Wine of the week: a perfect Champers for New Year’s Eve

published 27 December 2019

2013 Ayala, Le Blanc de Blancs, Champagne, France

£52.95 from thewhiskyexchange.com; £57.99, Latitude Wine & Liquor Merchant, 0113-245 3393; £55, Cambridge Wine Merchants, 01223-568989; £55, Dulwich Vintners, 020-8299 1051

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This article is exquisitely timely and also rather annoyingly ahead of the game. This amazing wine works perfectly as a stunning New Year's Eve Champagne recommendation, but I am rather itchy about the fact that only a handful of stockists have listed it and only one of them, The Whisky Exchange, is showing it on their website. That is because this wine is fresh off the boat. So please bear with me and forgive me that this truly mesmerising wine is not yet more widely distributed.

I have known the Ayala brand for a long time they even made a special cuve for me for around a decade, so that certainly elevates them somewhat in my estimation! But I haven't visited for a long while and so when I tasted this impressive new vintage all of my memories flooded back.

Only made in top years, Le Blanc de Blancs is a great wine. Made from 100% chardonnay and coming entirely from the Cte des Blancs, it features a host of Grands Crus (25% Cramant, 23% Chouilly and 14% Le Mesnil-sur-Oger) and Premiers Crus (25% Cuis and 13% Vertus) in its make up, so while it is a mono-varietal, there is tremendous layering of flavour and complexity.

With six years spent ageing on the lees and a dosage of only six grams per litre, this is a mellow, but brightly acidic wine.It is ideally suited for New Year's Eve, but I'd buy enough to last you for five years, too!

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.