Champagne Mouzon Leroux L'ascendant Solera NV Base 17. Disg. Jan 2022

Champagne Mouzon Leroux L'Ascendant Solera is built on a perpetual reserve started in 2010 and vinified entirely in seasoned oak.

A perpetual reserve, or solera, is a single vessel of wine topped up each year with the new harvest, so every bottling carries a fraction of every vintage before it. The approach has been taken up in Champagne by growers including Selosse, Bérêche and Laherte, and Sébastien Mouzon established his in 2010. This bottling rests on the 2017 harvest, with reserve wine from the solera making up half the blend; the reserve itself is replenished by half each year. The composition runs to roughly sixty per cent Pinot Noir and forty per cent Chardonnay, all from Verzy, and the wine is fermented and raised entirely in seasoned oak rather than steel. After forty-eight months on lees it was disgorged in January 2022 with one gram per litre of dosage.

Drinking well now and worth further cellaring, it belongs at the table with roast chicken, mushroom dishes or aged Comté. Serve at 8°C.