Benoît Marguet’s “Shaman 17” non-vintage Brut Nature is composed from a cépages of sixty-nine percent pinot noir and thirty-one percent chardonnay. The vins clairs were barrel-fermented and given extended aging in cask...
Benoît Marguet’s “Shaman 17” non-vintage Brut Nature is composed from a cépages of sixty-nine percent pinot noir and thirty-one percent chardonnay. The vins clairs were barrel-fermented and given extended aging in cask until July of 2018 prior to bottling up for secondary fermentation. The wine was disgorged in November of 2020. The wine offers up a lovely bouquet of white peach, apple, a touch of hazelnut, patissière, a beautiful base of soil and a whisper of buttery oak. On the palate the wine is crisp, full-bodied, focused and complex, with a lovely core, excellent mineral drive and cut, elegant mousse and a long, very well-balanced and bone-dry finish. This is a beautifully made Brut Nature, but at this point in its evolution, it is still a little snappy and will be most enjoyed by purists in the non-dosé camp. For me, it needs still a couple of years in the cellar to soften up its spine of acidity just a bit more. It is once again a superbly made wine, but I miss the days when this bottling sported four grams per liter of dosage and I could drink it right out of the blocks!