Champagne Louise Brison "Rosé de la Côte des Bar" Brut Nature 2015

FROM ROSENTHAL

THE WINE: For her exuberant and vinous rosé—pure Pinot Noir always from a single vintage—Delphine employs whole-bunch semi-carbonic maceration for five or six days, followed by nine months of aging in used barrels before bottling for secondary fermentation. Tangy, spicy, and juicy, this wine dances on the palate, its bright acidity counterbalancing notes of fresh jam while its tensile Kimmeridgian minerality provides a sturdy base.

THE PRODUCER: We live in the era of the “superstar winemaker,” and it is perhaps easy to forget that for most of its history viticulture has been simply an extraordinarily taxing form of subsistence farming. Before the appellation system, before mechanization, and before the possibility of easy travel, Louise Brison eked out a modest living from a few hectares of vines in her home village of Noé-les-Mallets in the Côte des Bar. The family trade sustained the Brisons through the tumult of the 20^th century, and Louise’s grandson Francis began estate-bottling a portion of their fruit in 1991. Today, Francis’ daughter Delphine looks after the family’s 15 hectares, and since taking the reins in 2004 she has converted fully to organic viticulture—practicing since 2011 and certified since 2017.

Louise’s tenacity lives on in Delphine, who produces astonishingly vibrant wines with a total absence of ornamentation. All her Champagnes are single-vintage and zero dosage, and she ages all her vin clair in used barrels for nine months before bottling for secondary fermentation. Five years is the minimum stint sur latte for Delphine’s Champagnes, but due to an absence of malolactic fermentation and to the mineral fortitude of the terroir they read as direct and driving rather than excessively autolytic. Furthermore, Delphine has no patience for the fanciful nomenclature which plagues so much Champagne even from small growers, instead choosing straightforward names for her cuvées: “Chardonnay de la Côte des Bar,” “À l’Aube de la Côte des Bar,” and so forth.

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