Fleury
Fleury
Fleury is a maison in the Côte des Bar that produces very fine Champagnes, capable of telling the story of their terroir with precision.
The Fleury maison is based in Courteron, a small agricultural centre on the Côte des Bar. We are in the Aube département, the southernmost offshoot of Champagne. Here, in 1895, following the devastating crisis in French viticulture due to the invasion of phylloxera, Emile Fleury planted the first American-grafted Pinot Noir vines in the entire region, establishing a winery. In 1929, at the height of the Great Depression, his son Robert produced and marketed a Champagne from his own grapes, becoming one of the first récoltant manipulant in the entire Côte des Bar.
The Fleury’s flair for innovation certainly did not end there. In 1962, Jean-Pierre, representing the third generation of the family, took over at the helm of the winery and decided to convert the estate’s vineyards to organic farming. Between 1989 and 1992, all the land was converted to biodynamics, and Fleury thus became the first winery in Champagne to apply the principles of the Steinerian doctrine in the vineyard. Today, the domaine is led by Jean-Pierre’s children, Jean-Sebastien, Benoît and Morgane, who in turn have introduced some important innovations in terms of agronomic and oenological management, including the use of horses in the vineyard and the production of cuvées without added sulphites.
The grapes that give rise to Fleury Champagnes come from vineyards treated exclusively with sulphur, copper and biodynamic preparations. Compared to the northern part of Champagne, the soils of the Côte des Bar are characterised by a greater presence of limestone, which gives the grapes an excellent structure. Among the vines cultivated, Pinot Noir stands out, occupying 90% of the fifteen hectares of vines owned by the Fleury family, but there is also room for small quantities of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, the latter two having become very rare in Champagne. The oenological protocol is as simple as it is accurate: fermentations are spontaneous, and enamelled steel vats and sixty-hectolitre oak casks are used for the vinification and ageing of the base wines. Foaming in bottles corked with cork and a long stay on the lees give Fleury Champagnes great complexity, contributing to their uniqueness.
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