Meunier usually gets treated as Champagne's third wheel — the workhorse blended in for flesh, rarely credited. The Wirth family, five generations deep in the Coteaux Sud d'Épernay villages of Vinay, Moussy and Brugny, build their house wine around it instead: 70% Meunier to 30% Chardonnay, farmed organically, fermented partly in 600-liter barrel with reserve wine held in concrete. Twenty-six months on the lees give it depth, and a dosage of just 2 grams per liter means there's no sugar to hide behind. What's left is Champagne with its shirt untucked: citrus, ginger, orchard fruit and a saline snap, all of it dry and direct. If your idea of Meunier is 'soft and fruity,' this will rearrange it.