Start Your Champagne Journey with Ulysse Collin’s Champagne Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs Les Pierrieres
The Ulysse Collin winery’s Champagne Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs Les Pierrieres is a masterpiece, a lovely bottle that captivates your heart and initiates a love affair with Champagne, enticing you to savor its effervescent delights.
It’s a fantastic Blanc de Blanc, made entirely of Chardonnay from 40-year-old vines in one of Champagne’s most suitable regions: the Côte des Blancs.
Today, Ulysse’s son, Oliver, is at the helm of this small artisan winery, where he is devoted to the production of authentic and distinctive wines, so much so that only indigenous yeasts are used for fermentation. Six months in oak barrels. Then comes fermentation in the bottle. And, of course, his wines are not clarified or filtered.
The result is a wine with an ambitious structure, rare elegance, and sidereal sapidity owing to the inherent characteristics of Chardonnay and the soils where it grows, which are marl and gypsum-based.
The time spent in the Selosse cellar has paid off.
The bouquet
It starts with refined hints of yeast, butter, seaweed, mint, sugared almonds, and an explosion of citrus aromas. The rhythm and aromatic precision are superb; they envelop the nose and reveal an infinite number of layers to be discovered in a tight sequence.
The flavor
All of this richness translates into structure, persistence, finesse, strong minerality, and a clear and sharp acidity with a lime flavor in the mouth.
Despite the fact that it is a very intense and rich Champagne, it is declined with grace; the sip is natural, never weighed down or stylized, and always driven by an incredible savory charge.
It has a good balance, rare elegance, a lot of flavor, satisfaction, and a very long finish. Even after 5 minutes, you will notice the chalk on your tongue.
Price
80 euros. Of course, it is not cheap, but if you want to try a genuine Champagne made by a true winemaker, a wine that is not sweetened but is rocky and full of life, this is a great bottle.
Food Pairings
Choose the sweetness of Parma ham to enhance the flavor of the wine, obviously with piada from Romagna, but it is also worth trying with pizza margherita, veal with tuna sauce, hamburgers, carbonara, cacio e pepe, and paella.
