- By Brenden Robnik (02/02/2026)
Jacques Selosse is a tiny family estate in the village of Avize, making roughly 57,000 bottles a year. That's a rounding error for the big Champagne houses. Yet these are some of the most sought-after sparkling wines on the planet, and the domaine changed the way the world thinks about Champagne.
How did a small grower in the Côte des Blancs end up with that kind of reputation? Below I cover the family's history, the winemaking behind the house style, the full range, and a closer look at four cuvées I love: Initial, Sous le Mont, the Rosé and the Millésime.
Three generations in Avize
The story starts after the Second World War with Jacques Selosse. Jacques didn't come from a winegrowing family, but he built up a small estate in Avize and released his first Champagne in 1960. For years the family sold most of its grapes and made a modest amount of wine. By Anselme's own account it sold for "three times nothing."
Then comes the man who changes everything: Jacques's son, Anselme. Instead of studying in Champagne, Anselme went to wine school in Beaune, in Burgundy. There he spent time with some of the greatest white-wine makers in the world: Coche-Dury, Lafon and Leflaive. He came home in 1974 with a Burgundian idea in his head. A wine should taste of the place it comes from.
Anselme took full control of the estate in 1980. That idea, the vineyard first and the brand second, was close to heresy in Champagne at the time. The region ran on big houses blending grapes from all over and selling a consistent house style. Growers were paid by the kilo, so nobody had much reason to cut yields or farm carefully.
Anselme did the opposite. He cut yields, moved towards organic farming and treated every plot as something worth listening to. Plenty of people called him "the madman of Avize". Today he's widely seen as the father of the grower Champagne movement. A whole generation of growers followed his lead and started making and bottling their own wine.
Anselme and his wife Corinne also opened Les Avisés, a small hotel and restaurant right above the cellars in Avize. If you ever get the chance, go.
In 2018 Anselme officially retired and handed the domaine to his son, Guillaume. This was no sudden changing of the guard. Guillaume had been working alongside his father for years, and he's a seriously talented winemaker in his own right. He also makes a few tiny cuvées under his own name. Today the estate covers about 8.3 hectares. Most of it is in the Grand Cru villages of the Côte des Blancs: Avize, Cramant, Oger and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. There are smaller Pinot Noir holdings in Aÿ, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and Ambonnay.
How Selosse makes wine
What makes a Selosse taste like a Selosse? It comes down to a handful of choices, and every one of them goes back to Burgundy.
It starts in the vineyard. Low yields, organic-leaning farming and grapes picked fully ripe. Selosse fruit is some of the ripest and most expressive in Champagne, and you can taste it in the glass.
Plots are kept apart. Dozens of individual parcels are vinified separately, so each one can be judged on its own before blending.
Oak barrels instead of steel tanks. Most Champagne is fermented in stainless steel. Selosse ferments in small Burgundian barrels with native yeasts. The barrel lets a little oxygen in, which builds texture and those nutty, savoury, almost sherry-like notes the house is famous for. More recently the domaine has also experimented with terracotta.
Hands off in the cellar. For the core wines there's typically no malolactic fermentation, and no fining or filtration.
Time. These wines spend years on their lees before disgorgement, and some cuvées draw on a solera: a perpetual reserve that gets topped up each year so it carries a little of every vintage.
Very little sugar. Dosage is low and decided bottling by bottling, with no fixed formula. Many cuvées sit somewhere between zero and a few grams per litre.
The result is Champagne that drinks like great white Burgundy with bubbles. Rich, layered, oxidative, salty and alive. Some people find it polarising. I find it unforgettable. Treat these wines as wine first: use a proper white-wine glass rather than a narrow flute, and don't serve them too cold.
The range at a glance
Before getting into my four favourites, here's a quick tour of the whole family. Anselme's big insight was to split his Avize vineyards by slope. The lower slopes have more clay and give rounder, more generous wines. The higher slopes are chalkier, with naturally lower yields, and give tighter, more intense wines. Most of the range is built on that split.
| Cuvée | Style | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Initial | Brut Blanc de Blancs | Three successive vintages of Chardonnay from lower slopes in Avize, Cramant and Oger. The entry point and the biggest bottling. |
| V.O. (Version Originale) | Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs | The same three villages and three vintages, but from the higher, chalkier slopes, with longer ageing and almost no dosage. |
| Substance | Blanc de Blancs, solera | Drawn from a solera started in 1986 from two Avize parcels. First released in 1996 as "Origine", then renamed. For many, the house's most coveted wine. |
| Exquise | Demi-Sec | A sweeter style from a south-facing amphitheatre of vines in Oger. Rarely seen. |
| Rosé | Brut Rosé | Avize Chardonnay plus a small splash of red Pinot Noir from Ambonnay. |
| Millésime | Vintage | The only vintage-dated wine, made only in great years. |
| Lieux-dits | Single-vineyard, solera | Six mini-soleras, each from one site: Les Carelles (Le Mesnil), Chemin de Châlons (Cramant), Les Chantereines (Avize), La Côte Faron (Aÿ), Le Bout du Clos (Ambonnay) and Sous le Mont (Mareuil-sur-Aÿ). |
The lieux-dits were Anselme's way of showing that Champagne has terroir as distinct as any Burgundy village. Three are Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs, and three are Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims and Vallée de la Marne side. Production of each is tiny. There's even a Ratafia, and Anselme and Guillaume have announced a still white Coteaux Champenois called "Finage Avize".
The rest of this post takes a closer look at four of them: Initial, Sous le Mont, the Rosé and the Millésime.
Initial
We start where Selosse starts: Initial. The name says it all. This is the house's opening statement and its classic brut, and it's the wine most people meet first.
