Champagne Bonnet Ponson - Les Vignes Dieu - Blanc de Blancs - Premier Cru 2011
Champagne Bonnet Ponson is located in Chamery, in the Petite Montagne de Reims, Premier Cru Village of Champagne. Since 1862, the family has been making Champagne with Grégoire Bonnet as one of the village's first harvesting manipulators. After him, Jules Bonnet enlarged the estate by buying new plots in Chamery and installing a 5,500 kg wooden press powered by human power, before electricity reached the village, around 1902. His son Raoul moved to another place in the village after the destruction of the family cellar by a bombing in WWII. He then initiated the construction of the current cellars to store his small production of around 5,000 bottles per year. He was quickly joined by his son André, who was in charge of ploughing the family vines with his two horses from the age of 14. In 1956, André Bonnet met Monique Ponson, herself from a family of winegrowers from Vrigny, another village in the Montagne de Reims. From their union, André and Monique founded the Bonnet-Ponson estate, cultivating a few plots of Meunier and Pinot noir in Chamery, Vrigny and Coulommes la Montagne. After a lifetime of hard work, the area of the vines has been extended to 9 hectares, planted with three grape varieties in equal parts. For 30 years, their son Thierry Bonnet continued to develop the estate with the construction of new cellars and the addition of an additional hectare to the vineyard, several new plots in the municipalities of Chamery, Vrigny and Verzenay. After studying oenology and working as a winegrower in the southwest of France, Cyril Bonnet joined the family estate in 2013, at the same time starting the conversion of the entire vineyard to organic farming, which is now certified.
Les Vignes Dieu is a single plot planted in 1962, from the terroir of Coulommes-la-Montagne, classified Premier Cru. The Champagne is a Vintage Blanc de Blancs, made entirely from Chardonnay. The first fermentation is done in stainless steel vats (50%) and oak barrels of 228 litres (50%) and the wine underwent a malolactic conversion. Ageing on the lees lasted 7 months before bottling. The second fermentation is made in the bottle with a dosage of 2 to 3 g/L. The wine is aged in bottle for a further 6 years minimum.
Grape varieties: 100% Chardonnay
