Hot on the heels of Francis Egly’s 2008 Grand Cru, a future unicorn wine that was bestowed an elusive triple-digit score by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, is his new “Les Crayères” Blanc de Noirs. In my eyes, his precise mastery of 100% Grand Cru Pinot Noir is on full, cinematic 4K display tonight: This legendary bottling transcends what I previously thought was possible in Champagne and is flirting dangerously close with perfection. With Egly’s unrivaled, bordering-on-mythical skills, the epic 2012 vintage leading the charge, and the rarefied raw material of a 70+-year-old Grand Cru vineyard, tonight’s new release reigns as Champagne’s most vinous and jaw-droppingly powerful bottle of Pinot Noir. If Grand Cru Burgundy sparkled, this would be the gold standard.
Why all this furor over one bottle? 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 his wines for an absurd amount of time. As such, Egly stands far apart from the competition, and with each passing year, one can expect intensified acclaim, higher prices, and tighter allocations—his just-released “Crayères” is no exception. Out of the 100 cases that trickled into America, SommSelect managed a tiny fraction. Only thee bottles per person and two gets you complimentary Ground Shipping.
[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 waxed rhapsodic about for over the years. My goal is simple: to offer you rare Champagne exclusives and/or highly allocated sparkling gems that have to be pried out of an iron grip. These special offers don’t happen every week, but they will always be on a Friday night...stay ever-vigilant.]
When Francis took the reins from his father, Michel, back in 1980, organic farming was hardly fashionable in Champagne. Nevertheless, Francis and a few others—labeled as crazy by other Champenois—continued on with their vineyard-first approaches, which helped spawn a 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, and he has stayed true to his natural methodologies.
“Bouzy le nom, Ambonnay le renom” (“Bouzy has the name, Ambonnay the fame”) was how Francis Egly answered author Peter Liem’s question about the differences between the Grand Cru villages of Ambonnay and Bouzy. In Ambonnay, Pinot Noir reigns as king because of its ability to produce deep base wines with enough character to shine through in sparkling form. 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.
“Les Crayères” is a small vineyard located in the eastern side of the village of Ambonnay, in Champagne’s Montagne de Reims region, which is famous for producing deep wines that showcase great Pinot Noir varietal character. The deep soils of Les Crayères are composed of the purest chalk on the planet. Vine age is now at 70+ years—almost unheard of in Champagne, where dedication to the land and its farming is still rarely seen in the region. Egly-Ouriet’s farming is all organic and necessarily meticulous: It’s HARD to farm organically in Champagne, given the climatic conditions, not to mention the amount of extra work involved.
Once the grapes are carefully hand-harvested—in this case, 60% from 2012 and 40% from 2011—his multi-level cellar allows the pressed juice to be fed into new and used French barrels via gravity where fermentation on indigenous yeasts begins. In early 2013, both vintages were blended together and sent into bottle, where they then aged on lees for 72 months, undisturbed. After disgorgement in 2019, the Champagne received a minor dosage, roughly three grams, to balance out the acidity. It was bottled unfined and unfiltered, just one more reason that the cuvée has so much texture and complexity.
What’s first evident in today’s masterfully blended, six-years-aged, single-vineyard masterpiece is its tightly-coiled energy and profound delicacy. If you’ve experienced previous releases of “Crayéres,” one may expect an opulent, richly textured, and highly stylish Champagne in the glass, but this is more brains than brawn. The Wine Advocate called it “full-bodied, deep, and searingly incisive,” and that’s a brilliant analysis. As it sheds its nervous veil, multiple dimensions are revealed but each one has impeccable balance and consistency. Ripe, vibrant notes of yellow and red apple take center stage, followed by freshly picked Rainier cherries, apricots, currant, and salt-preserved lemon. Exotic spice, acacia honey, toasted hazelnut, dried herbs, crushed chalk, seashells, nougat, and vanilla bean also meld into the mix, further adding to the intensely satisfying, if not perplexing, mouthfeel. Grand Cru Champagne this may be, but it’s unafraid to showcase the ultra-fine textures and nobility of Burgundy’s best. For me, serving in large stems around 55 degrees, and savoring slowly over an entire evening is the go-to here. And if you’re able to take all three bottles, preserve your other two until 2025 and 2030. Cheers!
