Champagne Fleury
The Free Bacchus Story
Émile Fleury founded the house at Courteron in 1895 and did something odd for the Côte des Bar: after phylloxera came through, he grafted the region’s first Pinot Noir vines. The house has been a Pinot house ever since.
His descendant Jean-Pierre took over in 1962 and in 1989 converted the whole fifteen-hectare vineyard to biodynamics. No other producer in Champagne farmed that way. The region regarded the practice as eccentric at best and commercially reckless at worst, and there was no organic Champagne category to sell into. Demeter certification has been held continuously ever since.
Around eight per cent of Champagne’s vineyards are certified organic even now, more than three decades later.
The two things pull against each other, which is the real achievement. Champagne’s economics reward blending across many sites, volume and year-to-year consistency. Biodynamic farming rewards the opposite of all three. Fleury has run both for thirty-five years.
The Côte des Bar sits at the southern end of the appellation, closer to Chablis than to Reims, and it is Pinot Noir country. That is why the Blanc de Noirs is the clearest statement here — fuller and more vinous than the chalk-driven styles further north.
Why it’s remarkable
Free Bacchus Verification
- Demeter Certified Biodynamic since 1989 — the first biodynamic house in Champagne
If you’re buying
Cheat sheet
Save it to your phone. Everything you need to recognise this producer, and three things worth saying about it, at a glance in a shop or across a table.