Fleur de Miraval Champagne Rose Exclusivement ER1 NV 750ml

An extraordinary achievement this, made by the famously difficult saignée method, yet with a wonderful onion skin colour and poised aromas of lemongrass, small red berried fruit and pink grapefruit. Rodolphe Péters from the eponymous Champagne house in Le Mesnil sur Oger demonstrates why he is seen as one of the very finest winemakers in Champagne, coaxing wonderful complexity from his reserve wines ( aged in a solera) and ensuring definition and purity from the base wines, the purity and elegance of the 25% Pinot Noir component quite breathtaking. Despite the relatively modest time on lees (three years), there is definite pedigree here, and, given the aspiration to forge a new style of rosé, a triumphant aura of complexity and latent potential. Rodolphe already has a reputation for making some of the finest Chardonnay-based Champagnes; now the inspired partnership with the Perrins of Beaucastel, who, it has to be admitted, know a thing or two about red wine, has yielded a hugely impressive debut for the Fleur de Miraval. Behind these two winemaking giants there is the owner, a certain Brad Pitt, who has achieved a degree of success elsewhere (!) but who has been surprisingly hands-on with this project, as of course he is at sister company Miraval in Provence. Not a bad team, all in all. What’s more, this wine is appreciably different to the other prestige rosé Champagnes on the market, without in any way losing out in terms of profundity, or, at a more basic level, the power to give pleasure. The very high expectations have been matched… and then some!

• Country: France
• Region: Provence
• Size: 750ml

Varietal

Champagne Blend

The sparkling wines of Champagne have been revered by wine drinkers for hundreds of years, and even today they maintain their reputation for excellence of flavor and character, and are consistently associated with quality, decadence, and a cause for celebration. Their unique characteristics are partly due to the careful blending of a small number of selected grape varietals, most commonly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. These grapes, blended in fairly equal quantities, give the wines of Champagne their wonderful flavors and aromas, with the Pinot Noir offering length and backbone, and the Chardonnay varietal giving its acidity and dry, biscuity nature. It isn’t unusual to sometimes see Champagne labeled as ‘blanc de blanc’, meaning it is made using only Chardonnay varietal grapes, or ‘blanc de noir’, which is made solely with Pinot Noir.