Egly-Ouriet Les Prémices NV is a refined and approachable Champagne crafted from equal parts Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay from Trigny in the Petite Montagne. Based on the 2019 vintage and aged with minimal dosage, it offers layered notes of orchard fruit, honey, brown bread, and spice. Bright acidity, a saline finish, and gentle mousse make it a beautifully balanced and elegant introduction to Egly-Ouriet’s precision-driven style.

Decanter | D 92
Published: Sep 1, 2023
Drink: 2023-2026

The most accessible and open-knit of Egly-Ouriet's cuvées, Les Prémices carries an appetising brown bread, honey and spice complexity behind the fragrant, rounded orchard fruit and juicy black plum. A fine introduction to this part of Champagne. One third each of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay from the village of Trigny in the Petite Montagne.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 12.50%
Body: Medium
Grapes: 30% Chardonnay 30% Pinot Meunier 30% Pinot Noir / Pinot Nero

The Wine Advocate | RP 91
Published: Dec 14, 2023
Drink: 2023-2030

Based on the 2019 vintage and disgorged this year with one gram per liter dosage, Egly's NV Brut Les Prémices offers up attractive aromas of orchard and stone fruits mingled with fresh bread and honeysuckle. Medium-bodied, fleshy and racy, with bright acids, a pretty mousse and a saline finish, it's the finest rendition of this new cuvée to date.

Far from resting on the considerable and merited laurels that he has accrued over a 30-year career, Francis Egly has continued to refine and improve. The last decade's innovations include refrigerated press pans to immediately cool the must in ever-warmer vintages, a peristaltic pump to handle his wines even more gently and a once-again expanded cellar that gives him the space to work still more precisely. Just like his work in the vineyards, investment in the winery has been incessant. Starting from next to nothing when he began in the 1980s, today Egly holds some 700,000 bottles in reserve wines and wine maturing sur lattes—equivalent to seven times his annual production.

As readers will know, Egly picks ripe grapes and ferments most of his wines in barrel—some 10% to 15% of which are renewed every year, and all of which derive from the cooperage of his friend, Dominique Laurent—before subjecting them to lengthy sur lattes maturation, typically disgorging with less than three grams per liter dosage these days. But the devil is in the details; no winemaker in Champagne is more precise or meticulous, from vineyard to cellar. These latest releases once again come warmly recommended.