Coteaux Champenois Rosé
Aurora 2023

The Coteaux Champenois Rosé Aurora by Agrapart is a rosé wine born where no one would think to look for it, in the Côte des Blancs, where chalk lays down the law and colour almost feels like an anomaly. This is Cramant, a Grand Cru of light and finesse, where Fabrice chose to try a new register while keeping the family grammar intact, built on manual work, vines farmed without forcing and a care for the soil that borders on devotion. The name, with its echo of the glow of the northern lights, is perhaps the image that better than any other captures a wine resembling no other Rosé in Champagne.

This edition, 2023 harvest, comes entirely from the Lieu-dit Les Busons and shows a clear predominance of Chardonnay grapes, completed by 2% Pinot Noir picked together with the rest of the parcel. It is neither a blended rosé nor a saignée, but a third way the Domaine claims as its own, inspired by Provençal tradition and transferred onto the chalk of the Côte des Blancs. Vinification and fermentation proceed with indigenous yeasts alone inside a Wine Globe, a glass sphere that receives the wine straight from the harvest and preserves every nuance, while maturation continues for two years on its own fine lees with malolactic fermentation fully completed.

On tasting, Aurora 2023 shows a pale, luminous, almost translucent pink and an aromatic profile of great clarity in which wild strawberry, redcurrant and raspberry weave together with a floral touch that lightens the whole. On the palate the entry is fine and crystalline, carried by a mineral freshness that runs through the wine and sets its pace, while the chalky component returns that tactile, saline sensation belonging to the great terroirs of Cramant. Balance arises from the contrast between the delicacy of the fruit and the tension of the soil, closing on a long, luminous and progressive finish where savouriness takes over and prolongs the memory well beyond the last sip.