This is not your typical non-vintage Brut. The Aubry brothers include ancient indigenous varieties, which make up five percent of the blend; pinot meunier accounts for 45 percent, the balance in equal parts pinot noir and chardonnay. Nearly half of the blend is reserve wine, half of that coming from a solera made up of vintages going back to 1998. If all that seems complicated, the wine is not. Instead, it tastes like an essential Champagne, with scents of chalk, oyster mushroom, pear skin and lemon pulp creating a bold surround-sound of flavor. There’s purity to the expression and a healthy weight to the wine. Pour it with sea bass roasted with chanterelles.

A distinctive Champagne, structured by firm acidity and lightly wooly in texture, with notes of whole-wheat toast, dried raspberry, candied orange peel and hints of fresh chamomile and thyme. Minerally finish. Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Disgorged July 2023. Drink now through 2026. – AN

The current release of non-vintage Brut from L. Aubry Fils is base year 2010, with fortyfive percent of the blend comprised of reserve wines. The Aubry family has been working on a solera for their reserve wines since the 1998 vintage, with a bit more than half of the reserve wines in this blend hailing from this solera (and the remainder presumably 2009 juice). The cépages of the bottling is forty-five percent Pinot Meunier, twenty-five percent each of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and five percent of classic, old school grapes like Arbanne and Petit Meslier, with all the wines fermented in stainless steel and going through full malo. The bouquet is deep and complex, offering up scents of apple, bread fruit, lovely soil tones, fresh-baked bread, a hint of menthol and a discreet topnote of lime zest. On the palate the wine is deep, fullbodied and quite complex, with a fine core, lovely mineral drive, slightly large bubbles, but fine length and grip on the crisp finish. The fruit tones here play more of a supporting role than in many other non-vintage Brut bottlings, as the minerality and bread flavors are quite dominant, but this wine is very nicely balanced and works very well at the table, with its quite low dosage for a Brut wine. Good juice. 2015-2025+.