This cuvée speaks of generous yellow fruit, underpinned by notes of brioche and almond. The palate reveals itself as mineral and mouth-watering, carried by a fine balance that invites you to linger over every sip.
The A l'Aube de la Côte des Bar 2021 cuvée, crafted by Louise Brison, is a vintage champagne. It bears the signature of a single harvest, vinified on its own merits, without blending across different years.
This is a bottle you can pour from the aperitif onwards, alongside comté gougères for instance, before bringing it to the table with chicken in a morel cream sauce.
The Terroir
The A l'Aube de la Côte des Bar 2021 cuvée is a blend of:
- 50% Chardonnay
- 50% Pinot Noir
These grapes come from the Côte des Bar, a growing area of Champagne where Louise Brison tends its vines, at the crossroads between classic Champagne character and the more southerly relief of the Aube.
On this terroir, Chardonnay lends the wine tension and precision on the palate, while Pinot Noir brings body and a roundness that balance the blend and give it weight.
Organic farming ensures no synthetic pesticides are used on the plots, for fruit grown with respect for the living soil and a more authentic grape.
Winemaking
Delphine Brulez, the winemaker at the helm of Louise Brison, chose to age this Chardonnay and Pinot Noir blend in oak barrels for the 2021 vintage. The wood lends the wine delicate oak-aged notes that enrich the profile without dominating it.
Malolactic fermentation was complete: this softens the wine's acidity, giving it a velvety mouthfeel rather than a biting edge.
In terms of dosage, this cuvée falls into the Brut Nature category: it is made with no dosage at all, meaning no sugar is added after disgorgement. The wine thus reveals its raw character, with nothing to soften its edges, letting the work of the barrel and the two grape varieties in the blend speak for themselves.
The 2021 Vintage
In the Côte des Bar, 2021 will go down as an extraordinary year. On the night of 3 May, a frost struck the vines just as they were waking for spring, followed by exceptionally heavy rainfall throughout the summer. These conditions drastically reduced the harvest, making this vintage an extremely limited cuvée. The cool conditions that marked the season, however, allowed the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes to retain fine natural acidity at harvest. The resulting wine reflects this scarcity: it is taut and lively, carried by an energy that only the toughest years can bring.
