100% vinification in barrique. Bottling year was 2000 from the 1999 harvest. The fruit was sourced from a single vineyard known as “Les Crayères”. The vines here were planted in 1947. It’s an exceptional terroir: the soil is hardly 30 cm deep, then comes the chalk, hundreds of metres deep, hence the name of the site. The Vines are deeply rooted in this chalk, which gives the wine both its red fruit nuances - thanks to the ripeness and to the concentration of the old vine Pinot Noir - and the classic mineral signature. Dosage is 4 to 5 gr per litre and the wine ahs been aged on lees for 50 months. Disgorged September 2004. Made entirely from 55 year-old vines, this is a tribute to Ambonnay and a signature wine for the Domaine. Other producers have always considered a 100%, old vine Ambonnay like this to be too rich and have usually cut it with something else. Egly gives it to you pure and powerful. Deep, almost onion skin colour, fragrant with citrus, floral, red fruit aromas wrapped in a smooth vanillin texture that finishes with intense chalkiness. Rare and magnificent. A unique wine that is built for food and for aging. There is even some grip here. Like all Egly Champagnes, it’s a wine first, then a Champagne. With age more of the chalky, minerality will come through.

Huon Hooke – Sydney Morning Herald: “I was very taken with the Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru Vieilles Vignes NV, a single-site Ambonnay wine, 100 per cent pinot noir from vines about 60 years old, barrel fermented and aged. The colour is surprisingly light, while it has tremendous complexity of bready, straw-hay yeast autolysis characters, and the palate is powerful and very dry but smooth and superbly balanced, with very fine structure. A really special, and rare, champagne.” Le Classement 2005: 9.0 vin exceptional