New Release. Price £195.00. Tasting Notes: Salmon pink in colour with fine bubbles. Aromas of red fruits, orange and tangerine with chalky notes. Mineral notes on the complex palate, with smoky nuances & salinity on a long finish. Serving Suggestion: Great food wine – serve with spicy food, veal or beef dishes. Grape Varieties: 70% Pinot Noir, 30% Chardonnay (of which 5% Pinot Noir Aÿ Grand Cru) Dosage: 8g/l. Residual Sugar: 7.75g/l Vinification: To create this unique Champagne part of the blend is fermented in small new barrels made from Argonne oak for 10 days at 13-18°C, going through full natural malolactic fermentation in barrel. The wine is matured on the full lees for one year in 228L Argonne barrels (20% new) then blended with new wine and aged in a solera system of small oak barrels for a further 12 months before it is transferred into bottles. The wine is matured in its bottle for a further 6 years before disgorgement. Vineyard and Viticulture: The vineyards are south facing, often on quite steep slopes, where the chalky soils are well exposed to catch the warmth of the sun. The grapes for this wine come from single site where the average age of vines is between 35-40 years. Grapes are harvested entirely by hand. Background Information: Contemporaries of Henri IV and his descendants, the Hémart family settled permanently in Aÿ at the beginning of the 17th century. Their history took root there and became closely interwoven with the momentous historical events relating to Champagne from the 18th century onwards. At the opening of the 20th century, Léon Giraud married Miss Hémart and reconstructed the magnificent family vineyard, which had been ravaged by phylloxera. Today, Claude Giraud, the 12th generation of the Giraud-Hémart family, is in charge of the fortunes of the family business. The Giraud-Hémart family own 20 hectares – 35 parcels of Grand Cru land of which 26 is planted with Pinot Noir and 9 with Chardonnay. Only 17 of the Champagne region’s 323 Crus are classed as Grand Crus (rated 100%). The wine production of Giraud estate is environmentally-friendly, subscribing to the ‘lutte-raisonnée’ (limited intervention grape growing). The overall production is limited to 250 000 bottles a year, making the Giraud Champagne stand apart from the majority of bulk-producing champagne houses. The Giraud house is one of the few houses (Krug is another example) that conduct primary fermentations in oak. Henri Giraud pride themselves on sourcing wood for its barrels from the slow growing, tight grained, high quality trees of the ancient forest of Argonne, lying just 35 miles from the estate. Described by leading wine critic Robert Parker as “the finest Champagne house virtually no one has ever heard of”. The reason for this is that until the 1990s their wines were only sold directly to discerning, well-informed private customer in France and Italy