Pierre Gerbais Les Grandes Cotes Extra Brut

95 pts Wine Advocate (Kelley)
The NV Extra-Brut Les Grandes Côtes derives from Pinot Noir planted in a north-facing site, matured as a perpetual reserve spanning the 2011-2018 vintages. Wafting from the glass with aromas of peach, orange oil, pear, beeswax and fresh bread, it's medium to full-bodied, deep and ample, with a fleshy core of perfumed fruit animated by a pillowy mousse, concluding with a long, aromatic finish.

93 pts Vinous
Drinking Window 2024 - 2032
From: Champagne: The 2024 Spring Preview (Mar 2024)
The NV Extra Brut Les Grandes Côtes is a pure Pinot Noir from Celles-sur-Ource, made from a perpetual reserve spanning the vintages 2011 to 2019. Reductive funk on the nose dissipates into yeasty lemon notions. It is on the palate that the depth of the white pepper and tart apple flesh becomes apparent. The elegant mousse underlines the nobility of Pinot Noir even more with its salty tang and reductive treatment here. This is mouth-watering, juicy, bone-dry and lasting Disgorged: April, 2023.

• Varieties: Pinot Noir (100%)
• Dosage: 3g/L
• Terroir: Portlandian, Upper Kimmeridgian and Middle Kimmeridgian soils.
• Viticulture: Certified sustainable (Ampelos, 1996)
• Vinification: A blend of base vintage wine and solera reserve wine going back to 2011. Hand harvested and sorted. Primary fermentation and malolactic fermentation in tank. Secondary fermentation with cultured organic yeast strains in bottles, aged 36 months on the lattes. Disgorged 6 months before commercialization. 25-30 ppm total SO2 at bottling.

Today, the Aube has plenty of rising stars (and likely some shooting stars too), but the softly spoken Aurélien Gerbais is one of the most promising and most confidence inspiring. This 18-hectare estate in Celles-sur-Ource was planted by Aurélien's grandfather and father, and today amounts to some 50% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Blanc, divided pretty equally between northerly and southerly expositions. Much of the Gerbais holdings, moreover, have never seen synthetic pesticides and fungicides, as it was planted after the family abandoned these products. Aurélien himself studied in Burgundy and worked with Olivier Lamy in Saint-Aubin in 2008, returning to the estate in 2011 and immediately establishing perpetual reserves with a view to reimagining the range around a series of lieu-dit bottlings. Hard work in the vineyards, which are farmed organically, is followed by picking, sorting (rare in Champagne, where separation of press fractions is often deemed an adequate response to imperfect sanitary conditions at harvest), and vinification in tank without sulfites. Today, a decade's work is finally coming to fruition in the form of complex, refined, elegantly vinous Champagnes that are emerging as some of the region's most compelling, taking this estate from the ranks of the region's solid producers into the category of the exceptional. So, readers who haven't tasted the Gerbais wines for a few years should make haste to acquaint themselves with all these developments!