Description

Besserat de Bellefon is a Champagne that proves why you need to drink Blanc de Blancs styles. When it is freshly disgorged you get a classic aperitif style Champagne. If you let Besserat de Bellefon rest for 24 months you get a gorgeous wine dripping with Chardonnay fruit.

Why not buy six bottles, and drink one every six months to see the evolution? Lets be honest, if you don’t have cause to drink at least once every six months then you need to find one. Birthday and Christmas for example. Or even you find two days during the year that end with the letter ‘y’!

The quality of this wine is not surprising. This is 100% Chardonnay from the Grand Cru villages of Avize, Oger, Mesnil-sur-Oger, Cramant, Chouilly. Showing good intensity with hints of citrus and floral. Fuller body, mineral, dried apricot, hints of honey. Long finishing with a dry palate

Service

If you drink it now serve it nice and cold to accentuate the aperitif nature. After 6-12 months of age, feel free to let it warm up and let the bubbles die off.

Food Matches

When young, BBQ prawns would be an amazing pairing. With mature flavours I’d love to try it with a more complex crab dish.

Champagne

A wine region of France approximately 160km East of Paris. It is also the name of the wines produced from the area. Most famously it is a sparkling wine that undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle and is aged on lees. Although there is the occasional still wine you can find around particularly Pinot Noir. The fantastically named Bouzy Rouge is one such example. There are very few single vintage, single vineyard, single variety Champagnes (I can only name one and it was produced only 47 times between 1900 and 1999). Why? Due to the large area the region covers, and the challenging weather the houses blended wines to produce a consistent and reliable product every year. This is where the growers come in. They relish the chance to show off vintage variation and small plot wines.

Chardonnay

The grape that you can plant anywhere, in any climate and do anything to and it will still taste like an OK wine. When people hit the sweet spot of site, climate, cropping and winemaking, Chardonnay becomes a magical wine that will age gracefully but charm you at any age. Chardonnays can range from cool climate lean and citrusy to warmer climate tropical and overt. Oak and lees can add flavouring as can malolactic fermentation. In a Champagne context Chard can add mineral flavours, stone fruits and acidity along with some weight of fruit.