The wine needed no help. Réserve de la Terre Rosé (£88, uk.champagne-telmont.com) is not Telmont’s first rosé, but it is its first certified organic one— a wine made without pesticides, fungicides or synthetic fertiliser, from vineyards treated with something rarer than sulphur: respect. A blend of chardonnay, pinot meunier and pinot noir, with 15 per cent of the latter vinified as red wine from the Côte des Bars, a place where pinot grows with shoulders and dirt under its fingernails. It’s built from two oppositional years: 2020, full of swagger and sunlight; and 2021, scourged by mildew, marked by patience and loss. The result? Pomegranate, cherry, blood orange zest, a saline finish, and a line of spice drawn like wire across the tongue. It isn’t pretty. It’s beautiful.
The rosé rewriting the rules of Champagne
