Laherte Freres

About

Owner & winemaker: Aurélien Laherte
Vineyards: 11ha across 75 different plots in three different subregions, plus 4ha of purchased fruit
Vineyard management: Organic and biodynamic practices
Soils: Varied by site, including clay, chalk, and marls
Grapes grown: Meunier, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Petit Meslier, Arbanne, and others

Quick facts:

• The family estate was first established in 1889–Aurélien is the seventh generation of his family to make wine in Chavot.
• Besides Meunier, which the family has championed since long before its popular renaissance, Aurélien is particularly excited about the potential of Petit Meslier to excel in the era of climate change. Over the past ten years, they’ve planted several additional plots with the grape, an old crossing of Gouais Blanc and Savagnin that offers high acidity and beguiling tropical flavors.

Aurélien Laherte returned to his family’s estate in 2005, the seventh generation of Laherte to take up the mantle of vigneron encaveur in the small village of Chavot, south of Epernay. The Laherte family is passionately devoted to organic practices and biodynamic methods, farming each of their 75 plots in tune to the rhythms of nature and respect for the environment. Almost all of the vins clairs are fermented in wooden barrels, spend time on the lees before tirage, and are disgorged with minimal addition of sugar or dosage. The estate has considerable expertise in the Meunier grape, giving it a spotlight in an old vine bottling known as “Les Vignes d’Autrefois,” as well as in two different mono-varietal rosé bottlings. At his core experimental, Aurélien has expanded the family’s range of wines to include transparent, terroir-focused bottlings and cuvées based on uncommon “forgotten” Champagne grapes such as Petit Meslier and Arbanne, as well as more modest non-vintage bottlings for quotidian consumption. Laherte Freres is one of the rare, forward-thinking, and boundary-pushing estates in Champagne whose wines merit attention and reward cellaring.