Score: 92+/100 Points
This Champagne sparkling wine by Champagne Moutard is a brand-new single vineyard cuvée part of the new Climats de Champagne range, and made from 100% Pinot Noir grapes from a plot called Les Troncs (understand ‘the trunks‘ in French) in Southern Côte des Bar area of the French Champagne region.
The wine was vinified and aged in foudre (large 4000L oak vat).
The wine is aged and bottled under the more traditional steel staple cork closure instead of beer cap for ageing and a cage.
Overall Review & Tasting Impressions
A Champagne filled with character and personality like very few ever experience from a Champagne wine.
Clearly this is not your everyday non-vintage bubble, but a unique expression of Pinot Noir grapes grown and vinified with savoir-faire and the intention of making a wine in a distinctive yet genuine style.
Bursting with pungent fruity character, the wine’s crispiness and salty minerality, combined with a dry and smooth balance, make for a soft yet mind-imprinting experience from many complex layers of sensation.
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Full Tasting Notes
This Blanc de Noirs champagne comes in a delicate slightly pale lemon-yellow color elegantly tainted by touches of pink hues, betraying and reminding this white bubbly is made from red grapes (a Blanc de Noirs Champagne). Looking slightly grey then but made shiny by captivating gold hues.
The nose is, straight away, equally captivating from its uncommon depth and clear unusualness. It’s filled with pungent honey wax, sweet spices and citrus aromas. Absolutely like a floral honey it smells like which is very tempting. Hints of fresh pear brighten the aromatic profile with a crisp fruity appeal, while nutmeg and zesty grapefruit add layers of depth.
Put the Champagne in your mouth, and the wine strikes by the concentration of flavors and its crisp acidity, with tons of notes to experience, yet delivered with utter finesse.
The wine bursts with grapefruit and lemon flavors, elegant pear and banana, perhaps with a hint of tropical litchi and pineapple.
Certainly, the Pinot Noir transpires with notes of sour cherry and red berry liqueur scents. Many layers of fruit then provide the dominant features, augmented by nutmeg, white pepper and other spices, always with this underlying slightly oxidative honey and wax character somewhat reminding of a Fino Sherry, the green apple tones included.
This is clearly a dry Champagne, being a Brut Nature with very little added sugar at dosage (3 grams per liter). But its gorgeously oily texture and the ripeness and dominance of its fruit character make for a perfectly balanced and smooth experience.
Salty phenolics add a salivating textural feel to the finish.
Enjoy 🙂
Learn more about the producing winery at Meet the Moutard Family: Vignerons in Champagne & Burgundy
Meet the Moutard Family in Video
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