What to expect

“Gimonnets cracking and cleverly named ros is just 8% red wine (not least because it costs him almost 15 a litre to buy) blended with his vintage Gastronome cuve his blanc de blancs with the most body.

Charged with 50% grand cru chardonnay, the result upholds its mantra of sustaining the mouthfeel, persistence and surging bath-salts chalk minerality of the Cte des Blancs with great accomplishment, touched with the palest salmon pink hue and the lightest reflections of white cherries and strawberry hull.

Delightfully restrained and refreshingly tense, its more about crystalline precision than flavour. One of the most refreshing apritif ross this year, serve it like a delicate blanc de blancs, not like a ros.”

Tyson Stelzer – The Champagne Guide

Technical details

92% chardonnay 25.5% Chouilly for fruit and elegance, 16.5% Cramant for plumpness, 10% Oger for masculine structure and spicy minerality, 9% Vertus for exotic flavours, 32% Cuis for vivacity and freshness; 8% 2014 and 2013 pinot noir red wine from Bouzy; aged on lees 1824 months; 6.5g/L dosage; 13,363 bottles; DIAM closure

About the House

he difference between a good wine and an exceptional wine is only a question of very, very small details, but we must focus on every detail all of the time, declares Didier Gimonnet, who oversees his familys glorious estate with his brother, Olivier. The champagnes of Pierre Gimonnet & Fils are intricately assembled by masterful hands exclusively from enviably positioned and painstakingly tended old vines. Every cuve sings its aspiration of precision, purity and minerality, each speaking articulately of its place in the northern Cte des Blancs through expressive, chalky minerality, without one molecule of detail out of place. With high-strung tension, crystalline structure and rapier-sharp precision, these are blanc de blancs champagnes charged with an energy that will sustain them long indeed. They represent some of the best-value apritif champagnes of all.

Food suggestion