More Than a Restock: Le Brun de Neuville
Words by Samuel Harwood
Selling through an allocation is always a good problem to have. Even better is having it back in the cellar.
We're delighted to have restocked Côte Blanche, the Blanc de Blancs from our friends at Le Brun de Neuville, while also extending our partnership with the house and adding Extra Blanc to the Promised Cask range.
For us, this is about more than simply bringing in another Champagne. From the beginning, we've wanted Promised Cask to be built around a relatively small number of producers we genuinely believe in, getting to know the people behind the wines, growing alongside them and finding interesting ways to introduce their wines to people in the UK.
Le Brun de Neuville is a very good example of that.
Based in Bethon, in the Côte de Sézanne, the house has a particular affinity with Chardonnay and produces a fascinating range of Champagnes exploring not just grape and terroir, but the influence of people and time.
Côte Blanche was our introduction to the house and remains one of our favourites. Made entirely from Chardonnay, it is fresh and generous, with a lovely chalky character and enough richness to make it enormously drinkable. It also proved rather popular with our clients, hence the need for a new allocation.
It now sits alongside Extra Blanc, another 100% Chardonnay cuvée, but one with a drier, tauter and more precise character. Together with La Croisée des Chemins and the remarkable Autolyse Noirs & Blancs, our range now gives a much broader picture of what Le Brun de Neuville can do, spanning from the freshness and generosity of Côte Blanche to Champagnes shaped by longer ageing, different blends and more gastronomic styles.
The Autolyse is particularly interesting. The range is built around extended ageing, with selected parcels spending 14 years in the cellar. This is a wonderful demonstration of what time can do to Champagne.
The timing feels particularly appropriate because our relationship with Le Brun de Neuville is also moving beyond the bottle.
This October, Le Brun de Neuville will be our sparkling wine partner for the World Monuments Fund Gala Dinner at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It will be a fantastic setting in which to pour their Champagne and more importantly, an opportunity to introduce the house to a new audience in London.
It's exactly the sort of partnership we had in mind when we started Promised Cask: not simply importing and selling wines, but building relationships with producers and creating opportunities to tell their stories properly.
So yes, the Champagne is back in the cellar. But more importantly, our relationship with Le Brun de Neuville is growing and we're pretty excited about where we go next.