Initial is 100% Chardonnay from three Grand Cru villages: Avize, Cramant and Oger. The grapes come from the lower slopes, where there's more clay in the soil. That gives a slightly rounder, more generous wine than the hillside sites used for V.O.
It's always a blend of three successive vintages. So rather than one year's snapshot, you're tasting a little window of time. The base wines are fermented in barrel with native yeasts, generally without malolactic fermentation. After bottling, the wine rests on its lees for years before disgorgement. Dosage is low, typically a few grams per litre, and it varies from release to release.
Even though it's the "biggest" wine in the range, we're talking about roughly 33,000 bottles a year. That's tiny.
In the glass, look for pear and apple, preserved lemon, hazelnut and toasted almond, with fresh bread and that hint of oxidative richness. Underneath it all sits a chalky, salty spine. Initial is a perfect introduction to the Selosse style: everything that makes the house special, in its most approachable form.
Sous le Mont
Now we leave the Côte des Blancs and Chardonnay behind. Sous le Mont is one of the six lieux-dits, and it's 100% Pinot Noir, a Blanc de Noirs.
The vineyard is in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, a Premier Cru village in the Vallée de la Marne. It sits on the same hill as Philipponnat's famous Clos des Goisses. Sous le Mont is on the east-facing side, so it catches the gentle morning sun. The soils are chalky, and the nearby Marne river moderates the climate. Selosse acquired the site in 2003.
Like all the lieux-dits, Sous le Mont is made as a mini-solera. Each year a portion of the wine is drawn off and bottled, and the new vintage is added to the reserve. So every bottle carries the memory of every vintage since the solera began. The wine is barrel-fermented, aged for years on its lees and given very little or no dosage.
What to look for: this is the most aromatic, perfumed side of Selosse. Think red fruits like cranberry and cherry, rose petal, white pepper and orange peel, with spice, dried herbs and a touch of the house's nutty, savoury character. It's vinous and textured but surprisingly elegant. It's Pinot Noir showing grace rather than power.
It's fascinating to taste it alongside Initial. Same winemaker, same philosophy, same barrels. But a different grape and a completely different place, and you can taste the difference.
The Rosé
Next, the Rosé, which many critics count among the very best rosé Champagnes made anywhere.
The base is essentially Chardonnay from the Avize slopes, blended across successive vintages. In some descriptions it's close to the V.O. Then a small amount of still red Pinot Noir is added for colour and fruit, usually somewhere between 5 and 10%. The red traditionally comes from Ambonnay, from Francis Egly of Egly-Ouriet, one of the great Pinot Noir growers in Champagne. In years when Egly's yields were too low, Selosse has sourced the red elsewhere.
Think about that for a second. One of the greatest Chardonnay growers in Champagne, blended with red wine from one of the greatest Pinot growers. It's a meeting of two legends in one bottle.
The colour is often more peach skin or pale copper than bright pink. On the nose and palate, the Chardonnay gives texture, citrus, lees richness and that Selosse savouriness. The Pinot adds a bright line of red fruit: cranberry, pink grapefruit, rose and red berries. It's powerful and textured, but not heavy.
This is a rosé for the table. It works beautifully with food, from salmon and duck to roast poultry.
Millésime
And finally, the Millésime.
This is the only vintage-dated wine Selosse makes, and only in years Anselme or Guillaume think are worthy of it. Everything else in the range is about blending time: three vintages, or a solera spanning decades. The Millésime does the opposite. It captures one single year.
Traditionally it's a Blanc de Blancs from two prized parcels in Avize. For the 2005, those were Les Chantereines and Les Maladries du Midi, both Grand Cru. More recent vintages have broadened the recipe and brought in some Pinot Noir. Selosse is never afraid to change something if he thinks it makes the wine better.
The wine gets the longest ageing of anything in the range, typically around nine years on its lees before disgorgement. Dosage is minimal. The 2005 was disgorged in November 2015 with just 1.3 grams per litre. Quantities are tiny: a few thousand bottles in a given year.
I want to tell you about the 2005, because it's the best Champagne I have ever had. At a Selosse event I hosted in Sydney, it was simply perfect in every respect. The nose was intoxicating: nutty, saline, citrus, a French patisserie and so much more. I kept going back just to smell it. Then the palate coated every inch of my mouth. Citrus and stone fruit, salty acidity and the warmth of every baked good you can imagine, with that nutty edge sitting just in the background. The texture and balance were extraordinary. I've gone back over my notes many times, and I wouldn't change a thing. One hundred points, every day of the week. And I'm not alone. Gault&Millau scored it 99.
Whatever the vintage, the Millésime is Selosse at its most concentrated: the purest expression of a single year in Avize, given the time to become something remarkable.
Final thoughts
What ties all of these wines together is conviction. Anselme Selosse decided that Champagne could be about place, patience and the grower's hand, not just a brand and a house style. He was right, and the whole region has changed because of it. With Guillaume now at the helm, the domaine is in good hands.
Selosse can be hard to find and it isn't cheap. But if you get the chance to taste these wines, take it. Open them with time, pour them into a proper wine glass and let them unfold. In my experience, they'll stay with you for a long time.
Sources
• Wine Spectator: How winegrower Anselme Selosse shook up Champagne
• Rare Wine Co: Jacques Selosse tech sheet
• Rare Wine Co: Jacques Selosse grower profile
• Sotheby's: Jacques Selosse, the estate revolutionizing Champagne
• Wine With Seth: Jacques Selosse
• Bibendum: Jacques Selosse range notes
• K&L Wines: Selosse Sous le Mont