2015 Champagne Paul Dethune, Grand Cru Blanc de Noir Les Crayeres Extra Brut


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Description

From: Grande Montagne de Reims, Ambonnay, Champagne, France
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir

Taste: Enticing aromas of honeysuckle, toasted brioche, spiced and roasted green apples, candied grapefruit, crushed oysters…and on, and on…this wine is nearly as much fun to smell as it is to taste. Luckily, you don’t have to choose, and the wine leads to a pure, expressive palate of lemon cream, cherry saltwater taffy, strawberries, toasted almonds, and more…all harnessed by rigid tension and penetrating minerality. Just wow!

Pairing: Steak. Seriously. Get yourself a beautiful Hanger steak (or filet, if you must), simply season with good salt, and sear in a cast iron skillet. While it rests, make this classic bearnaise sauce…slice, season with some flaky salt, and be amazed. Frankly, we can’t think of anything better, so while there’s a lot of other dishes that will pair well with this champagne (and you’d be just as well rewarded enjoying this alone to celebrate a great day or cheer up a gloomy one), we’re going to share a recipe for Cast-Iron Steak by Julia Moskin; a great steakhouse alternative for all you home chefs!

About. Paul Dethune makes this from one and a half hectares of pinot noir on Les Crayeres’ powerful, south-facing, chalky slope planted to over 50-year-old vines. The Dethunes are the second oldest Champagne family in Ambonnay, with an unbroken history of growing grapes in the region going back to 1610! That’s the same year Galileo discovered three moons of Jupiter, folks. History, pedigree, location…this wine has the resume that would rival any producer in Champagne, and at a tremendous value. Egly-Ouriet makes their non-vintage cuvee from an adjacent plot that goes for $260+ per bottle. We won’t even talk about the price of Krug’s Clos d’Ambonnay, just a stone’s throw away… (side note: the word “crayère” means chalk pit and is a common term throughout Reims, so beware of cheaper look-alikes that don’t actually hail from this tiny Grand Cru site!).

Like each of his forebears, Pierre Dethune has created his own style of Champagne – rooted in tradition yet ever-evolving – the one constant being the grassy lands of Ambonnay. Over the past few years, the Dethune portfolio has gradually lowered the total dosage – moving below the 6g/liter allotment and transitioning the wines to Extra Brut or below (even when labeled as Brut). This bottling is a zippy 5g/liter. The shift has produced an enhanced freshness and verve to the finished wines without sacrificing the purely ripe fruit orchard characteristics that are definitively Ambonnay.

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