Cremant D’Alsace Rosé NV, Jean Baptiste Adam, Alsace, France

This Cremant d`Alsace Rosé is a traditional method wine; bright, very pale pink, delicate aromas and flavours of small red berries, candied rhubarb and herbs. Starts dry and herbal, then sweeter and fruitier in the middle. Finishes long with a spicy kick.

Made with 100% Pinot Noir that macerated on the skins directly in the press for about four hours, so very little colour was leached out, explaining the wine’s beautiful pale colour. More serious and complex than some; it clearly resembles Champagne more than many other Alsace crémants do.

• Grape Varieties: Pinot Noir
• Size of Bottle: 750ml

J-B Adam is one of the oldest estates in Alsace, with 19 ha of organic vineyard in the Haut Rhin village of Ammerschwir. The granite slopes of Grand Cru ‘Kaefferkopf’ provide the backdrop to the village and produce the estate’s unforgettable wines. 400 years on, J-B Adam remains in safe family hands, guided by the 14th generation of Adams, Jean-Baptiste and his daughters Laure, Pauline and Marie. Their progressive stewardship has seen the introduction of biodynamic principals and a ‘non-interventionist’ regime in the cellar (a natural process of slow pressing, wild fermentations and no filtration) that ensures wonderfully expressive, clean and complex wines.

The Method Traditionelle requires a secondary fermentation within the closed bottle to create a fine natural mousse and generate the rich yeasty lees flavours enjoyed in the best sparkling wines. This is the method used to make Champagne, although it has long been the preferred method to create distinguished sparkling wines in many of France's wine regions. The Languedoc's Blanquette de Limoux claims to be the oldest, yet there is an established tradition of Method Traditionelle wines in the Loire Valley where the sparkling wines of Saumur and Cremant de Loire are also aged in natural chalk cellars. Other notable Method Traditionelle sparkling wines originate in Burgundy, Alsace and the south west.