Larmandier-Bernier
Les Chemins d'Avize
Champagne
2015

The producer

Few names in Champagne are as quietly revered as Larmandier-Bernier. Based in Vertus in the Côte des Blancs, this family estate has been cultivating their vines with biodynamic principles since the 1990s - long before it was fashionable. Their focus is unwavering: expressing terroir with clarity and precision. Working exclusively with Premier and Grand Cru vineyards (mostly Chardonnay), they ferment with indigenous yeasts, use minimal dosage, and allow extensive lees aging. The result? Champagnes of remarkable texture, energy, and finesse, consistently rated among the region’s finest by sommeliers and critics alike.

The wine

Les Chemins d'Avize is a distinguished single-vineyard Champagne from Larmandier-Bernier, crafted from two small plots - Chemin de Plivot and Chemin de Flavigny - in the heart of Avize, a Grand Cru village in the Côte des Blancs. Planted in 1955 and 1960, these 60-year-old Chardonnay vines thrive in poor, chalk-rich soils with minimal topsoil, imparting a distinctive mineral character to the wine. The estate employs biodynamic viticulture, using indigenous yeasts for fermentation in neutral oak barrels, followed by malolactic fermentation. The wine matures on its lees for a year without filtration or fining, then undergoes secondary fermentation and ages in the cellar for at least six additional years. Each bottle is hand-disgorged one year before release, with a low dosage of 2 g/L, resulting in an Extra Brut Champagne that showcases the purity and elegance of its terroir.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.