Larmandier-Bernier Terre de Vertus 1er Brut Nature Millésime 2017

Blanc d' Blancs 100% Chardonnay frá þorpinu Vertus. Hér er engin viðbættur sykur (zero dosage) - má efast um að til séu betri Chardonnay kampavín og að sjálfsögðu lífræn ræktun. 

My epiphany came at a simple dinner at the home of a friend, Dominique Denis, in the city of Châlons-en-Champagne almost fifteen years ago. The wine was a bottle of Larmandier-Bernier’s Terre de Vertus, the food a slab of thick, earthy, duck liver terrine. My host had simply pulled the Champagne from the cellar and poured it into my glass. It was cool, but not truly cold. ‘Shouldn’t we chill this?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me. ‘What you are about to drink is a wine first and a Champagne second.’ This was a phrase I was to hear a number of times during subsequent visits to the region. As soon as my friend poured the wine, I was disorientated. Intense aromatics of earth, salt flakes and crushed chalk rose from the glass. There were none of the toasty, bready, yeasty characters that I thought Champagne was supposed to have; this smelt like the ocean and like rocky soils immediately after the rain. In the mouth, the wine was like nothing I’d ever tasted from the region: a mineral blast that was somehow rich yet intensely savoury at the same time, like essence of mineral water – ferrous and with a long, citrussy, saline finish. It was wonderfully dry and cleansing and had none of the harsh acidity or the syrupy, dosage-driven texture and sweetness that you find in so many Champagnes.3 And it went perfectly with the food, losing none of its personality or intensity. It slurped up the terrine and broke it down like a river carrying silt.

Walters, Robert. Bursting Bubbles (p. 14).