Ruinart: The Oldest Champagne House, Now Poured by the Glass
Founded 1729. Aged thirty-eight metres beneath Reims. From $35 a glass to $550 a magnum.
Three bottles stand on marble plinths in the window at Chadstone, and all three are open. You can order a glass of any of them at the counter, or all three side by side, which is the more interesting way to spend forty minutes.
The house behind them was founded in Reims in 1729, fourteen years before Moët and forty-three before Veuve Clicquot. Nicolas Ruinart was a cloth merchant who began sending bottles of sparkling wine to his fabric customers as gifts. Within six years the gifts had outgrown the cloth, and he wound the drapery business up to sell Champagne instead.
What follows is what each of the three tastes like, why the house has built nearly three centuries on one grape, and which bottle is worth taking home rather than drinking at the bar.
A monk, a nephew, and a decree
The idea did not start with Nicolas. It started with his uncle, Dom Thierry Ruinart, a Benedictine scholar from Reims who spent time at Saint-Germain-des-Prés outside Paris in the 1680s and encountered a wine that held its bubbles. He was a contemporary of Dom Pérignon and knew him. He never made wine commercially himself, but he understood what the aristocracy in Paris had started drinking, and he told his family.
The commercial opening came in 1728, when a royal decree finally permitted wine to be transported in bottles rather than barrels. Sparkling wine could not survive the journey any other way. Nicolas Ruinart entered the founding charter of the house in his account book on 1 September 1729, and the first deliveries went out the following January.
Chalk, eight kilometres of it
Beneath the Saint-Nicaise hill in Reims lies a network of pits cut into pure Cretaceous chalk, quarried from Gallo-Roman times onward to build the city above. They are pyramidal, open at the top, and enormous. Ruinart was the first Champagne house in Reims to move its cellars down into them in the eighteenth century, and the network it holds today runs roughly eight kilometres and descends about thirty-eight metres, close to the height of the nave of Reims Cathedral.
Chalk does something specific for wine. It holds a steady ten to twelve degrees year-round without any mechanical help, stays humid, and blocks light and vibration entirely. The house rests its non-vintage cuvées on their lees down there for up to three years before release, which is where the brioche and toasted-nut character comes from, and closer to a decade for the Dom Ruinart prestige bottlings. The cellars were classified a French historic monument in 1931, and in 2015 the Saint-Nicaise hill and its pits were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Why Chardonnay
Most Champagne houses build their style on Pinot Noir, which gives weight and structure. Ruinart went the other way. Chardonnay sits at the centre of every cuvée here, drawn mainly from the Côte des Blancs and the Montagne de Reims, and the house style that results is lighter on its feet than the Champagne average: citrus and white flowers rather than red fruit, tension rather than breadth.
You can taste the argument across the three wines at the bar. The Brut is Pinot-led and the roundest of them. The Blanc de Blancs is Chardonnay alone and the most precise. The Rosé sits between the two, using Chardonnay for lift and Pinot Noir for colour and grip. Same house, three positions on the same question.
The range at Wine More Cellars
| Wine | Grapes | Bottle | In brief |
|---|---|---|---|
| R de Ruinart Brut NV | Pinot Noir led | $145 | The house entry point. Orchard fruit, biscuit, round finish. |
| Ruinart Rosé NV | Chardonnay and Pinot Noir | $200 | Tropical and floral rather than berry-sweet. Spice on the close. |
| Ruinart Blanc de Blancs NV | 100% Chardonnay | $220 | The signature wine. Citrus, white blossom, long and taut. |
| Ruinart Blanc de Blancs Magnum | 100% Chardonnay | $550 | Same wine, 1.5 litres, slower ageing. Built for a table. |
R de Ruinart Brut NV
NoseReinette apple and apricot over fresh almond and hazelnut, with elderflower and a thread of coriander seed. A second wave brings brioche and biscuit.
PalateGolden fruit, plum tart and ripe stone fruit, round and persistent, before Chardonnay freshness cuts through the finish.
CellarDrink now · Serve 8 to 10 °C · Tulip glass, not a flute
Pinot Noir carries this one, at 40 to 45% of the blend, and it shows in the breadth. Ruinart puts it with vegetarian dishes and cheese rather than seafood, which is unusual advice for Champagne and worth taking. Buy six or more and the price falls to $135 each at checkout.
Ruinart Rosé NV
NoseTropical first: pomegranate, lychee and guava, layered with rose petal and freshly picked red berries. Warmer spice follows, tonka bean and nutmeg.
PalateCoral to rosewood in the glass, refined through the middle, closing soft and rounded rather than sharp.
CellarDrink now · Serve 8 to 10 °C · Aperitif or seafood
The construction is the interesting part. Pinot Noir goes in twice, 43% vinified as white wine and 12% as red, and it is that red portion doing the colour and the grip. The current release sits on a 2021 base with around 30% reserve wines, disgorged in March 2024 at 8 g/L, and critics call it ready now rather than one to hold. Anyone who finds rosé Champagne too confected should try this one. Three bottles or more brings it to $190 each.
Ruinart Blanc de Blancs NV
NoseRipe lemon, juicy pear and just-picked peach, then a floral layer of white blossom with ginger and pink peppercorn behind it.
PalatePale gold with green and jade lights. Tension and roundness held in unusual balance, ripe citrus and tropical fruit running to a long, delicate finish.
CellarDrink now, or hold five to eight years · Serve 8 to 10 °C · Seafood, white fish, or alone
If you drink one Ruinart, drink this. It is the wine the house is known for internationally and the clearest statement of what Chardonnay-led Champagne means. The current release draws on a 2021 base with close to 40% reserve wines, disgorged early in 2024 at 7 g/L, and it will carry five to eight years in a cool cellar if you would rather not open it yet. This bottle ships in the Second Skin case, a moulded paper jacket introduced to replace the gift box, nine times lighter and 60% lower in carbon footprint. Six or more brings it to $200 each.
Ruinart Blanc de Blancs NV Magnum
NoseRipe lemon, juicy pear and just-picked peach, then a floral layer of white blossom with ginger and pink peppercorn behind it.
PalateTension and roundness in balance, ripe citrus and tropical fruit through a long, delicate finish, with the larger format holding it fresher for longer.
CellarDrink now, or hold past the eight years a 750ml will carry · Serve 8 to 10 °C
A magnum has the same neck and cork as a bottle but twice the wine behind it, so oxygen reaches proportionally less of it and the wine develops at half the pace. That makes this the format to buy if you want the same Blanc de Blancs in three or four years rather than this weekend. It also solves a table of eight in one pour.
Glass, flight, or bottle
A glass is 100ml, so a 750ml bottle holds seven and a half of them. At the bar that arithmetic favours the bottle every time, and there is no corkage on it. Whatever you do not finish goes home with you, recorked.
The flight is the exception worth paying for. One glass of each of the three, poured together, is the only way to see what changes when Chardonnay moves from supporting role to sole grape. Taste them in the order they appear above, lightest structure to most precise, and the house style stops being a marketing line and becomes something you can point at in the glass.
Poured by the glass at Wine More Cellars, Shop B136, Lower Ground, Chadstone Shopping Centre.
Questions about a bottle or a format? Email us and we will answer properly.