One of the most exciting new growers to arise in Champagne in the last 15 years, Aurélien Suenen is a perfect example of how quickly a terroir-obsessed grower with quality vineyards can make their mark. Aurélien made his first wines in 2009 when he unexpectedly found himself in sole charge of the Cramant-based family domaine. Now, the wines are being discussed in the same breath as the greatest names of the Côtes des Blancs. How he got here is an interesting tale.

Suenen grew up in Champagne on his family estate, so he was no stranger to working in the vineyard and cellar. On his return, he almost immediately began to make radical changes. His father’s practice had been conventional; the son chose a different path. Aurélien realised that all the Champagnes that moved him emerged from organics. This helped him make the connection between high quality and ethical practice. He also associated his father’s illness (and the widespread cancers afflicting many of his father’s generation) with the chemicals used so heavily in the vines. These two factors drove him in his pursuit of better.

Suenen’s wines represent a scintillating range of ‘living soil’ grower Champagne and are some of the most precise, textural and intensely mineral wines emanating from the region.

Good friends in the region—in particular, Pascal Agrapart, but any number of top growers—were on hand to help with advice and contacts. So, from the very beginning, Suenen laid the foundations for the quality we see today. He shrank the estate to raise the standard of work in the vines, eliminated chemical usage, began cultivating his vineyards and moved towards organic viticulture. The wines got better and better and now achieve a standard associated with only the very finest growers.

His tireless work in the vines is assisted by right-hand man Christophe Barbier, who has worked for the family for over 20 years. Suenen and Christophe cultivate, use cover crops and organic composts to nourish life in the soil and increase soil biodiversity as much as possible. They use herbal infusions to promote the natural defences of the vines. Organic certification came in 2019. To further understand the nuances of his terroirs, Suenen works closely with vineyard soil specialist Emmanuel Bourguignon (son of Claude and Lydia). Yields are low (half the level of his father’s era). While there is no fixed formula, Suenen picks later than most of his neighbours (which is not saying much in Champagne), thus bringing more ripeness and depth to offset his vineyards’ intense minerality. The winemaking here has followed a similar changing-of-the-guard trajectory.

From his tiny 3.2 hectares of vines, Suenen crafts two village blends and four single-vineyard lieu-dit vintage wines. Suenen’s decision to bottle his Oiry vineyards apart is a game changer. In fact, Suenen’s two bottlings from this Grand Cru village are currently the only pure Oiry wines on the market. While the Oiry cuvée is all about tension, stony density and salinity, Suenen’s C + C cuvée blends the texture and flesh of Cramant with the ripe opulence of his south-facing Chouilly vines to produce something more hedonistic. Both wines are superb terroir statements from the northern Côte des Blancs and are underpinned by the chalky mineral freshness that is a hallmark of this grower. The lieu-dit wines come from each of the three Grand Cru villages mentioned above, with a fourth from Suenen’s 0.21-hectare plot of old-vine, ungrafted Meunier in La Grande Vigne in Montigny-Sur-Vesle, north-west of Reims.