L'art d'être naturel — the art of being natural.
Courteron sits at the southern edge of Champagne, in the Côte des Bar, on clay-and-limestone slopes laid down in the Kimmeridgian and cut by the first tributaries of the Seine — the river rises about seventy kilometres upstream of the village. Geologically this is Chablis country rather than Marne country, and the distinction matters more than the map suggests. There is no chalk here in the sense that Reims means chalk. The wines are rounder, the Pinot Noir riper, and for most of the twentieth century the region was treated by the north as a poor relation. Our profile of Drappier, forty minutes away at Urville, tells the other half of that argument.
The Fleury family has been anchored here since 1895. What makes the estate worth a page is not longevity, though — plenty of families have farmed the same slope for longer. It is that four consecutive generations each made a conspicuous bet at a moment when the sensible thing was to keep still.
Émile, after phylloxera. He qualified as a master-grafter in 1894, at the point when the louse was destroying French vineyards and grafting onto American rootstock was the only known answer. He was the first in the region to plant grafted Pinot Noir. That is a technical decision now; at the time it was a wager that the vineyard had a future at all.
Robert, in 1929. The economic crisis was ruining small growers, who were dependent on selling their grapes to houses that could suddenly no longer pay for them. Robert Fleury's response was to keep the harvest and make his own champagne with it — becoming one of the first récoltants-manipulants in southern Champagne. The whole category of grower champagne, which today is a matter of taste and ideology, began for him as a way of not losing a year's work. The longer story of how growers came to stand apart from the houses is told separately.
Jean-Pierre, in 1989. He took over in 1970 and two decades later converted part of the vineyard to biodynamics, completing the whole estate by 1992 — the first in Champagne to do it. It is difficult to overstate how isolated that was. Biodynamics, set out by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, was marginal even among Burgundy's believers, and Champagne was the least hospitable ground imaginable for it: a region organised around blending fruit from hundreds of growers, where the individual parcel was precisely what the system was designed to average away.
The fourth bet is still running. Benoît Fleury was born in 1989, the same year the vines were converted — a coincidence the family enjoys. He trained at the viticultural school in Beaune, took a BTS in viticulture and oenology at Montpellier and a degree in viticulture and environment at Reims, worked harvests in Burgundy, the Languedoc and as far away as Ontario, and came back to run the vineyard from the 2010 vintage. He is planting rare varieties — Pinot Gris among them — and treats viticultural agroforestry as the next thing worth trying.
Curious whether a grower's champagne is what you actually want to open?
Find your Champagne moment →Created in 2012 from the 2009 harvest, the estate's first champagne bottled without sulphur. Removing it takes away the usual insurance against oxidation and bacterial spoilage, which makes this less a stylistic gesture than a statement about how confident you are in the fruit.
A single-variety cuvée from true Pinot Blanc, made at Morgane's initiative. Pinot Blanc is one of the forgotten permitted varieties of the appellation, grown almost nowhere and bottled alone almost never — which is the entire point of the wine.
Pure Pinot Noir from the 2004 vintage. In the Côte des Bar this is the grape speaking in its own register rather than as the structural half of a blend — weight and red-fruit depth where the Marne would give tension.
Fifteen hectares is small for a name this widely cited, and the estate is explicit that it treats the vineyard as a single organism — a biotope rather than a substrate holding vines upright. Whatever one makes of biodynamic preparations and lunar calendars, the practical consequence is a farm run at a level of attention that scale usually makes impossible.
The succession is unusual in shape as well as in health: three of Jean-Pierre's children are involved, dividing the work between the vineyard, the cellar and the wines' presentation to the world. The family calls the arrangement la galaxie Fleury. It is a slightly whimsical name for something quite hard-headed — a small estate that has stayed independent through four generations of doing the opposite of what the market advised.
Was Fleury really the first biodynamic estate in Champagne?
Yes. Jean-Pierre Fleury converted part of the vineyard to biodynamics in 1989 and the whole of it by 1992, which by the estate's own account made him the first in Champagne to do so. At that date the practice was marginal even in Burgundy and close to unheard of in a region built on blending across many growers' fruit.
Where is Champagne Fleury based?
In Courteron, in the Côte des Bar at the southern end of the appellation. The slopes are Kimmeridgian clay and limestone, cut by the first tributaries of the Seine, which rises about seventy kilometres upstream. It is the same geological world as Chablis rather than the chalk of the Marne.
What is a récoltant-manipulant, and why does it matter here?
A grower who makes and sells champagne from their own fruit rather than selling grapes to a house. Robert Fleury became one of the first in southern Champagne in 1929, when the economic crisis was ruining small growers and bottling his own harvest was the way to save it. The category that now defines grower champagne began as a survival measure.
How big is the Fleury vineyard?
Fifteen hectares, worked as a single living organism rather than as a set of plots. The estate treats the cultivated soil as a habitat rather than a substrate, which is the practical content of biodynamics as they describe it.
What is the Sonate cuvée?
Fleury's first champagne bottled without sulphur, created in 2012 from the 2009 harvest. Working without added sulphur removes the usual safety net, so it is a technical statement as much as a stylistic one.
Who runs Fleury now?
Three of Jean-Pierre's children. Morgane handles the wines' presentation and the estate's public face, and initiated the Notes Blanches cuvée from true Pinot Blanc. Benoît, born in 1989 — the same year biodynamics began at the domaine — trained at Beaune, Montpellier and Reims and took over the vineyard from the 2010 harvest.