When Maison Telmont launches a champagne, they don’t just pop corks, they plant roots. Larry shares an afternoon in Highgate with Telmont’s charismatic President, Ludovic du Plessis, for the unveiling of their first organic rosé cuvée, Réserve de la Terre Rosé…
It’s not every day that the President of a champagne house rings you from a black cab.
“Toby! It’s Ludovic,” came the rich French lilt over a backdrop of muffled traffic horns. “Welcome to the family! I have a real treat for you this afternoon, I hope you can join me.”
The line went dead before I could respond.
Hours later, there he was on a flower-strewn terrace of a Highgate watering hole, with the air of a man who’d just won a bet. The place was bedecked in roses, foxgloves, the odd slightly tipsy-looking daisy, and in the centre of the table he placed a green glass bottle with the reverence of someone revealing a Fabergé egg.
“This,” he said, “is our first organic rosé cuvée.”
Ludovic placed the slender bottle between us — elegant, understated, and very deliberately not the clear glass of tradition. “Eighty-seven percent recycled,” he said, patting it affectionately. “Better for the earth, better for the wine.” He turned it so the pale pink label caught the sunlight. This was Telmont’s Réserve de la Terre – Rosé, the latest in the Damery house’s mission to prove that the future of champagne is not only sparkling but certified organic.
And then we sipped.
It’s a cuvée that sings of both sunshine and patience. Born from two vintages — the challenging, rain-soaked 2021 and the generous, celebrated 2020 — it’s a rosé d’assemblage of Chardonnay, Meunier, and Pinot Noir, the latter lending a whisper of Côte des Bars red to the blend.
On the nose, pomegranate and redcurrant flit over a subtle toastiness. The first sip is a floral fanfare, followed by cherry, orange zest, and a saline length that insists you pause before the next. There’s delicacy here, but also intent — the quiet confidence of a champagne that knows where it came from and where it’s going.
And, as we sipped, Ludovic spoke of its legacy; of Bertrand Lhôpital, Telmont’s cellar master and great-grandson of its founder, who had been quietly turning the vineyards organic since 1999 – long before it was fashionable – and of Leonardo DiCaprio’s investment in their green crusade, lending a little Hollywood glow to the French terroir.
And Ludovic himself? He was the evangelist, the man in the cab, the apostle of recycled glass and living soil. He spoke of the land the way others speak of childhood sweethearts. “Organic,” he told me, “is not marketing. It is respect — for the vines, the growers, the earth.” He gestured expansively at the flowers around us, as if they too had been part of the conversion plan.
Somewhere behind us, a hipster couple debated the merits of oat milk over almond. A Jack Russell barked at a bee. The sun lowered, gilding our glasses. And I thought, as the last of the bottle slipped away, that if more revolutions tasted like this, we’d all be in the streets by teatime.
There are only 5,119 bottles of Réserve de la Terre Rosé in existence. At £88, it’s hardly the cheapest cause to join. But then, can you put a price on sipping the future of champagne in the company of a man who calls you from a London taxi?
Telmont Réserve de la Terre – Rosé, £88, available at www.champagne-telmont.com.
Telmont Champagne Réserve Brut NV, £52, available at Waitrose and online at www.waitrose.com.
