Champagne Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru NV (Base 19, Disg. July 24)

Vintages: 2019 (50%), 2018 (30%), 2017 (20%)

Bottling: 2020

Disgorgement: July 2024

Time on lees: 48 months

This is simply a stunning release of this wine. As always, it’s 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay exclusively from low-yielding Grand Cru vines, predominantly located in Ambonnay, but also Bouzy and Verzenay. 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. The musts fermented with native yeasts, and the first period of maturation (before going to bottle) lasted almost one year, with the wine remaining on its fine lees the whole time. Over 50% of the wine fermented and matured in barrel. 

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 chalky and saline. It’s a terrific food wine and will gain more and more depth over the next three to 12 months. It’s as good a release of this cuvée as we’ve tasted. So, grab what you can! As we’ve said many times, if Egly made only this wine, he would still be one of the region's superstars; it puts to shame many a prestige cuvée at considerably higher prices. The 2019 base was bottled with 2 g/L and disgorged in July 2024.