Overview
Bergères-lès-Vertus is a premier cru village of the Champagne appellation at the southern end of the Côte des Blancs, in the Marne department roughly 20 kilometres south of Épernay. It adjoins Vertus to the north and is the last commune of the côte's continuous slope; south of the village the vineyard gives way to the plain, interrupted only by Mont Aimé, a detached outlier hill on the commune's boundary. The commune carries approximately 220 hectares of vines, about 97 percent Chardonnay with some 5 hectares of Pinot Noir and 1 hectare of Meunier, worked by roughly 130 declared operators. The village was rated 95 percent on the échelle des crus.
History
Mont Aimé carries most of the commune's recorded history. Blanche of Navarre, countess of Champagne, had a castle built on its summit in 1210, and the hill served the counts of Champagne as a stronghold and residence; the fortress was later dismantled and its stone reused in surrounding villages. On 13 May 1239 the inquisitor Robert le Bougre had 183 men and women convicted of Catharism burned at the stake on the hill, one of the largest mass executions of the medieval inquisition in France. In September 1815, after the fall of Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I of Russia held a review of his army on the plain at the foot of Mont Aimé.
The village's modern wine economy consolidated in the twentieth century around cooperative structures: the Coopérative Vinicole du Mont Aimé, based in the village, is affiliated with Union Champagne, the Avize-based union of Côte des Blancs cooperatives, and a large share of the commune's fruit has long supplied négociant houses rather than village-labeled bottlings.
Terroir & Climate
The vineyards lie mainly between 120 and 160 metres on the east-facing chalk slope that closes the Côte des Blancs, continuous with the vineyards of Vertus; additional parcels wrap Mont Aimé, whose summit reaches about 240 metres, with broadly east-facing exposures. The subsoil is the chalk of the côte, under shallow topsoil that provides the drainage and water regulation characteristic of the region's Chardonnay sites. The climate is that of the central Marne, a cool regime combining oceanic and continental influences, with a mean annual temperature near 11 degrees Celsius and rainfall around 700 millimetres.
Grape Varieties & Wine Styles
Chardonnay accounts for about 97 percent of plantings, among the highest proportions in Champagne, and the village's production is dominated by blanc de blancs and by Chardonnay destined for house blends. Black grapes occupy only a few hectares. Fruit rated 95 percent commanded premier cru pricing under the échelle, and wines made entirely from grapes of villages rated 90-99 percent may carry the premier cru mention. Chardonnay from the southern end of the côte is conventionally described in the trade as fruitier and earlier-developing than that of the grand cru villages further north, and it serves both village-designated cuvées and large-volume blends.
Notable Producers
Resident growers include François Vallois, a family estate producing on the order of 35,000 bottles annually, Bertrand Vallois, and Perrot-Batteux. The Coopérative Vinicole du Mont Aimé presses for roughly 111 members farming about 83 hectares. Houses holding vineyards in the commune include Duval-Leroy, based in neighboring Vertus, along with Moët & Chandon, Bollinger, Piper-Heidsieck and Lallier.
What to Know
Bergères-lès-Vertus and Vertus are the two premiers crus that close the Côte des Blancs to the south; the grand cru band of the côte (Avize, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger, Chouilly, Oiry) lies further north. The 95 percent rating placed the village near the top of the premier cru scale before the échelle was formally abolished in 2010; the terms grand cru and premier cru remain permitted on labels under the old village lists. Most of the commune's Chardonnay reaches the market inside house and cooperative blends, so village-labeled bottlings are comparatively few and mostly small in scale. For buyers, the village is a source of premier cru blanc de blancs priced below the grand cru villages of the same slope.