Shopping for wine often requires plunging into the unknown. That is especially true this year for Champagne, because a new wave of small grower-producers on the shelves can mystify even the seasoned wine lover: Éric Rodez, Guillaume Sergent, Suenen, Bourgeois-Diaz, for a start. Who are these guys?

If you love Champagne, you will want to get to know these small producers, some of whom I’ve encountered for the first time.

Once, in another universe maybe 25 years ago, shopping for Champagne was not complicated. You simply had to familiarize yourself with a few of a couple of dozen big houses.

These grandes marques, or great brands, all professed to have a house style, which they adhered to year after year by blending wines from different terroirs within the Champagne region and from different vintages. Whereas fine wine from almost every other region in the world sought to express the particularities of place and vintage, Champagne prided itself on a mingled consistency year after year.