Champagne Paul Lebrun, Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature, "Aline la Nature"

This is an incredibly fine and delicious, complex wine that is made in a style that is becoming increasingly popular with fine dining establishments and wine bars as it is about as pure an expression of Champagne as you can find. Made with no dosage, this Brut Nature is searingly bright, focused yet complex, engaging and rewarding.

Apple, pear, quince, peach and apricot flavours mark out this incredibly fine and precise, energetic Champagne, that has more richness than most Brut Nature wines on account of the quality of fruit from the Côte de Sézanne. A creamy mid-palate with complex flavours leads to a long, bright and engaging finish with notes of salted almonds and lime.

Aged for four years on its lees before bottling, this wine shows the vision that Nathalie has for this "5th Commune" of Champagne, the Côte de Sézanne. Featuring soils of clay, limestone, and marl, the different villages give complexity and richness, fruit and structure, depth, power and minerality to this wine, making it a complete Champagne experience. 

Paul Lebrun was one of the first wine-makers in Champagne to break away from supplying the big houses and négociants, just after the First World War, establishing his own house in 1931. With vineyards in three of the top villages in the Côte des Blancs, the winery was always set to produce really high quality wines. The fact that three of the villages are Grand Crus and two are Premier Crus just affirms the provenance of seriously high-grade Chardonnay. Based in Cramant, one of the most-sought-after of all Côte des Blancs villages, the winery now has 16.5 hectares of vines in both Côte des Blancs and the Côte de Sézanne, where it is run by Paul's granddaughter, Nathalie and her son Joseph.

They make wines in a very traditional method with three years minimum of less ageing and fermentation in stainless steel tanks, choosing to highlight vineyard characteristics with minimum of winery intervention. The Côte de Sézanne offers riper and fuller fruit characteristics, while the homestead of Cramant in the Côte des Blancs gives scintillating minerality and complex flavours that often develop over years of ageing.

Grower Champagne is now firmly established as a source of great, individual wines that offer something different to the established brands (Grandes Marques) that have dominated sales and production in the region for so long. The concept of owning, farming and then making wine is not a stretch in most regions (and, indeed, many of the larger houses in Champagne own at least some vineyards from which they make wine), but the focus on quality of fruit and effort in the vineyard to produce high quality sparkling wine is the essence of these wines.