Egly Ouriet Brut Champagne Les Premices NV

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Producer	Egly Ouriet
Country	France
Region	Champagne
Varietal	Champagne Blend
Sku	23437
Size	750ml

 

WA

90

Practicing organic. 1/3rd Pinot Noir, 1/3rd Chardonnay, 1/3rd Pinot Meunier. 50% 2018, 30% 2017, 20% 2016. From a 3.5 ha parcel in the village of Trigny, directly adjacent to the village of Merfy. Sandy soil with some clay. 40+ year old vines. Indigenous yeast. No malo. Fermented and aged in stainless steel. Aged 36 months on the lees. Dosage: 2g/L. Unfined and unfiltered.

Far from resting on the considerable and merited laurels that he has accrued over a 30-year career, Francis Egly has continued to refine and improve. The last decade's innovations include refrigerated press pans to immediately cool the must in ever-warmer vintages, a peristaltic pump to handle his wines even more gently and a once-again expanded cellar that gives him the space to work still more precisely. Just like his work in the vineyards, investment in the winery has been incessant. Starting from next to nothing when he began in the 1980s, today Egly holds some 700,000 bottles in reserve wines and wine maturing sur lattes—equivalent to seven times his annual production. As readers will know, Egly picks ripe grapes and ferments most of his wines in barrel—some 10% to 15% of which are renewed every year, and all of which derive from the cooperage of his friend, Dominique Laurent—before subjecting them to lengthy sur lattes maturation, typically disgorging with less than three grams per liter dosage these days. But the devil is in the details; no winemaker in Champagne is more precise or meticulous, from vineyard to cellar.

FEB 2023 STAFF PICK:

“What a beautifully balanced champagne composed of 1/3 PN, PM, and Chard! The amount of precision in this non-vintage champagne so impressive. Super low dosage of 2g/L creates a wonderful structure to support all of the pretty aromatics of berries, lemon tarte, and white flowers.” — AK

Based on the 2019 vintage and disgorged this year with one gram per liter dosage, Egly's NV Brut Les Prémices offers up attractive aromas of orchard and stone fruits mingled with fresh bread and honeysuckle. Medium-bodied, fleshy and racy, with bright acids, a pretty mousse and a saline finish, it's the finest rendition of this new cuvée to date.