NV Guillaume Selosse Estra Brut Au dessus du Gros Mont

The NV Blanc de Blancs Cramant Au Dessus du Gros Mont, based on the 2017 harvest and disgorged with 1.5 grams per liter dosage, is a particular success this year. A mono-variety wine that’s made the same way as the lieux-dits of Jacques Selosse (readers interested in more detail are invited to consult my note on Les Carelles), it departs from the other wines with the more significant percentage of new oak for the maturation of the base wine (50% aged in new barrels and 50% in one-year-old barrels, mostly from Cavin and François Frères). Complemented by the complex, multi-vintage blend component (aged in four-hectoliter foudre) dating back to 2008, it’s a wine that derives from a parcel in Cramant that Guillaume received as a gift from his grandmother on his 18th birthday. Located at the top of the slope, it’s a high-altitude vineyard with two contrasting exposures—part of it faces south, while the other faces north. Soaring from the glass with scents of pastel de nata, beeswax, Asian pear and tangerine, it offers a bouquet of extraordinary complexity. Full-bodied and concentrated, it’s multidimensional and intensely perfumed, with racy acidity and a long, saline finish. It’s a brilliant wine that meets and even surpasses the high expectations I formed tasting its previous renditions. What is sure is that the wine will be very difficult to find, as only about 700 bottles were produced.

Selosse's NV Extra-Brut Au Dessus du Gros Mont (2015) is lovely, delivering aromas of waxy orchard fruit, mandarin oil, candied peel, peach and buttered toast, followed by a full-bodied, deep and sapid palate animated by a pillowy mousse and framed by chalky structure. Precise and penetrating, it has turned out very well indeed. Unlike Largillier, this cuvée is made just like the Jacques Selosse lieu-dit bottlings and, at some point, will likely be integrated into that range.

Based on the 2011 vintage complemented by a perpetual reserve dating back to 2008, Selosse's NV Extra-Brut Au Dessus du Gros Mont (2011) was disgorged in 2017. Bursting with aromas of citrus fruit, toasted nuts, dried white flowers and candied peel, it's full-bodied, fleshy and concentrated, with lively acids and chalky dry extract, concluding with a long, sapid finish. It's a lovely, vinous Champagne that evokes the Jacques Selosse lieu-dit bottlings in style—unsurprisingly as, unlike l'Argillier, it's made in much the same way as those cuvées.