2018 Pascal Agrapart Grand Cru Minéral Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne

This must be one of the most beguiling and refined 2018s from the Côte des Blancs, managing to retain a tensile, nuanced and detailed complexity in a year that can sometimes be a bit simple. From some of the estate’s chalkiest, shallowest soils, Minéral impresses by setting white peach, bitter almond and dried flowers in a lithe, persistent frame full of leapfrogging details of slate, umami savour and apricot kernel richness, dancing over a long, detailed finish. Terrific.

95 points Tom Hewson decanter.com

This year 2018 fits the Minéral cuvée like a glove. A comfortable and rich vintage, which meets the straightness, verticality and tension of this cuvée, for a wine that is both energetic and textured.

96 points La Review du Vins de France

Disgorged July 2024. Minéral is blended from two adjacent vieilles vignes plots (50-plus years old) on the border between Avize and Cramant, where the vine roots plunge straight into the chalky bedrock. The fruit from Le Champ Bouton in Avize fermented in tank, while the component from Les Bionnes in Cramant was vinified in 600-litre oak casks—“barrels for the expression of minerality and tank of the precision”, as Pascal puts it. The wine spent over five years on lees and was dosed at 3 g/L. Typically the saltiest, most mineral wine in the Agrapart range, this is also incredibly deep and vinous this year—Meursault-like but with an iodine/salinity that is uniquely Côte des Blancs. A great release of this wine!