2010 Jacques Selosse, Millesime

The deeper golden straw-colored 2010 Champagne Millésime Extra Brut is a powerful wine, taking on an almost Alsatian-like application for wine pairings, as its botrytis characteristics shine through in all the right ways. Opening to sappy notes of ripe golden peaches, graham crackers, ginger, and honeycomb, it’s fleshy and full-bodied, with chalky mineral notes that move to the front of the palate, while a rich tannin structure expands across the mid-palate and finish with an extracted texture of orange oils. A serious and broad wine, it has a lot of bold personality, with its acidity taking a backseat in this vintage. It demands to be served with choucroute or an onion tart. Zero grams per liter dosage.

Demonstrative and charming, Selosse's 2010 Extra-Brut Millésime will be a great vintage to drink while patient readers are waiting on the 2010. Bursting from the glass with botrytis-inflected aromas of tangerine, crisp yellow orchard fruit, citrus blossom, clear honey and toasted nuts, it's full-bodied, satiny and pillowy, with an open, expressive profile that lends it real immediacy. Guillaume Selosse explains that to produce the Millésime, he doesn't select the "best" barrels from each of the lieux-dits, but rather those with a more pronounced personality. The 2010 likely won't be the most long-lived vintage of this bottling, but it will deliver enormous pleasure over the next decade.

The 2010 Extra-Brut Millesime Grand Cru is a pretty, soft vintage Champagne for Selosse. All the elements are beautifully balanced. The 2010 doesn’t have the power of recent vintages, but it does have something none of those wines have and that is tons of immediacy. There’s plenty of energy, but not quite the depth of the very finest years. That’s actually an advantage, as readers will be able to enjoy the 2010 with minimal cellaring. White flowers, candied lemon peel, crushed rocks, mint, hazelnut and almond paste all open gracefully in the glass, lifted by a pretty exotic note that lingers on the close. No dosage. Disgorged: April 7, 2021