2014 Champagne Ellner Blanc de Blancs Brut 750 ml

Champagne’s 2014 season started like it was strapped to a 503-horsepower M3: A warm, dry spring set up a big, healthy crop, and growers were wearing grins—until a damp summer pumped the brakes. Hard. By late August, vignerons from Reims to Oger were chomping their fingernails. Only a gorgeous September could deliver on the season’s early promise.

September came, and with it four weeks of sunshine—exactly what the vines needed. The top houses were ebullient: Krug planned on bottling their $1,000 Clos du Mesnil. Ditto Roederer, Philipponnat, and Taittinger with their têtes de cuvées. 

From that glorious season comes the 2014 Ellner Blanc de Blancs Brut, a gorgeous and perfectly aged 100% Chardonnay that displays a fine year through the lens of a decade in a dimly lit cellar. What you get in the glass is a justification for the patience it took to get here: a medium-gold bubbly with finely developed aromas of toasted brioche and baked apples preceding a creamy palate with a persistent mousse. 

Blanc de Blancs bubblies are made solely from white grapes, and Ellner’s Chardonnay hails from plots from the family’s collection of vineyards, which founder Charles Ellner began assembling at the end of the 19th century. Ellner released his first Champagne in 1905. Now the family-owned estate, which boasts impressive holdings of 50 hectares, is run by Jean-Pierre Ellner, grandson of the founder. 

All the Ellner wines are fermented in stainless steel to preserve the fresh fruit, and none see malolactic fermentation. The Chardonnay that composes this Blanc de Blancs spent a few months in large oak before aging on the lees.