Blanc de Blancs is Ayala’s calling card, and their 2015 release is a work of great elegance and purity. Sourced only from prestigious grand and premier cru villages in the Côte des Blancs - the grand crus in question being Chouilly, Cramant and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger - this impressively complex wine has been aged for six years on its lees and is described, according to Ayala’s cellar master Caroline Latrive, as ‘an ode to Chardonnay’. An impressive poetic result indeed, all the more so as 2015 was a rather unpredictable, helter-skelter vintage, its early humidity replaced by ferocious heat, reminiscent of 2003, and the threat of drought. Perfect harvest conditions ensued, and the musts were clean and expressive. The wine underwent full malolactic fermentation and six years later was dosed at 6 g/L, at the upper end of the Extra Brut classification. A silvery, almost nacreous colour with large playful bubbles and a nose, initially rather unforthcoming, which offers Braeburn apples, iodine and spring flowers, and then, with a little time in the glass, hints of praline and even Apfelstrudel, a seam of chalk underwriting the edifice, and a pleasing salinity perfectly poised on the finish. Disgorged: July 2021. Dosage: 6g/L.