Champagne Jerome Prevost Brand Overview
Jérôme Prévost is regarded as one of Champagne’s most revered grower-producers and a leading champion of pinot meunier. Based in the village of Gueux, west of Reims, he began his domaine in 1987 after inheriting a small parcel of old-vine meunier known as Les Béguines from his mother — who famously challenged him to prove he could succeed as a winemaker. For the first decade Prévost sold his fruit to the négociants, lacking both a cellar and the means to vinify himself. During this period he formed a close relationship with Anselme Selosse, who encouraged his minimalist philosophy and allowed him to use his cellars in Avize between 1998 and 2003. Those early vintages of Les Béguines quickly established Prévost as one of Champagne’s most compelling new voices.
Today the domaine comprises just 2.2 hectares planted predominantly with massal-selection pinot meunier vines dating from the 1960s, rooted in Thanetian soils of clay, sand and limestone rich with marine fossils. Prévost believes meunier is one of Champagne’s most misunderstood varieties, capable of extraordinary depth and complexity when farmed carefully and harvested fully ripe. Viticulture is meticulous yet understated: light ploughing under vine, natural grass cover, and minimal intervention throughout the growing season. In the cellar, the wines are made with indigenous yeasts and aged for around ten months in a mixture of old and new barrels of varying sizes. The wines are neither filtered nor stabilised, with low dosage and relatively short post-disgorgement ageing preserving their energy and texture. Produced in tiny quantities, Prévost’s Champagnes are intensely vinous, layered and expressive — wines that have helped redefine the possibilities of pinot meunier and cemented his reputation as one of the cult figures of modern Champagne.
