Julien Prélat "Chantemerle Gourmandise" Rosé Champagne

Julien Prélat is the first in his family to bottle Champagne under his own name, breaking from four generations of vine-growing tradition in Celles-sur-Ource to join the small cohort of serious grower-producers defining the Côte des Bar today. He works the same village as Cédric Bouchard and Aurélien Gerbais, sharing their devotion to transparent, site-specific bottlings that privilege terroir over blending conventions. Where much Champagne relies on assemblage across vineyards, vintages, and varieties to achieve consistency, Prélat's wines speak to single moments and single places. Chantemerle Gourmandise is his rosé, made entirely from Pinot Noir vines averaging 30 years old. Rather than the saignée method, where color is bled off during maceration, Prélat uses traditional assemblage, blending roughly 90% white base wine with 10% still red Pinot Noir to build both color and aromatic depth. It's a technique that allows for precision, adding vinosity without overwhelming the mineral backbone the Côte des Bar is known for. The Aube, Champagne's southernmost district, sits on Kimmeridgian limestone loaded with fossilized oyster shells, the same substrate that defines Chablis 40 miles south. It's cooler and more marginal than Burgundy, but warmer and more clay-rich than the Montagne de Reims or Côte des Blancs, yielding Pinot Noir with darker fruit, more structure, and a subtle saline edge. In the glass, Chantemerle Gourmandise carries wild strawberry, rhubarb, and a faint quinine bitterness on the nose, then turns vinous and textural on the palate. There's real freshness here despite the richness, a tightrope act that makes this more compelling with food than many rosé Champagnes. Production hovers around 1,300 bottles per vintage, making this a genuinely scarce pour even among collectors who chase grower bottlings. Pair it with charcuterie, duck rillettes, or grilled salmon with herb butter. At Off Premise, it's the kind of rosé that rewards drinking now but doesn't demand an occasion.