"Located in the Villers-Marmery an anomaly in the Montagne de Reims, an island of Chardonnay in a sea of Pinot Noir, you might say. You have a meter of topsoil, then chalk (in the Côte des Blancs it’s just 10 cm of topsoil). Yet Chardonnay evidently came to Villers by accident. Around the turn of the century one grower happened to try it and lo, it was good. Others followed. Now we have something unusual and actually gorgeous. We tasted another grower’s wine from Villers- Marmery and it had that flavor, though without the class of Margaine. The village expresses a new face of Chardonnay and expends the range of possibilities for Champagne."Terry Theise

RM or récoltant-manipulant. Driven by passion for their product, these producers bottle and sell their wines under their own labels. There is a potential for high quality combined with good value, and wines that might reflect the terroir of small plots of land rather than standardised blends. R stands for Récoltant ( the literal translation is ‘Harvester’) M stands for Manipulant ( literally ‘Handler’) These “grower” champagnes account for just under 3 percent of the total market.