History

The Taittinger family, who have been at the head of the House for almost a century, have a permanent desire for excellence. "To have our family name on a bottle imposes a responsibility and a requirement at all times. This signature bears both the know-how of the past and a commitment to the future," Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger likes to say. A commitment that he has embodied for 40 years and that he now shares with the members of his family (his son Clovis and his daughter Vitalie) within the House's management team. They all form a close-knit and highly complementary team.

Terroir

The estate has a vineyard area of approximately 287 hectares. The grape varieties are white Chardonnay (90%: the king variety), Meunier Noir (5%) and Pinot Noir (5%). In order to develop its range, the estate obtains its grapes from external suppliers. The vines enjoy a moderate oceanic climate and a degraded continental climate. The terroir exploited by the Champagne Taittinger estate is essentially composed, in more or less large and scattered quantities, of lignite clay, green marl, Bartonian limestone, Ludian limestone, sand, flint, Sparnacian clay, Campanian chalk (Côte des Blancs), Thanetian marl (Montagne de Reims), Thanetian sand, sands from the Cuisien, Lutetian marls, Bartonian marls (Marne Valley), Turonian chalk (Upper Cretaceous, between 94 and 90 million years ago), grey marly chalk, Kimmeridgian limestones, Kimmeridgian marls (Côte des Bar), clayey marls, hard limestone slabs, silts and chalk from Bélemnites (Côte des Blancs). To finish the vineyard is in reasoned agriculture.

Vinification and maturing

The Champagne Taittinger estate uses the traditional Champagne-type winemaking method. The grapes are then vinified in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats. The estate sets up an undergrowth vinification in oak barrels and oak tuns for all or part of the vintages it produces. The bottles are riddled (to allow the wines to regain their limpidity after champagnization) both manually on a wooden rack and mechanically by gyropalette. After riddling and ageing on slats (obligatory for champagnes), it is necessary to remove the deposit that has accumulated in the bottle at the neck. The estate then carries out a disgorging with ice and by disgorging on the fly.