2015 M. Brugnon Blanc de Blancs Brut Champagne 750 ml

We've always considered drinking vintage Champagne one of life’s true luxuries—and therefore about the furthest thing from a realistic weeknight endeavor. But if any bottle proves it can be both, it’s the 2015 Champagne M. Brugnon Blanc de Blancs. 

A vintage bottling from precious Premier Cru terroir that goes into Krug and Dom Pérignon, it boasts all the depth and complexity you’re happy to get at $100-$200 per bottle. We first tasted this gorgeous wine in Alain Brugnon’s winery more than a year ago—and claimed the exclusive for Wine Access members, right there in the cellar. 

Now Brugnon’s vintage bottling is here, and it’s drinking even better than before, every sip conveying one of the great vintages of the last decade, and the pedigreed terroir that keeps the most famous Champagne houses coming back every year. 

Because this stellar bottle’s only way to the States is through Wine Access, our members are the only ones who will get it—at a price that’s reasonable for Champagne of any quality, and nearly unfathomable for a vintage bottling boasting this kind of Premier Cru pedigree.

The lemon-straw-colored Brugnon announces itself as a formidable Champagne from the start, with aromas of green apples, quince paste, yellow flowers, biscuits, and toasted hazelnuts. Textured with a steady stream of ultra-fine bubbles, it’s focused and energetic on the palate, with fresh apple and vibrant lemon accented by toasty, nutty, mineral, and floral undertones. Through it all, an elegant chalkiness gives away this wine's Premier Cru provenance, and like great vintage Champagnes do, it keeps developing in the glass, revealing deeper and deeper character.

The wine is composed of 100% Chardonnay from the superb 2015 vintage—a season so good that one chef de cave (of a big-name Champagne house) admitted he had to go easy on using 2015 wine in his non-vintage blend: He feared making his house cuvée too good might set future expectations too high.  

For Alain Brugnon’s vintage Champagne, there was no such restraint. He tapped the chalky Les Barbettes and Les Maladries plots in Rilly la Montagne, the 35-year-old vines of the former bringing wisdom and restraint, the young vines of the latter supplying precocity and verve. Alain preserved that energy by eschewing malolactic fermentation, and the choice shines through in a wine that will delight in its youth, and develop beautifully over the next decade.