Drop 28

Drop 28 – LIQUID ELECTRICITY — The Drop with a Nervous System

WITH Champagne Doussot- Bourdot, Kissinger-Bähr, Maison Glandien & Jules Brochet

Okay, this one is different. Drop 28 wasn’t planned as „four bottles“ — it started as three, and then something happened that made me throw the plan out the window. More on that in a second.

Liquid Electricity — that’s the name I gave this drop, and honestly, nothing else fit. Every single bottle in this box has pressure, salt, smoke and real nerve running through it. These aren’t wines that ask to be liked. They just are, fully, unapologetically, and that’s exactly the point.

I built the core of this drop around three regions that almost never get put side by side: Champagne Doussot-Bourdot, a young grower Champagne I discovered and could not stop thinking about; Kissinger-Bähr, a Rheinhessen producer finally coming back to BTB after two years away; and Maison Glandien, our Burgundy all-star, doing something completely unexpected with Aligoté. Three totally different terroirs, one shared electric current.

And then — last minute, completely unplanned — I couldn’t resist adding a fourth bottle. A surprise guest that wasn’t supposed to be part of this drop at all, but the moment I tasted it, I knew it belonged here. Champagne Jules Brochet just walked straight into the box and refused to leave.

So Drop 28 grew from three bottles into four. Together, they show exactly what this drop is about: tension over comfort, texture over polish — and sometimes, the best plan is the one you didn’t stick to.

Inside the box

Champ Fremyot 2022 – Champagne Doussot-Bourdot

Champ Fremyot 2022 is a Champagne with force, grip and real architecture. This is 100% Pinot Noir from Loches-sur-Ource, grown on Kimmeridgian limestone, aged 10 months in 228L barrels — and you feel every bit of that oak. It’s oxidative, salty, powerful and unbelievably long. Not cute, not polished, not trying to please everyone.

Billy Doussot is one of those young Côte des Bar growers who make you pay attention immediately. He took the family domaine into a new chapter in 2021, and Champ Fremyot is exactly the kind of serious, charged Pinot Noir Champagne that makes you sit up.

It is a Champagne with a nervous system of its own.

Drinking recommendation: Now!

Chardonnay 2024 – Kissinger-Bähr

Chardonnay 2024 is a white with smoky reduction, salty tension and serious length. From loess and limestone soils in Nierstein, Rheinhessen, spontaneously fermented and aged in used barrique — this is Moritz and Jasmin Kissinger-Bähr working biodynamically with zero interest in boring polish.

What makes this wine so exciting is that beautiful confusion it creates — is it Jura? Burgundy? Germany? It’s all three and none of them, and that’s exactly the magic. After two years away from BTB, it’s finally back — and it hasn’t lost an ounce of its edge.

Drinking recommendation: Now, or give it a year to unfold further

La Moiré 2024 – Maison Glandien

La Moiré 2024 is exactly why serious Aligoté deserves way more respect than it gets. From a 1991 planting on clay-limestone in Cheilly-lès-Maranges, produced in ridiculous quantities — only four pièces — hand-picked cold, basket-pressed, full-lees aged in Stockinger barrels with native yeast and 50% new oak.

Tino Kuban doesn’t treat this like Burgundy’s quiet side grape — he treats it like it has something to prove. It’s sharp, salty, textured and electric, but with real substance behind the tension. This is Aligoté with teeth.

Drinking recommendation: Now if you want the grip, or hold to see the substance settle in

Prémices – Champagne Jules Brochet

And then the surprise: Prémices from Champagne Jules Brochet, our uninvited but very welcome fourth guest.

Pierric Brochet is the kind of grower whose story you want to know before you even taste the wine. He named the domaine after his great-grandfather and, after training with Anselme Selosse, took his family’s plots in Taissy, Mailly and Barzy-sur-Marne into organic farming — building something small, precise and personal out of a old family heritage. This is not a big house. This is one guy, a handful of hectares, and total control over every step.

Prémices is a blend of 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay, built mostly around the 2022 vintage with about 20% perpetual reserve running through it, extra brut and barely dosed. The result is gourmand but balanced — layered, textured, with that reserve wine giving it a depth you don’t expect from something this fresh. It’s the kind of Champagne that quietly steals the show once people actually try it.

Production is tiny — just a few thousand bottles exist at all — which makes finding it in this box even more of a win.

Drinking recommendation: Now, and don’t overthink it — just pour