Ayala Le Blanc de Blancs 2015

A subtle nose reveals hints of cool chalk, dried corn husk and a slight edge of lemon zest. The palate shows the fine freshness and brightness you expect from a Blanc de Blancs but couches it in a gentle, soft and elegant body that shows its yeasty autolysis with lovely notes of springy, pillowy pide bread that lifts off into a soaring note of pure Amalfi lemon. This combines sunny ripeness with cool poise. Lovely.

Blanc de Blancs is Ayala’s calling card, and their 2015 release is a work of great elegance and purity. Sourced only from prestigious grand and premier cru villages in the Côte des Blancs - the grand crus in question being Chouilly, Cramant and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger - this impressively complex wine has been aged for six years on its lees and is described, according to Ayala’s cellar master Caroline Latrive, as ‘an ode to Chardonnay’. An impressive poetic result indeed, all the more so as 2015 was a rather unpredictable, helter-skelter vintage, its early humidity replaced by ferocious heat, reminiscent of 2003, and the threat of drought. Perfect harvest conditions ensued, and the musts were clean and expressive. The wine underwent full malolactic fermentation and six years later was dosed at 6 g/L, at the upper end of the Extra Brut classification. A silvery, almost nacreous colour with large playful bubbles and a nose, initially rather unforthcoming, which offers Braeburn apples, iodine and spring flowers, and then, with a little time in the glass, hints of praline and even Apfelstrudel, a seam of chalk underwriting the edifice, and a pleasing salinity perfectly poised on the finish. Disgorged: July 2021. Dosage: 6g/L.

Dried honeysuckle, lemon, dried apple, praline, toasted almond and crushed stone on the nose. Mineral and linear with a medium body, sharp acidity and sleek bubbles. Fresh and dry. Chardonnay. Drink now.