"One of the things I love about Benoît Tarlant’s non-dosé bottlings of Champagne is that he is not afraid to keep the wines down in the cellar aging on their fine lees until the acids have relaxed a bit before he releases them. This allows the wines to drink with true generosity right out of the blocks, despite no dosage. The new release of Benoît Tarlant’s non-vintage “Brut Zéro” is from the base year of 2016 and was disgorged in February of 2023, after six years aging sur lattes. The wine is roughly a one-third each blend of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, but with a four percent addition of petit meslier, pinot blanc and arbanne, just to make things interesting. The wine offers up a lovely bouquet of apple, pear, raw almond, bread dough, chalky soil tones, just a hint of buttery oak and a lovely topnote of dried flowers. On the palate the wine is bright, fullbodied, precise and complex, with a fine core of fruit, excellent mineral undertow, a fine girdle of acidity and lovely focus on the long, zesty and beautifully balanced finish. Fine juice. 2025-2045+. "