La Côte aux Enfants

This vineyard used to be called La Cote aux Enfers - Hell's Hill - for how brutally steep it is. It was renamed La Cote aux Enfants because children were reckoned the only ones light enough to scramble up it without trouble. Jacques Bollinger spent years in the early 20th century buying back over 50 separately owned slivers of it until Bollinger owned the whole four hectares outright. It's a still red wine, not Champagne at all - a Coteaux Champenois, made only in the best years, a deliberate return to Champagne's original fame as a red-wine region.