Champagne Egly-Ouriet Brut Les Prémices

Les Prémices hails from 3.5 hectares of vines in Trigny, northwest of Reims and the Vesle river in the Massif de Saint-Thierry area. To give you your great-grower-bearings, Trigny is situated just to the west of Saint-Thierry and Merfy (where Alexandre Chartogne is based), and east of Montigny sur Vesle (where Aurélien Suenen grows the fruit for his stunning La Grande Vigne cuvée). The Egly vines span seven historic lieux-dits in the commune. Like the Domaine’s Vrigny vines, these plots have come via Annick Egly’s side of the family. The return of the two Egly children, Charles and Clémence, to the Domaine has given Francis Egly the ability to begin producing from these plots, and this is just the second release.

Reflecting what is planted in the vineyards, Les Prémices is an equal blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. The vines are, on average, 40 years old and are rooted in clay, sand and sandstone over chalk bedrock—a soil typical of the Massif de Sainte-Thierry. As always, the classic Egly manifesto applies here—old vines, low yields, hand harvesting of fully ripe fruit, no inoculation, long lees aging, no fining or filtration and low dosage, etc. One difference here is that the wine was fermented and aged exclusively in tank. While the first release was drawn from a single vintage (2016), this release is a 2017 base with 60% reserve wine from the intense, low-yielding 2016—so you can expect something more complex and layered from this release. The wine spent 36 months on lees and was disgorged with two grams per litre.