Jacquesson: The Champagne House That Numbered Its Cuvées

There are older champagne houses than Jacquesson, but very few still belong to the family that runs them, and almost none have done what the Chiquet brothers did in 2000. That year, Jean-Hervé and Laurent Chiquet quietly decided to stop making the thing every champagne house makes: a non-vintage cuvée that tastes the same every year. In its place they put a number.

That was the year the 728 arrived, based on the 2000 harvest. It was followed by 729, based on 2001. Every year since, a new number, a new blend, a new bottle. If you buy the current release, Cuvée 748, you are drinking the twentieth chapter of Jacquesson's numbered experiment, and the 748th release of a house that started in 1798.

That is the story worth telling.

From Châlons-sur-Marne to Dizy

Memmie Jacquesson founded the house in Châlons-sur-Marne in 1798, at the tail end of the French Revolution. His son Adolphe made a small mark on the entire wine world when, in 1844, he invented the muselet, the wire cage that keeps a champagne cork attached to a champagne bottle. Every sparkling wine you have ever opened uses his invention.

Napoleon was a customer. So was his court. Jacquesson supplied the French army, the Russian court, the Ottoman court. For most of the nineteenth century the house was one of the giants. Then, as with many family estates, the twentieth century was harder. The house shrank, changed hands, and by the 1970s Jacquesson was a small and slightly forgotten name.

Jean Chiquet bought the estate in 1974 and moved it to Dizy, in the Vallée de la Marne just across the river from Épernay. He worked to rebuild the house piece by piece. His sons Jean-Hervé and Laurent took over in the 1990s. In 2000 they made the decision that defines Jacquesson today.

The Numbered Cuvée: A Break with Tradition

Every major champagne house builds its reputation on a non-vintage bottle that tastes the same year after year. Moët Impérial in 2019 should taste like Moët Impérial in 2024. The blenders spend the winter tasting base wines from many harvests, drawing on reserve stocks, and layering them together to reach a house style. Consistency is the goal. Consistency is the promise.

The Chiquet brothers looked at this and saw a philosophical problem. If a house style is what you sell, then the harvest and the vineyards become raw material for that style. The wine hides the year. It flattens the terroir. It says less about a specific place and a specific season than it could.

So they stopped. Since 2000, Jacquesson has not made a traditional non-vintage. Every year the cellar produces one main blend based on that year's harvest, with a modest amount of reserve wine from earlier years to add depth. The blend is named after its number: 728, 729, 730, all the way up to today's 748, based on the 2020 harvest.

You are not buying a brand when you buy a Jacquesson. You are buying a year, translated through some of the best vineyards in Champagne. The assemblage is different every time because the year is different every time. Very few houses in the region will let you drink champagne that honestly. Jacquesson is one of them.

The Vineyards: Grand Cru with No Interest in Boasting

The estate owns around 28 hectares, most of it planted on Grand Cru and Premier Cru slopes. Aÿ for Pinot Noir. Avize and Oiry for Chardonnay. Hautvillers and Mareuil-sur-Aÿ for Premier Cru complement. These are among the most coveted addresses across the three regions of Champagne, and Jacquesson is one of the few small estates that owns significant parcels in them.

Ninety-five percent of the fruit that goes into a Jacquesson bottle comes from these estate vineyards. Technically the house is classified as Négociant Manipulant, because they buy the remaining five percent, but for practical purposes Jacquesson is a grower house in everything but paperwork.

Alongside the numbered cuvées, Jacquesson bottles a series of single-vineyard wines that have earned cult status among champagne enthusiasts. Vauzelle Terme is a Blanc de Noirs from Aÿ that shows power, dark fruit and depth. Champ Caïn is a Blanc de Blancs from Avize, defined by chalk-driven purity. Corne Bautray comes from a single Chardonnay parcel in Dizy. Terres Rouges is a rosé from Dizy that is quieter and more complex than most rosés you will taste.

These wines are fermented in large old oak casks, dosed minimally or not at all, and released only when the cellar decides they are ready. There is no annual calendar. There is a wine that is ready or not ready.

What Jacquesson Means for Our Selection

We import Jacquesson because they represent something rare: a house with two centuries of history that is not resting on it. The 200-year legacy is respected. The 25-year numbered experiment shows the same house pushing for a more honest expression of what the vineyard and the year gave them.

If you want a champagne that tells you something specific about where and when it was made, this is one of very few big names that will honestly do that. There is no house style hiding the harvest. There is the harvest, dressed carefully. This is what makes Jacquesson stand alongside the best grower champagne we import, even though technically they operate as a house.

Where to Start with Jacquesson

The current numbered cuvée is the honest place to start. It is what the Chiquet brothers are asking you to taste this year, straight from the 2020 harvest as they saw it.

If you want to see how Jacquesson fits alongside the other families we work with, and understand where each one sits by region and style, our meet our growers hub walks through every one of them.

Jacquesson has been quietly refusing to blend for uniformity for a quarter of a century. That is not the way champagne is supposed to work, and it is exactly what makes them worth opening.