Gosset Champagne Grande Réserve / NV / 1.5L

Description:

Gosset Grande Réserve NV is a rich, textural Champagne from the historic Épernay-based house, built on a roughly even split of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with a touch of Pinot Meunier. Blended across several vintages and cellared for years on lees, it carries real depth without losing its bright acid line.

Baked apple, poached pear and preserved lemon lead, with brioche and toasted hazelnut sitting underneath from extended lees ageing. There is a chalky, almost floral lift behind the fruit that keeps the aromatics from turning heavy.

Gosset avoids malolactic fermentation, and you can taste it: malic acid gives the palate a firm, mouth-watering spine that cuts through the creamy autolytic weight. The mousse is fine and persistent, the mid-palate broad and gently spiced, and the finish long, dry and saline. A magnum format means a slower, gentler maturation than a standard bottle, so this drinks with more freshness and finer bead.

Pour it with roast chicken, seared scallops, tempura prawns or a wedge of aged comté. At 1.5L it is a wine for a long table — Christmas lunch, a milestone birthday, a dozen people who want the same bottle poured twice.

Drink now through to 2032, with the magnum holding its condition well at the back end of that window.