50%Chardonnay/50% Pinot Noir. Created by the Tarlants' parents back in 1982, Cuvée Louis is named for Benoît’s and Melanie’s great-great-great grandfather. Louis was the first to bottle Tarlant estate wine (in 1928) and the one who planted this 0.9 hectare of selection-massale Pinot Noir and Chardonnay back in 1946-1948. The lieu-dit is named "Les Crayons" in reference to its particularly chalky make-up and is a flat site near the Marne in the Tarlants' home village of Oeuilly. This low-lying, river-adjacent site yields what the Tarlants refer to as "a river wine", necessarily of fuller body and richer character. The vines are organically farmed and harvested by hand and the clusters very slowly and gently pressed. The juice ferments spontaneously with native yeasts in Burgundy barrels; the wine does not go through malolactic fermentation. The 1996 was bottled in 1997 and not disgorged until 2025. "Louis" is almost always a multi-vintage bottling but in this case, the choice was to let this legendary Champagne vintage stand alone.