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Vintages: 2018 (60%), 2017 (20%), 2016 (20%)
Bottling: 2019
Disgorgement: July 2023
Time on lees: 48 months
This is simply a staggering release of this wine. As always, it’s made exclusively from low-yielding Grand Cru vines, predominantly located in Ambonnay, but also Bouzy and Verzenay. Again, as always, it’s 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay. The old cliché—Egly starts harvesting when everyone else has finished—still holds true and it’s obvious from the first sip that this wine is made from perfectly ripe fruit. Natural fermentation was with wild yeasts only and the first period of maturation (before going to bottle) lasted almost one year, with the wine remaining on its fine lees for the whole time. Over 50% of the wine was fermented and aged in barrel. The dosage was a tiny one gram per litre.
It's a wine of tremendous finesse; wonderfully bright and loaded with Pinot character—juicy red fruits and all kinds of spice—and a long, tonic close that’s both chalky and saline. It’s a terrific food wine and will gain more and more depth over the next three to twelve months. The superb 2018 vintage plays its part in raising this to the very top level, and it’s as good a release of this cuvée as we’ve tasted (which is saying something when you consider how many years we’ve been shipping it!) So, grab what you can! As we’ve said many times, if Egly made only this wine, he would still be one of the superstars of the region; it puts to shame many a prestige cuvée at considerably higher prices.