The Pur Mesnil cuvée from Franck Bonville is a champagne born of a single village, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. This Grand Cru of the Côte des Blancs shapes the entire personality of the wine.
It's a cuvée built around notes of citrus and white orchard fruit, carried by a mineral tension that keeps the palate alert right through to the very last drop. Pur Mesnil is a saline wine, singular and generous in the elegance of its terroir.
This is a bottle you can pour from the aperitif onwards, alongside Gillardeau oysters for instance, before bringing it to the table with a Sole meunière finished with brown butter and almonds.
Le Terroir
The Pur Mesnil 2019 is a Blanc de Blancs, meaning it is made entirely from Chardonnay. These are Chardonnay grapes from the terroir of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, a village classified Grand Cru on the Côte des Blancs, where Franck Bonville tends his vines.
This cuvée comes from three plots located mainly on the lower slopes of Le Mesnil, a part of the terroir where the chalk surfaces right at the top of the soil. This chalky subsoil gives the wine its tension and precision, while the minerals it transmits to the vine come through as an intense salinity. The wine reflects its origin faithfully: a discreet terroir that favours restraint over show.
On this terroir, Chardonnay lends the wine its directness and finesse.
La vinification
Olivier Bonville, the winemaker at the helm of Maison Franck Bonville, chose to ferment this 2019 Chardonnay entirely in stainless steel tanks, a vessel that preserves the freshness of the fruit without imparting any oaky notes. Malolactic fermentation was carried through in full: it rounds out the acidity and brings a velvety texture to the palate. The wine was then bottled under cork for its second fermentation.
Dosage was set at 2.5 g/L, placing it in the Extra Brut category: a tiny amount that lets the wine express itself without artifice, while giving it just enough support to balance the Chardonnay's tension. This restraint showcases the chalky aromas characteristic of the Mesnil terroir, without ever masking them. At Franck Bonville, this precision at every stage aims to preserve the pure identity of the grape.
Le millésime 2019
The 2019 growing season began with spring frosts that reduced yields across the Côte des Blancs, concentrating the Chardonnay berries destined for Pur Mesnil all the more. A heatwave then hit in July, speeding up sugar accumulation in the grapes. The cool September nights that followed slowed this progression, preserving acidity (the grape's natural freshness) right up to a late harvest. The bunches from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger thus arrived at the press with a rare balance between ripeness and tension, despite lower yields. This contrast shaped a cuvée that is both taut and ripe, where the vibrancy of the late season answers the generosity of summer.
