NV Champagne Egly Ouriet Grand Cru Extra Brut

This is simply a staggering release of this wine. As always, it’s made exclusively from low-yielding Grand Cru vines, predominantly located in Ambonnay, but also Bouzy and Verzenay. Again, as always, it’s 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay. The old cliché—Egly starts harvesting when everyone else has finished—still holds true and it’s obvious from the first sip that this wine is made from perfectly ripe fruit. Natural fermentation was with wild yeasts only and the first period of maturation (before going to bottle) lasted almost one year, with the wine remaining on its fine lees for the whole time. Over 50% of the wine was fermented and aged in barrel. The dosage was a tiny one gram per litre. It's a wine of tremendous finesse; wonderfully bright and loaded with Pinot character—juicy red fruits and all kinds of spice—and a long, tonic close that’s both chalky and saline. It’s a terrific food wine and will gain more and more depth over the next three to twelve months. The superb 2018 vintage plays its part in raising this to the very top level, and it’s as good a release of this cuvée as we’ve tasted (which is saying something when you consider how many years we’ve been shipping it!) So, grab what you can! As we’ve said many times, if Egly made only this wine, he would still be one of the superstars of the region; it puts to shame many a prestige cuvée at considerably higher prices.

Champagne Egly-Ouriet
Francis Egly is a vigneron growing and crafting wines that offer remarkable intensity as well as transparency of site, from vines that are positively ancient by Champagne standards. Like all great French growers, the Egly philosophy can be defined by one word: terroir. Very low yields, old vines, only great sites, perfectly ripe fruit, extended lees aging (the Brut NV can spend up to 48 months on lees) very low or no dosage and no fining and/or filtration are all decisions taken because Egly believes that they allow his terroir to speak most clearly. These practices are identical to the finest growers in Burgundy and the polar opposite of conventional Champagne production. As Michel Bettane, the leading French critic has written, the “… larger houses cannot hope to emulate the cultivation norms…” that are found here. The resulting wines are amongst the purest, terroir-driven and un-manipulated wines in the whole of France. To quote Andrew Jefford in The New France, they are “…wines of riveting concentration and purity”.

Egly-Ouriet only produces wines from its own vines. There are close to 10 hectares of Grand Cru vineyards, mostly in Ambonnay, but also in Verzenay and Bouzy. Then, there’s two hectares of Pinot Meunier in the 1er Cru village of Vrigny, that gifts the coveted 100% Pinot Meunier Les Vignes de Vrigny. And now, there are also estate vines in the villages of Trigny (in the Massif de Sainte-Thierry area just north of Reims) and Bisseuil (near Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and Aÿ, south of Ambonnay).

“These are among the purest, unmanipulated Champagnes readers will come across.” Antonio Galloni, The Wine Advocate

Francis Egly took over from his father, Michel, in 1982, after which he immediately converted the Domaine to 100% estate bottling. In turn, this fastidious fourth-generation vigneron has recently been joined by his returning children prompting the recent acquisition of new vineyards in preparation for the passing of the baton. The Domaine has now built a new cellar to store the extra volume being generated from these sites. They have also recently installed refrigerated press pans to immediately cool the must at pressing and a peristaltic pump to handle the wines even more gently. It is not by accident that this growth in production coincides with the full-time return of the Egly children to work at the Domaine. Charles has now returned to work in the vineyards and was joined recently by his sister, Clémence, who completed her wine studies in Dijon. Some fresh vines and equipment for the next generation to sink their teeth into.

When you start to open and drink the wines of a great grower like Egly, as you would with any other great wine, you start to realise their incredible versatility. First of all, they go with a staggering array of dishes: any kind of bird, game, pork, veal, charcuterie, terrine, most seafood, and some cheeses. You have to work pretty hard to find something that doesn’t work. And they have the added bonus of staying fresh—and even improving—for days after opening. As Peter Liem describes them, “If there are any Champagnes that fit the often-used description of “Burgundy with bubbles”, Egly-Ouriet’s would be the leading candidates.”