Champagne Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs Vieilles Vignes NV Base 11. Disg. Nov 2018

The Blanc de Noirs Vieilles Vignes is Egly-Ouriet's Pinot Noir from Les Crayères, a plot of Ambonnay vines planted in 1946 and 1947.

Ambonnay is a grand cru of the Montagne de Reims and among the most highly regarded Pinot Noir ground in Champagne. Egly-Ouriet, run by Francis Egly since the start of the 1980s and now with his daughter Clémence, farms around twenty hectares organically across Ambonnay, Bouzy, Verzenay and Bisseuil, about half of it in the home village. Les Crayères carries the estate's oldest vines, a massal selection of small-berried Pinot Fin planted just after the war, sitting on barely thirty centimetres of topsoil over chalk. Yields are cut hard and the fruit is picked late, with only the first pressing kept. The wine is fermented entirely in barrel with indigenous yeasts, is not filtered, and stays on its lees for something in the order of six years before disgorgement, here in November 2018 on a 2011 base, with a minimal dosage.

More a wine for the table than the aperitif hour; serve at about 8°C with roast chicken, veal or a mature cheese.