When Champagne master craftsman Francis Egly subjects a wine to ‘vieillissement prolongé’—meaning extended, or prolonged, aging—he doesn’t mess around. And while it is not the only showstopper in the star-studded Egly-Ouriet Champagne lineup, today’s wine, nicknamed “V.P.,” spent eight years (!) aging on its lees in bottle in Egly’s cold caves in Ambonnay.
Holding inventory for this long is a major investment, and yet this incredibly sumptuous, complex Champagne continues to be priced well below the multitude of upper-tier bottlings it readily eclipses. As with all the very best grower Champagnes, we get one or two cracks a year at an allocation of “V.P.,” and this is one of those times: If you are serious about structured, age-worthy Champagne, this is a wine that must be in your cellar, and we can offer up to six bottles per customer until it sells out.
Established subscribers already know the Egly-Ouriet story, but it is always worth a review: This is the benchmark estate among the Champagne houses that grow and vinify all their own grapes. These “grower-producers” (from the French récoltant-manipulant, indicated by a tiny ‘RM’ on the label) have seized the moment with sommeliers, as the story of a scrappy, small-scale, family-owned vineyard doing battle with Champagne’s grandes marques—some of them owned by luxury-goods conglomerates—is an easy one to get behind. The thing with Egly-Ouriet is that it’s now a formidable “brand” as well, with as much cachet as any in Champagne. It has transcended categorization and become a grande marque in its own right.
The fastidious Francis Egly, who has been in charge here since 1980, is the fourth generation to work his family’s vineyards. Their holdings have expanded to about 12 hectares, most of them in the Grand Cru-classified village of Ambonnay, home to some of Champagne’s (if not all of France’s) greatest Pinot Noir. Yes, there’s Chardonnay in there, too, but organically farmed, old-vine Pinot Noir is at the heart of every Egly-Ouriet cuvée (save for a 100% Pinot Meunier he makes from vines in the village of Vrigny). The respected Champagne writer Peter Liem dubbed Egly-Ouriet “Burgundy with bubbles,” and indeed Egly has inspired many new-generation Champagne producers to shift the focus away from blending and ‘branding’ and toward a more vineyard-specific model in the Burgundy mold (i.e., treat it like wine, not whisk(e)y).
Among the many things that set Egly-Ouriet’s wines apart is Francis Egly’s penchant for harvesting later, and thus riper, than most of his contemporaries; these richer ‘base’ wines are also often fermented and aged in oak barrels, lending them even more dimension and reducing Egly’s need for much of a corrective dosage (sugar addition) before final bottling. “V.P.” is bottled as an Extra Brut (drier than Brut), with a minuscule dosage of just 3 grams per liter. This release is 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay that was fermented on indigenous yeasts in oak barrels; the “base vintage” of this cuvée is 2008, with the remainder coming from 2006. As noted above, it spent eight years aging on its lees (spent yeast cells from the secondary fermentation) before it was disgorged and readied for sale.
The result is a Champagne of nearly unparalleled richness, savor, and aromatic complexity. In the glass it displays a deep, golden yellow core moving to slight green hues on the rim. The aromatics are intense, led by aromas of brioche, creamed yellow apples, red berries, lemon, honey and crushed stones. The palate is full-bodied with amazing flavor concentration of cream, white mushrooms, fresh bread, preserved lemon, and chalk. And while it is roughly a decade old, this is just the beginning—it will develop more complex aromas for many years to come, so don’t hesitate to lay some down. As with all “main event” sparklers like this one, enjoy this wine from an all-purpose white (or red) wine stem, just under cellar temperature (around 50°F), so its full range of aromas and flavors can be fully appreciated. I still vividly remember a dish I enjoyed with Champagne many years ago at Taillevent, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris; the attached recipe is a great approximation and a terrific accompaniment for what I consider one of the great ‘gastronomic’ Champagnes out there. Enjoy!
