For those of you keeping count, yes, this marks our third Egly-Ouriet offer of the year, but we’re also expecting it to be our last: Our source has told us not to hold our breath for another drop until 2022! While this is partly due to an extreme uptick in global demand and the persisting nightmare of shipping backlogs, it’s also because Francis Egly marches to the beat of his own drum, releasing wines only when he feels they’re ready.
Today’s rarefied Grand Cru is based on the soon-to-be-legendary 2012 vintage, with small amounts of 2011 and 2010 blended in, and it matured 87 months in the cellar before Egly decided it was in perfect form. The “VP” stands for Vieillissement Prolongé, basically “prolonged aging,” and those close to Francis may have heard him express that it’s his personal favorite cuvée. It’s got it all: premium Grand Cru fruit, Egly’s blending wizardry on full display, extraordinarily long aging, and a tiny two-gram dosage. This is a powerfully vinous and intelligent Champagne that delivers sweeping strokes of textural richness and perfectly framed, multi-dimensional minerality. Considering that both his “Crayères” bottling and vintage releases are now regularly fetching $200+ (the ’08 we sold last year is now retailing for multiples more and is impossible to find), it’s not just Egly’s favorite cuvée anymore—it’s mine too! As mentioned above, we won’t be seeing more Egly-Ouriet for a while, so make sure you get enough to last. Up to six per person, Complimentary Ground shipping on two.
[NOTE: If this is your first time seeing our Friday night series, welcome! My name is Mark Osburn, writer and sommelier at SommSelect, and you’re likely familiar with the many Champagnes I’ve effused about over the years. My goal with this platform is simple: to offer rare, highly allocated sparkling gems that have to be pried out of an iron grip. These special offers don’t happen every week, but they’ll always be on a Friday night—stay vigilant!]
Just a quick refresher: Francis Egly isn’t “arguably” or “one of” the best grower-producers in Champagne; he’s in everyone’s top two or three, end of story. He organically farms to a fanatical degree, harvests at absolute perfect levels of ripeness, barrel vinifies, and ages for a flat-out ridiculous amount of time. Egly stands apart from the competition and with each passing year there is renewed acclaim, climbing prices, and tighter allocations.
When Francis, a fourth-generation vigneron, took the reins from his father, Michel, back in 1980, organic farming was hardly fashionable in Champagne. Nevertheless, Egly and a few others—labeled as crazy by other Champenois—continued on with their vineyard-first approaches which spawned an impassioned grower revolution. French wine writer Michel Bettane (an encourager of the grower movement in the ’80s, and the main reason Francis started bottling his famous “Les Crayères” bottling) has this to say about Egly Ouriet: “Few producers can equal Francis Egly in skill and experience, and larger houses cannot hope to emulate the cultivation norms.” It’s true, and despite the frenzied push for his wines, Francis refuses to sacrifice quality; his vineyard holdings still remain quite small; he has stayed true to his natural methodologies; and perhaps most impressively, he only releases wine when he is comfortable with its evolution, not when the market demands it (always).
You really taste the Pinot Noir in Egly’s wines because he picks at extreme levels of ripeness, which is typically done after everyone else in Ambonnay has already finished. To Francis, picking ripe, or “late,” is the most important part of the process. He doesn’t consider himself a pioneer or a trendsetter; he just makes the finest quality wine he can—and that starts with perfectly mature, concentrated grapes. These create richer ‘base’ wines, which he then ferments in aged in oak barrels, lending them even more dimension and profundity. It’s also why Egly can bottle “VP” with a minuscule 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay of just two grams!
This current release is 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay from his prized estate holdings in Grand Crus Bouzy, Ambonnay, and Verzenay. The “base vintage” of this cuvée is 2012, with the remainder coming from his 2011 and 2010 reserves. It was bottled without fining or filtration, and was then sent to mature for 87 months on its lees before it was disgorged in late 2020. The result is a Grand Cru Champagne of nearly unparalleled richness, savor, and aromatic complexity. In the glass, it displays a deep yellow core moving to slight silver and copper hues on the rim. The aromatics are jaw-droppingly broad and intense, led by a small army of ripe yellow apple, Bosc pear, toasted hazelnuts, grilled pineapple, creamy brioche, red berries, citrus curd, acacia honey, crushed stones, white mushrooms, lees, oyster shell, and crushed chalk. It’s a full-bodied, endlessly textured, deeply stimulating wine that transcends Champagne and skews more Burgundian, and while it’s roughly a decade old, this is just the beginning—it will develop more complex, nuanced aromas for many years to come so please lay a couple down. As with all “main event” sparklers, enjoy this from an all-purpose stem just under cellar temperature (around 50°F), so its full range of aromas and flavors can be fully appreciated.
