2015 Maurice Grumier Les Plates Pierres 750 ml

“Can you imagine if you’d discovered Jacques Selosse before anyone else?” 

No name in the Champagne world carries more cachet than Selosse. So when our friend—a Master of Wine who wrote a book about Champagne—asked us that question as he drove us alongside a hillside en route to Champagne Maurice Grumier, our interest was beyond piqued. 

A day earlier, we’d tasted at Selosse, reveling in the wines for which diners at MICHELIN-starred restaurants pay four figures. Two hours later, after Fabien Grumier had taken us through a tasting of the range of his wines, we realized our friend hadn’t just introduced us to a phenomenal producer. 

He’d leaked one of the greatest secrets in Champagne. 

We soon locked in an allocation over for our members, and as soon as our sommelier friends caught wind of our score, they started clamoring for it too. We even featured Grumier in our MICHELIN Wine Club at the request of San Francisco’s three-star Quince.

The Grumiers have had a presence in the Marne Valley for nearly 300 years, and their 2015 Les Plates Pierres is simply an extraordinary value in single-vineyard, vintage grower-Champagne. 

“Les Plates Pierres” refers to a vineyard in the Marne Valley right-bank village of Venteuil. At 25 years of age, the south-facing vines there handled the warm 2015 vintage beautifully, giving optimal ripeness with ample acidity. Composed of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir, the wine spent nearly seven years on the lees, developing complexity and the structure to make it optimal for further bottle-aging.

For anyone who delights in Champagne or once-in-a-lifetime discoveries, this is a must-try.