Champagne Laherte Frères Blanc de Blancs 1.5L MAGNUM NV Base 16. Disg. Jan 2018

This is Laherte Frères' all-Chardonnay Champagne in magnum, built on the 2016 harvest with about half the blend drawn from reserve wine.

Aurélien Laherte is the seventh generation at Chavot, south of Épernay, where the family has made Champagne since 1889. He farms roughly ten hectares split into some seventy-five parcels across ten villages, working with biodynamic preparations, plant infusions and cover crops. The Chardonnay for this cuvée comes off the slopes of the Coteaux Sud d'Épernay and the Côte des Blancs, where thin topsoil sits over chalk. Parcels are pressed and fermented apart on indigenous yeasts, largely in neutral Burgundian barrels with some foudre and tank, and the wine is bottled without fining or filtration. Around half the blend is reserve wine, which gives continuity from year to year, and the finished Champagne is disgorged with little or no dosage, the base year and date declared on the label. In magnum the wine ages more slowly.

Good now and better still with a few years in the cellar. Serve at around 8°C with oysters, grilled prawns or a plate of hard cheese.