I recently had the chance to update our sparkling wine list at Table Fifty-Two, bringing in some wonderful new selections, and began to indicate whether the wines featured on our sparkling list are grower or négociant. Grower sparkling wines and récoltant manipulant champagnes are certainly enjoying a surge in popularity these days, but must we abandon our stalwart friends of old such as Krug or Billecart-Salmon in favor of Gaston Chiquet or Egly-Ouriet? The answer, at least on our list, is you can enjoy both. There will always be some classic négociant-manipulant Champagne houses featured on our list, as well as selections from newer négociants such as Rita Jammet, whose wonderful "La Caravelle" champagnes are named after her iconic restaurant of the same name, but our small list is mostly focused on grower sparkling wines, such as Ode Panos from Greece and the soon to arrive Luis Pato sparkling Maria Gomez from Portugal as well as a handful of the best récoltant manipulant champagnes. Why récoltant manipulant? Like most of the bottles on our list, these are wines made by the same people who grow the grapes and tend to the land they grow on. In négociant champagnes, the focus is often on maintaining a house style, even if the house, like Bollinger, does grow a large percentage of their own grapes, whereas grower champagne is much more about the winemaker's vision and the unique stamp a unique piece of land can put on a wine. Certain of these wines have been chosen by the 26 members of Club Trésors de Champagne as being "Special Club," which is a peer certified designation with a meaning similar to tête de cuvée, but the full range of wines that sparkling savants like Cedric Bouchard and Francis Egly produce reflect an iconoclastic spirit towards wine making married with a great respect for their terroir. We currently feature Egly's "Les Vignes de Vrigny, which is an unusual 100% Pinot Meunier and the even more unusual 2008 "La Boloree" from Cedric Bouchard, which is made from 100% Pinot Blanc, as well as Gaston Chiquet's "Special Club," Anselme Selosse's "Initial" Blancs des Blancs and Vilmart et Cie's "Grand Cellier." The price to quality ratio on these wines is outstanding, and they offer a chance push beyond the realm of big house champagnes into a different aesthetic sphere where the farmer-winemaker is king.