In the vocabulary of champagne, Blanc de Blancs readily evokes the Côte des Blancs. Champagne Ayala shifts the gaze: with Collection N°18, the Maison unveils what it presents as the first Blanc de Blancs from the Grand Cru of Aÿ made by a Champagne House.
A collection that counts its rarities
The Ayala Collection rests on a simple and demanding principle: ephemeral cuvées, in limited quantity, unveiled at their peak. Each highlights a particular terroir that the Chef de Caves wished to bring forward through a singular year. The number that accompanies each bottle bears witness to it: it speaks of rarity, but also of lineage. N°18 follows the latest editions, N°8, N°7, N°14 and N°16, numbers that do not follow one another and suggest that the Maison does not publish according to a calendar, but according to what the year is willing to offer.
This approach extends the vision the Maison has held since its founding: the cultivation of the diversity of terroirs. Each bottle, it specifies, is the fruit of the Maison’s artisanal know-how.
This logic of the cuvée unveiled at its peak has a consequence: the moment of release is not dictated by the market, but by the maturity of the wine. It is a way of putting cellar time back at the centre, at a time when novelties are expected to arrive quickly. Limited quantity, numbering, an edition that does not return: rarity here is not a pose, it follows from a principle of making.
Aÿ, without detour
The originality of N°18 lies in a choice of place as much as of grape variety. This vintage cuvée comes exclusively from the Maison’s vineyard in Aÿ, the cradle of Champagne Ayala since 1860. It offers an unprecedented interpretation of chardonnay, the Maison’s signature grape. The term matters: choosing to isolate one grape variety on a single vineyard is to ask the terroir to speak without the support of a blend, and to accept that the cuvée be judged entirely on what Aÿ has to say.
One can see in this gesture a form of modesty. It is not a matter of announcing a revolution, but of putting a question to a place the Maison has known for more than a century and a half: what does it give when everything else is taken away?
What the Chef de Caves says
The description by Julian Gout, Chef de Caves, gives the wine an almost indulgent silhouette. To the eye, a brilliant colour with golden glints. On the nose, notes of brioche perdue, fresh hazelnut and a hint of eucalyptus. The palate is ample, with a fine attack, in which one finds ripe fruit, pastry and chalky notes, which he links to the characteristics of the Aÿ terroir. He speaks of a structured and generous wine, with fine length and a creamy finish.
What holds the attention is the alliance of two registers usually set against each other: the roundness of pastry and the rectitude of chalk. The brioche perdue and the fresh hazelnut promise warmth; the chalky minerality, for its part, recalls the soil. Between the two, eucalyptus is the unexpected touch, almost a signature of fancy. One readily imagines a wine that is first enjoyed for its indulgence, then reveals itself through its structure: this is, incidentally, what the Chef de Caves suggests in evoking a creamy finish that extends the length on the palate.
A bottle apart, at a public price
Ayala Collection N°18 is sold in a case at wine merchants, at a public price of 95 euros. In a world where rare cuvées often hide behind prices that are not mentioned, the indication is clear, and it places the bottle in the field of chosen gifts rather than of inaccessible collector’s pieces.
What remains is the essential: the idea that a great champagne can still bear a village name before a prestige name. If the Ayala Collection continues its numbering, one will wonder which terroir, which year, which number will come next. The next riddle is already in the missing number.
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