Ruinart
Ruinart Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs 750ml
Ruinart Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs 750ml
FRANCE : CHAMPAGNE
SUSTAINABLE : Chardonnay
MED-BODIED, RIPE LEMON, WHITE PEACH, WHITE FLOWERS, CHALK, NO OAK
Ruinart signed its founding charter in Reims in 1729, which makes it the oldest Champagne house by a comfortable margin, and it has built everything since on Chardonnay. This is the bottle that states the case plainly: all white grapes, drawn from 25 to 30 crus across the Côte des Blancs, the Montagne de Reims, the Sézannais and the Vallée de la Vesle.
Fermentation runs in stainless steel with no oak anywhere, and the malolactic is carried out in full. That combination is the whole trick. Nothing browns or softens the fruit, so the Chardonnay arrives unmediated, while the malolactic supplies enough roundness to keep a zero-oak blanc de blancs from turning severe.
The wine then spends two to three years on its lees forty metres down in the crayères, Roman chalk pits beneath Reims that are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Drink it young: the point of this cuvée is freshness, not bottle development.
PAIRINGS :
| Oysters on the half shell | the chalk and citrus do the work of a squeeze of lemon |
| Sea bass carpaccio with lime | the house's own pairing; ripe citrus in the wine tracks the lime |
| Aged Comté | nutty, almost butterscotch, against the almond note from lees ageing |
Couldn't load pickup availability
