Champagne Flancourt from Quentin Richard

<p>Quentin Richard, alongside his father Matthieu and mother Delphine Boulard, dutifully tend to Champagne Francis Boulard et Fille&#39;s 3.5 hectares of organic vineyards. While we&#39;ve&nbsp;worked with his&nbsp;grandfather Francis and mother&nbsp;Delphine for over 15 years, Quentin is someone we&#39;ve only just begun to know since&nbsp;his return to the estate in 2020. So when he&nbsp;reached out to us about his new project Flancourt, an artisanal micro-Champagne house he&#39;d started with his fianc&eacute;,&nbsp;we&nbsp;didn&#39;t know how to respond.</p> <p>You&#39;d think that Louis/Dressner Selections, importer of wine for almost 40 years, would know how to handle a Champagne house. Well guess what? We live in a bubble! We know we&#39;ve got you&nbsp;covered for&nbsp;Beaujolais, Loire and Emilia Romagna and&nbsp;yes, we even&nbsp;have some amazing grower Champagne producers, including Boulard! I guess the point I&#39;m trying to make is that the company&#39;s ethos has always revolved around a person, the vigneron or vigneronne, doing everything from A to Z. And sure,&nbsp;we DO&nbsp;work with a lot of n&eacute;gociant wines from said vignerons now, a reality shaped&nbsp;by&nbsp;the shifting landscape&nbsp;that a decade of short crops throughout&nbsp;the 2010&#39;s and 2020&#39;s forced many of them to turn to for survival. Some, like Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme and the late Olivier Lemasson&nbsp;were even principally n&eacute;gociants before acquiring their own land and shifting into the full-fledged vignerons they&#39;d eventually become.&nbsp;</p> <p>So why did this&nbsp;proposal of working with a Champagne house feel so alien? It essentially boiled down to one thing: a lack of understanding how something like Flancourt actually works, and why Quentin would want to embark in such a project when he already makes amazing Champagne with his family. In his own words:</p> <p><i>&quot;The project was born out of a deeply personal desire: to create a brand complementary to that of the family estate&mdash;one with a distinct identity, yet consistent with my own background and vision of wine.</i></p> <p><i>My parents remain actively involved at Francis Boulard et Fille&nbsp;today, and I felt a desire to develop my own distinct creative expression alongside them. The wines from my family estate are highly precise and distinctly gastronomic&mdash;a result of our commitment to organic and biodynamic farming practices. With this project, however, I sought to explore something slightly different: wines that are more immediate and approachable in style, while still maintaining the utmost rigor in our selection of terroirs and the quality of our winemaking. Thus, this venture represents a natural continuation of my work with Boulard&mdash;an estate I also look forward to taking the helm of in the future.</i></p> <p><i>I currently work with three different partner winegrowers, from whom I purchase grapes exclusively. I chose them, above all, for the quality and consistency of their work in the vineyards. The terroirs hail primarily from the Massif de Saint-Thierry and the Marne Valley, as well as from the Ch&acirc;teau-Thierry sector for a portion of the blends. This diversity allows me to craft wines that possess a balance of tension, fruit, and equilibrium. The vineyards have an average age of 30 years.</i></p> <p><i>Regarding viticulture, even if the vineyards are not certified organic, it is of utmost importance to me to work exclusively with partners who adopt a responsible approach that respects the soil.&nbsp;No herbicides or systemic products are used in the vineyard plots with which I work. The soils are either mechanically tilled or kept under grass cover, depending on specific needs.<br /> <br /> My partner winegrowers do not produce Champagne themselves; instead, they sell their grapes to various Champagne houses or cooperatives within the region. While this practice is quite common in Champagne, the specific plots selected for my wines are subject to dedicated monitoring and precise quality criteria.</i></p> <p><i>In the cellar, fermentations are carried out using indigenous yeasts. I strive for winemaking methods that are as natural and non-interventionist as possible, while maintaining precision and stability. Generally, the wines are neither fined nor heavily filtered. Depending on the specific cuv&eacute;e and vintage, a light filtration may be performed prior to bottling to ensure the wines&#39; stability during transport and export.</i></p> <p><i>We average around 30 g/L of sulfites, but this can vary depending on the cuv&eacute;e, the sector, the vintage, and the grape varieties. It is never an exact figure. We add sulfites at press and a second time at racking.&quot;</i></p>