Jacques Selosse Champagne Rose NV Wine 750ml

FRANCE : CHAMPAGNE : AVIZE

Chardonnay, Pinot Noir

MED-BODIED, FRESH PEACH, ORANGE BLOSSOM, WET STONE, SALINE, OAK

Anselme Selosse came home from studying in Burgundy in 1974 with an argument nobody in Champagne was making: that to build a profound Champagne you first have to build a profound still wine underneath it. He took the Avize estate over in 1980, cut yields, pulled the vineyards off chemical fertilizers and herbicides, and in 1994 Gault-Millau named him France's best winemaker in every category. His son Guillaume has run the domaine since 2018.

The Rosé is an assemblage of two successive vintages of Avize Chardonnay with roughly a tenth still Pinot Noir from Ambonnay — a rosé built by blending, not by bleeding. Base wines ferment on native yeasts in Burgundy barrels, fût and demi-muids, less than a fifth of them new, and the bottles then sit about five years before disgorgement. Annual production runs near 500 cases for the entire world.

Jeb Dunnuck 97 pts. Wine Advocate 96 pts. Serve it at cellar temperature in a white wine glass rather than a flute — the importer's standing instruction is not to serve these wines too cold.

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