Champagne R. Dumont & Fils Rosé NV

Alcohol: 12%

Grapes: 100% Pinot Noir

Localization: Champignol-lez-Mondeville, L'Aube, Champagne, France

Tasting Notes: Dark pink. Earthy, musky and pungent, with a smoky mineral quality lifting ripe red berry and blood orange aromas. Sappy and nicely concentrated, offering wild strawberry and raspberry flavors that show depth as well as purity and energy. The refreshingly bitter finish leaves behind suave floral and smoky mineral notes.

The Domain: The Champagne house of the Dumont family is situated in Champignol-lez-Mondeville, a village in the southern Champagne region of the Aube, some 90 miles southeast of Reims and Epernay. Characterized by forested hills, streams and vineyards, it is a natural and reflective environment that has attracted people such as Saint Bernard (Clairvaux) and Renoir (Essoyes). The Dumonts have owned vineyards in this area for over two hundred years and today three Dumont brothers work together to produce champagne exclusively from their own 22 hectares. The soils are a geological extension of those in Chablis, namely kimmeridgian chalky clay. The vineyard is planted with 90% Pinot Noir and 10% Chardonnay. Bernard Dumont’s comments are insightful. “We grow grapes on the same soils as the vine growers in the Chablis region. There, they produce white wine from white grapes and here we produce white wine from red grapes.”

The Dumonts farm bio-dynamically and are in conversion to organic certification.

The Dumont Brut Rosé is made exclusively from Pinot Noir. A selection is made in the vineyard from parcels that are particularly ripe and from bunches with deeply colored skins. Fermentation proceeds as with red wines but the wine is drawn off the skins after a day or so with the Dumonts looking carefully at the balance of extraction, color and tannin. This method, known as “saignée”, is a tricky art but one that can produce the most natural and delicately complex style of Rosé champagne. The Brut Rosé NV is aged for two years on the lees before disgorgement and dosage is 10 grams.