Champagne Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Brut Rosé NV Base 12. Disg. Oct 2018

Egly-Ouriet's Brut Rosé is a grand cru blend given its colour by a small share of still red Ambonnay Pinot Noir made on the estate.

Ambonnay has a long history of still red wine alongside Champagne, and Egly-Ouriet draws on its own Ambonnay Rouge for this cuvée rather than buying red wine in. The blend runs to roughly seventy per cent Pinot Noir and thirty per cent Chardonnay, with about five per cent of the red added for colour and flesh. Francis Egly has run the estate since the start of the 1980s and farms some twenty hectares across Ambonnay, Bouzy, Verzenay and Bisseuil, organically and with regular ploughing, on very low yields and with late picking; only the first pressing goes into the wine. Part of the base ferments in barrel with indigenous yeasts, the wine is not filtered, and it rests around four years on lees before hand disgorgement with a very small dosage. This bottling is a 2012 base disgorged in October 2018.

A rosé with enough substance for the table; serve at about 8°C with duck, salmon or a plate of charcuterie.