2016 Marguet "Les Crayères" Grand Cru Champagne

The 2016 vintage of Les Crayères from Benoît Marguet is made solely from chardonnay, but as it is not labeled as a Blanc de Blancs, I have listed it here, rather than in the Blanc de Blancs section. Like these other single vineyard bottlings reviewed in this article, the vins clairs were aged until the end of July of 2017 prior to bottling up for their secondary fermentation, and the wine was disgorged in April of 2021. It offers up a beautifully refined and complex bouquet of lemon, pear, incipient notes of crème patissière, a profound base of limestone minerality, orange blossoms and a lovely touch of buttery oak. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied, complex and tensile, with a beautiful core of fruit, supremely elegant mousse, great mineral complexity and drive, brisk acids and laser-like focus on the very long, well-balanced and youthful finish. To my palate, this beautiful wine needs five years in the cellar to let its acidity relax a bit and allow the wine to truly drink with generosity, but I am sure that there are plenty of Brut Nature fanciers out there who would not hesitate to drink it with great pleasure today. It is a brilliant young wine. 95+