Bruno Paillard is a young, dynamic Champagne House that has quickly established a reputation for elegant wines with real style. Fresh, dry and vibrant, these wines are made with an uncompromising attitude to quality that shines through in the glass.Originally a Champagne broker, Bruno Paillard started his own Maison in Reims back in 1981 – the first new Champagne House in more than a century. The challenges involved in taking on the region’s established names would have stopped lesser men than Bruno, but over the last three decades Bruno and his daughter, Alice, have turned this eponymous business into one of the most prestigious in Champagne.In 1994, he purchased his first vineyard:3ha in Oger, a beautiful Grand Cru of the Cote des Blancs. Today, Maison Bruno Paillard is still an independent family-owned Champagne producer, with 32.5ha of vineyards covering 15 crus of Champagne, across more than 100 individual plots all with unique terroir. These provide more than 60% of the grapes for Bruno Paillard. 12ha of these vineyards are Grand Cru, an unusually high percentage given that across the region, the Grand Crus represent just 17 of the 320 villages.The house follows a strict quality charter that includes using only first pressings, vinifying each cru separately and putting the disgorgement date on each bottle. They were the first to display disgorgement dates on the back labels of all their cuvees – and have been doing so since the mid-1980s. Their house style is achieved by blending each vintage with 25-50% reserve wines. These are a blend of previous vintages in a solera-style system, dating all the way back to 1985!The Premiere Cuvee is a very personal interpretation of the whole region, through the selection of 35 of the 320 crus of champagne. It is the flagship of the Bruno Paillard style.A top quality wine, the Première Cuvée has to survive any harvest whether rich or poor. produced using more than 30 Crus, the composition of which is a house secret. Reserve wines:A blend of 25 vintages, since 1985; up to 50% of the final blend. Ageing is longer than the legal requirement; three years sur lie, then a minimum of a further five months after disgorgement. Dosage:Extra brut, very low dosage, less than 6g/L. This creates a very pure, very authentic champagne. (For the record, the “extra brut” denotes a sugar level of up to 6g/L).