Nowack Les Bauchets

Tatler Champagne Guide 2024-2025

Grape Makeup:

100% Pinot Noir

Sweetness Level:

Extra Brut

Ageing on Lees:

Four years

Price:

$$

Cellar:

Up to five years

Category:

Culinary

What

A biodynamic Meunier specialist, a grower since 1795, known for initiating the second fermentation with grape must and all-natural yeasts, taking the idea of minimal intervention to the next level.

Where

Vandières, Vallée de la Marne; ~75% Meunier, remainder Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; organically farmed.

Why

This parcel on the mid-slope, identified down to its lat/long coordinates on the bottle, is thoroughly coddled, treated to plant-based preparations and a carefully applied winter mulch, all interspersed with trees to bring biodiversity. The resulting wine, vinified and matured in barrel, is not filtered or fined, giving an intensely natural but polished style.

What Else

Their non-vintage S.A. is impressively packed with quality factors less commonly found in growers’ NV blends, with 40% reserves coming from 2012-2019 in the 2020 base NV. The result is surprisingly classic in style, albeit with a briny, toasted maize edge that reminds you (in a good way) that it is from a grower producer.

Tasting Notes

This is an unapologetically natural style, with pungent sweet apple and papaya funk and a wet clay, Ovaltine maltiness, milk tea and white tea all at once. A sharp edge of jittery acidity slices through the front, which is otherwise quite dense and compact. The mid palate brings crystallised ginger and malt biscuit with wafts of chenpi. This is a very attractive version of minimal intervention, with a nice balance between the maltiness and the volatile sharpness.

Try It With

Complex, spiced dishes, Malay, Indonesian or Singaporean.

When To Drink

Entrées or snacks

Perfect For

The young person who already knows all the cool champagne brands

TL/DR

Pungently natural but rich and malty

Supplier

Deco Wines