The Wine Advocate | RP 94
Published: Dec 14, 2023

As usual, the latest disgorgement of Egly's NV Extra-Brut Grand Cru V.P., this year based on the 2015 vintage complemented by reserve wines from 2014 and 2013, is one of the highlights of the range. Wafting from the glass with aromas of pear, green apple, freshly baked bread, crushed mint, honeycomb, white flowers and praline, it's medium to full-bodied, fleshy and layered, with a racy and concentrated core, a pretty pinpoint mousse and a long, saline finish.

Far from resting on the considerable and merited laurels that he has accrued over a 30-year career, Francis Egly has continued to refine and improve. The last decade's innovations include refrigerated press pans to immediately cool the must in ever-warmer vintages, a peristaltic pump to handle his wines even more gently and a once-again expanded cellar that gives him the space to work still more precisely. Just like his work in the vineyards, investment in the winery has been incessant. Starting from next to nothing when he began in the 1980s, today Egly holds some 700,000 bottles in reserve wines and wine maturing sur lattes—equivalent to seven times his annual production.

As readers will know, Egly picks ripe grapes and ferments most of his wines in barrel—some 10% to 15% of which are renewed every year, and all of which derive from the cooperage of his friend, Dominique Laurent—before subjecting them to lengthy sur lattes maturation, typically disgorging with less than three grams per liter dosage these days. But the devil is in the details; no winemaker in Champagne is more precise or meticulous, from vineyard to cellar. These latest releases once again come warmly recommended.

Drink Date: 2023 - 2035