Champagne Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Brut Rosé 1.5L MAGNUM NV Base 12. Disg. Oct 18

This is a magnum of Egly-Ouriet's grand cru Brut Rosé, coloured with still red Ambonnay Pinot Noir made on the estate rather than bought in.

Egly-Ouriet works from Ambonnay on the southern flank of the Montagne de Reims, a grand cru with a serious record for Pinot Noir and for still red wine. Francis Egly took over at the start of the 1980s and farms around twenty hectares across Ambonnay, Bouzy, Verzenay and Bisseuil, organically and with regular ploughing, cutting yields hard and picking late so the fruit comes in properly ripe; only the first pressing is kept. The rosé is roughly seventy per cent Pinot Noir to thirty per cent Chardonnay, with about five per cent of the estate's own red for colour. Part of the base ferments in barrel with indigenous yeasts, the wine goes unfiltered, and it spends around four years on lees before hand disgorgement at a very low dosage. This is a 2012 base disgorged in October 2018, in a 1.5-litre bottle that will carry the wine forward more slowly than the standard format.

Cellar it or open it now with duck, salmon or charcuterie; serve at about 8°C.