Vilmart & Cie
Coeur de Cuvee Premier Cru
Champagne
2015

The producer

Few producers in Champagne command the quiet respect that Vilmart & Cie does. Based in Rilly-la-Montagne in the Montagne de Reims, this family-run estate has been crafting grower Champagne of exceptional character for over a century. Laurent Champs, the fifth-generation winemaker, continues the legacy with meticulous viticulture and a Burgundian approach in the cellar, fermenting all wines in oak barrels and eschewing malolactic fermentation to preserve purity and tension. Working primarily with Premier Cru Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Vilmart’s wines are powerful yet poised, layered with complexity, and celebrated for their precision, elegance, and age-worthy structure. For many insiders, Vilmart is Champagne’s best-kept secret.

The wine

Coeur de Cuvée Premier Cru from Vilmart & Cie is the flagship expression of this revered grower-producer, sourced exclusively from the estate’s oldest Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines in the Premier Cru village of Rilly-la-Montagne. These 60+ year-old vines grow on chalk and clay soils that lend depth and tension to the wine. Crafted only in exceptional vintages, Coeur de Cuvée is vinified entirely in small oak barrels without malolactic fermentation, preserving its remarkable freshness and energy. It spends ten months on the lees in barrel before undergoing secondary fermentation and aging for an additional five to six years in bottle. With a precise Extra Brut dosage of 4–6 g/L, this wine reveals a dazzling interplay of richness and finesse, layered with citrus oil, pastry, chalky minerality, and a vibrant, crystalline finish. A benchmark Champagne for those who seek depth, longevity, and elegance in equal measure.

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.