Savart
Frédéric Savart
écueil
montagne de reims - champagne
story…
Founded by René Savart in 1947 when he purchased his first vines in Écueil. René remained at the helm until the 70’s when his son, Daniel, took over the winemaking. Production remained extremely small until around the mid 80’s when Daniel significantly expanded the family holdings. Since 2005 Daniel’s son, Frédéric, has been in control and has continued to evolve and increase the quality of the wines bottled under the Savart name.
Though Frédéric was born into a wine family, his true passion was football and he actually signed a youth contract with Stade de Reims as an attacking midfielder. However while pursuing this dream he met the woman who would become his wife and when a potential transfer to another club came up he refused to move thus ending his foray into professional football. It was after this that he decided to return home to work with his father in the vineyards.
farming & Philosophy…
Farming practices can easily be summed up as proactive instead of reactive. Preferring to put in preventative measure to negate disease as much as possible rather than treating it after widespread infection to the point of eradicating disease. His holistic approach to farming is about creating an environment within which the plants & vines are better equipped to resist maladies on their own without intervention.
In the cellar the philosophy is much like the farming, Fred does not want to guide the wines to an end goal. Choosing to make decisions that preserve and protect the unique characteristics that mother nature has gifted his vineyards and fruit. A good example of this is malolactic fermentation, he does not try to guide the wines through malolactic, nor does he block malolactic, any wine that goes through malolactic is done naturally and without any intervention.
Most of the wine is fermented in stainless steel, however Fred has been increasing his use of barriques for fermentations.
Vineyards…
Fred farms four hectares of vines, mostly located in Ecueil, but they also have a hectare of vines in the neighboring village of Villiers-aux-Noeuds. Of their four hectares there is only a 1/2 hectare of Chardonnay in total, the rest is planted entirely to Pinot Noir. Including a very prized parcel of sélection massale plantings of Pinot fin d’Écueil that was planted by Daniel & René in Villiers-aux-Noeuds.
The majority of bottlings from Savart are blends of fruit from several plots that he farms, however there are two lieu dits that he bottles on their own; Le Mont des Chrétiens & Le Mont Benoît. The lieu dits of Aillys, Chaillots derriere, Moutier, & Gillys also play a significant role in two bottlings from Savart, a blanc & a rosé under the Expression label. Although these are not single lieu dit bottlings, they are unique bottlings in that they are produced exclusively with old vine Pinot Noir, vines are all over sixty years of age. They are also both bottled brut nature and are single vintage bottlings.
Le Mont des Chrétiens
located in Écueil and planted entirely to Chardonnay in sandy soils, which is a bit a-typical being that Écueil is known for its Pinot Noir | prior to 2013 this was labeled as La Dame de Coeur
Le Mont Benoît
located in Villers-aux-Noeuds, a lieu dit that was really brought to prominence by Emmanuel Brochet who owns about 2.5 hectares of the vineyard | Savart’s parcel is primarily Pinot Noir with about 5% Chardonnay planted in Chalky soils with varying degrees of clay & silt topsoil
Aillys, Chaillots derriere, Moutier, & Gillys
all located in Écueil and planted to 100% old vine (60+ year old) Pinot Noir on argilo-calcaire (clay-limestone) soils
