and he has become an indispensable figure in Champagne's new era.
In the cellar he shares a good deal with Éric Lebel, formerly chef de cave at Krug, whose influence he acknowledges, and he trades views with Selosse once a month.
The house owns five hectares in all — at Belval-sous-Châtillon and Trélou-sur-Marne in the Vallée de la Marne, and at Villedommange in the Montagne de Reims — planted chiefly to Meunier, followed by Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
The barrels come from Bollinger's own cooper, who works for no one else.
Drawing on time spent in Beaune in Burgundy between 2000 and 2002, Nicolas ferments and ages parcel by parcel in small barrels before a further period in 600-litre casks. To preserve the fresh acidity of the fruit, not one cuvée goes through malolactic fermentation — convictions held with a firm backbone.
Respect for terroir goes hand in hand with sustainable, low-treatment viticulture: no chemical products, work that follows the rhythm of the seasons, and traditional picking judged parcel by parcel according to the character of each site and variety and the ripeness of the fruit.
Nothing is fined or sterile-filtered. The finest grapes, tasted daily plot by plot, and a natural, unhurried hand in the cellar give every cuvée a voice entirely its own.
