Established in 1836, Madame Pommery is credited with creating the first vintage ‘brut’ style of Champagne in 1874, at a time when most champagnes were excessively sweetened with sugar. This revolutionary dry style set the benchmark for the rest of Champagne and it is in this spirit that the style of Pommery endures; with each cuvée displaying sublime elegance, finesse and freshness. Brut Royal NV has incredible balance and is a cheerful, lively and delicate wine.Pommery is one of the few Champagne houses that produce the large formats in their original bottles, to allow for optimal ageing. The Jeroboam comes individually packed in a timber case.

The wine unfurls on the palate to reveal fruity notes, highlighted by a creaminess reminiscent of honey made from fir trees. Smoky accents of coffee beans and toast balance out the wine’s minerality.

At the House of Krug, every vintage is crafted to celebrate the distinctive character of a particular year. Krug 2011 is so opulent yet crisp, the House’s Tasting Committee nicknamed this Champagne “Spirited Roundness”. For Krug, the year 2011 gave birth to a surprising Champagne allying finesse and power with a spontaneous, vibrant side born from this fiery year. Krug 2011 is ample, generous, and assertive. To tell the story of 2011, a selection of Pinot Noir plots’ wines constitutes almost half (46%) of the blend, imparting beautiful structure and magnificent balance, while Chardonnay plots’ wines (37%), most affected by the heat spikes, imbue ripe and juicy fruit aromas, and Meuniers (17%) add a wonderful freshness with elegant bitters. The striking profile of Krug 2011 comes after 12 years in the cellars, gaining in expression, harmony, and finesse. As all Krug Champagnes, Krug 2011 will continue to gain with the passage of time.

In some ways, this is the emblematic wine of the domaine. It was Michel Bettane, the influential French critic, who encouraged Francis Egly to bottle this single-vineyard wine separately, with the first release based on the 1989 harvest. This latest offering was bottled after the 2017 base had spent close to one year in cask before blending with 50% reserve wines from the 2016 vintage. The vinification and aging for both vintages took place in barrel. The fruit comes from old Pinot Noir vines in a single terroir known as Les Crayères. The vines here were planted in 1946, so they are now 75 years old (vines of this age are extremely rare in Champagne). The soil is barely 30cm deep, then it’s chalk, hundreds of metres down—hence the name of the site (craie is French for ‘chalk’; crayères references chalk quarries which likely once existed here). Les Crayères is situated mid-slope with a full south-facing exposure, not far from the estate’s cellars. The old vines are deeply rooted, giving the wine a classic mineral energy that weaves its way through the powerful, layered Pinot Noir fruit. The deep concentration is a product of the ripeness and low yields that the site and its ancient vines confer. The 2017 base is a tribute to the greatest sites of Ambonnay and the Egly-Ouriet domaine. Houses that emphasise blending may consider a 100% old-vine Ambonnay like this to be too intense; Egly gives it to you full throttle! This release has both profound depth and incredible finesse. It’s still early days for the nose (if you open it now, give it time), while the palate is already stunning: a layered yet chiselled, mineral mouth bomb. The dosage is only 2 g/L, and it’s invisible. As always, this unique expression of a singular terroir is built for food and aging. Give it two to three years, and it will be even better.

Disgorged July 2024. (Formerly known as Expérience). The price here reflects the demand for a cuvée that is utterly unique in the Champagne world and the rarity (there is next to none to go around). Finally, we should not forget that this is a wine style that is extremely difficult to make. First, some background for those new to this wine. In 2002, Agrapart sought and (remarkably) received permission from the local authorities to begin experimenting with a small quantity of wine that he wanted to produce without adding any sugar: no chaptalisation and no additions for the secondary fermentation’s liqueur de tirage (the tricky part), nor the final dosage (liqueur d’expédition). Not using sugar and yeast for the liqueur de tirage (to prompt the second fermentation in the bottle) is actually against the AOC laws, which is why Agrapart needed permission. So how does Agrapart achieve the bottle fermentation? Instead of sugar, he uses must (grape juice) from the same vineyards that produce the wine, thus enabling him to produce a Champagne that is 100% the product of estate-grown grapes. It is also a lower-alcohol wine because the absence of sugar additions means the alcohol does not jump 1.5 degrees, as typically occurs with standard secondary fermentation. So, this wine rests at around 11.8% alcohol compared with 12.5% for the rest of the range. It’s also a wine that can age well; we recently tasted the first vintage, 2007, from magnum at the estate. It was in wonderful shape! The current release is an equal-parts blend from vineyards that contributed to the Avizoise and Minéral cuvées (Les Robarts in Avize and Les Bionnes in Cramant), ‘dosed’ with around 20% of the juice of 2020 from these same vineyards. It is this juice that drives the secondary fermentation in the bottle. Again, no sugar or yeast additions are used for all fermentation, and the wine is never fined or filtered. Regardless of the methodology, this is simply a magnificent, one-of-a-kind Blanc de Blancs: complex, floral and crystalline—without the traditional autolytic notes of a standard tirage, but instead, a purity and delicacy that is second to none. The finish is seriously long as well, streaked with chalk, sap and candied lemon notes.