Amaury Beaufort Champagne "Le Jardinot XVIII"

Perhaps the biggest change in the fifteen-plus years of our travels searching out great producers in France and Italy - and Champagne specifically - to establish direct relationships with them, is that Champagne now has way more importers searching there. Lots…

We've got a few - Eric Rodez, Benoit Marguet, Pascal Doquet, Christophe Mignon, Benoit Lahaye and Champagne Larmandier-Bernier - which are all imported via our “almost direct imports” work; best for freshness, direct shipping and great pricing.

Today, Amaury Beaufort is an absolute star in Champagne -- and he will be in the USA soon, you'll find early press about him here in America too now already.

We compare today’s Beaufort offer to the likes of 2002 championing Champagne Egly, or in 2009 hosting Cedric Bouchard at the shop and suggesting buy these wines. Today both producers wine’s are very hard to find — and four to six times the price. Amaury and his work seems headed in a similar direction.

We'd heard great things about Amaury, and our Alex was able to visit and taste with him at his winery last spring. Alex was blown away and brought bottles back for our crew: we all agree it is wonderful Champagne.

Amaury's winery is in the Aube, just north of Cedric Bouchard vines, while Amaury's vines are just below Cedrics. Among Amaury’s neighbors are Marie Courtin, Vouette et Sorbée, Jacques Lassaigne and Pierre Gerbais.

Amaury, raised in Ambonnay, is the son of Jacques Beaufort, one of the early pioneers of organic and biodynamic farming in Champagne in the 1970’s. Jacques was the second producer in all of Champagne to make his wines from 100% organic grapes back in the 70’s. They have remained organic and added biodynamics since.

Amaury took sustainable farming even further, ending the spraying of sulphur and copper in the vineyards before leaving the family domaine in 2018 to focus on farming his own 1 hectare plot in Polisy and starting his own domaine.

His father Jacques purchased 3 single hectare plots decades ago in the village of Polisy in the Cote des Bar and kept them for his children. Amaury was given the plot in the center of the 3, which is advantageous because being surrounded by his siblings’ plots and the forest at the top of the slope, thus shielding him from the chemical farming of his neighbors.

His plot in Polisy ‘Les Jardinot’ and is all Kimmeridgian limestone, more akin to the soil type of Chablis than terroir in the Cote de Blancs or the Montagne de Reims. His Les Jardinot has never been farmed with herbicides or pesticides. The winemaking is natural: native yeast only, slow fermentations in wood and no sulphur is used.

Currently farming only his single hectare, his wine is made at his home in the Aube’s Bar Sur Seine. With no plans to increase production, Amaury has no employees and does the entirety of the vineyard and cellar work himself.

Get some today…..