Sparkling Wine Guide: Blanc de Blancs style

This style of sparkling wine is light to taste and all about finesse. They’re bright, refreshing wines, whose liveliness comes as a pleasant surprise to palate and taste buds. They’re expressions of the chalky terroirs responsible for their creation. They’re also typified by a sensation that’s hard to describe, referred to as "minerality". How do you identify it? There are aromas of gunflints on the nose. Other notes evocative of minerality include stone, graphite, chalk, flint, oysters and shells. It manifests itself on the palate in a combination of two sensations: acidity and salinity. Such sparkling wines are marked by a balance between citrus acidity and light mellowness. As they age, they take on a creamy, velvety texture.

These wines have notes of white flowers (hawthorn, honeysuckle, linden, acacia, jasmine and orange blossom), citrus fruits (grapefruit, lemon) and exotic fruits (lychee, pineapple) as well as apples, pears and spices (aniseed, ginger) and even mint notes. When older, they take notes of dried fruit, hazelnuts, almonds, ripe apples, honey and wax. Maturity provides them with notes of brioche, fresh butter, biscuit dough and toast.