Champagne De Sousa

Silica before winter in Avize

Erick De Sousa used silica as a vineyard decision, concentrating sugars before winter as former winemaker at Champagne De Sousa in Avize. Erick De Sousa had carried the house through a long station at the family property, with estate management from 1986 to 2023 and work still tied to the cellars and vines of the Côte des Blancs. The line is generational rather than decorative: he is the third generation of the Champagne De Sousa family winery, working inside an inheritance measured by parcels, chalk, pruning choices and reserve wines. The house itself began in 1950 and remains a grower Champagne address, not a brand built at a distance from its fruit. De Sousa’s role here is best read through repetition. Organic farming came with certification in 2010; Demeter biodynamic certification followed in 2013. Those dates matter because the method asks the vineyard to carry more of the wine’s argument. Soil work, preparations, old vines and cellar patience become one discipline, with each season answering the last.

Old Grand Cru vines in oak

The estate farms about 9.5 to 10 hectares of vines, with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier drawn from the Champagne AOC and Grand Cru villages including Avize, Cramant and Oger. The house works on a human scale, producing roughly 100,000 bottles per year, and its signature sits in the meeting of old-vine material and oak. Since 1995, old vines over 50 years old have been vinified in small oak barrels, giving the wines more matter before time in the cellar begins its quieter work. Indigenous yeasts carry fermentation, and malolactic fermentation occurs naturally. The house also works without filtration, fining or cold stabilization. Cuvée des Caudalies depends on a perpetual reserve system, with 50% of the blend coming from reserve wines started in 1995. In that cellar logic, reserve wine is not an accessory. It is memory held in liquid form, folded into the current base until a younger wine has an older voice.

Chalk under the cellar

The place has the quiet of a family-run grower house in Avize, surrounded by Grand Cru vineyards on chalk soils. The cellar, barrel rooms and tasting room keep the focus close to the work: oak, lees, glass, stone, the measured cold of Champagne below ground. There is no need for theatrical polish when the material is this specific. The old vines draw through chalk, and the cellar answers with barrel aging, reserve wine and time. In the room, the craft feels bench-side rather than ceremonial, shaped by the same decisions that govern the vineyard: avoid compaction, keep the soil alive, let each cuvée carry its parcel history. Tradition Brut, Extra-Brut Réserve, Brut Rosé, Mycorhize and Umami give that work names the house can return to, vintage after vintage.