FAMILIAL terroir

A French father and daughter has the wine world fizzing with their future-forward approach to producing Champagne. DANI VALENT joins some of the country’s leading wine experts to find out what the fuss is all about.

- DANI VALENT

I’m tasting blood and iron and rose petals says wine buyer Isy Szyman, sitting back in reverie. The all-rounder at indie wine store Rathdowne Cellars has just sipped one of her ride-or-die Champagnes, the Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Brut Rosé NV, poured at a masterclass special enough to draw 40 of Melbourne’s top sommeliers to Cutler & Co restaurant on a Monday afternoon.

The rosé is the sixth of 12 Egly-Ouriet Champagnes poured in four brackets of three to accompany an elegant, carefully matched fivecourse lunch by chef Jordan Clavaron. For the first hour, the air is electric. Bit by bit, sip by sip, restrained murmuring softens into grateful joy as more wines are poured and tasting glasses emptied – there are spittoons but few seem to be using them.

Egly-Ouriet is in the very top tier of grower Champagne houses, revered for its fastidious and refined sparkling wine made with grapes that owners Francis Egly and his daughter Clémence grow, tend and pick themselves. Clémence is the fourth-generation winemaker in her family, who established the estate in 1947.

“Today is beyond special, it’s once in a lifetime,” says James Broadway, sommelier and co-owner of Tedesca Osteria, Gourmet Traveller’s 2022 Restaurant of the Year. “This line-up of wines from one of the great Champagne producers is almost impossible to put together. They wouldn’t even drink these at home. And to do it in Melbourne – it’s close to unthinkable.” Even Robert Walters, owner of Bibendum Wine Co, the distributor which metes out this country’s coveted allocation of Egly-Ouriet, is full of superlatives. “I haven’t sat down to a selection of wines like this in 20 years,” he says.