NV Champagne D'Armanville Brut Rose Champagne 750 ml

The Côte des Bar has long been a Champagne value stronghold—but the price on Brut Rosés from the area suggest that prices have caught up with quality. Vouette et Sorbée’s Saignée de Sorbée is $150. Marie-Courtin’s Indulgence is $115. And Cedric Bouchard’s Brut Rosé, the Creux d'Enfer, is pushing a GRAND.

That’s why we’re so thrilled to bring you Champagne D’Armanville’s Brut Rosé. A treasure of a find, it’s got all of the red-fruit exuberance that has made Côte des Bar so trendy, but it still bears a reasonable price. Our Master Sommelier Sur Lucero locked it up for a simple reason: “Finding an authentic Rosé Champagne I want to drink in the mid $30's…just feels nostalgic. It is a price point you just don't find anymore!” 

As Champagne’s southernmost appellation, the Côte des Bar sits closer to Chablis than to Reims. It shares the same limestone and clay soils as Chablis, too, lending this wine an extraordinary mineral quality while simultaneously delivering the supple red fruit we want in a Pinot-driven sparkler. 

Pinot Noir is king here, where vineyards rooted in soils checkered with Kimmeridgian bands lend themselves to rich, fruity Champagnes with a minerality that distinguishes them from those made in the chalkier subsoils of the Marne in the north. 

Critic Eric Asimov, in the New York Times, captured the essence of the Côte des Bar’s slightly rugged appeal, especially for wine lovers who favor a concrete sense of place in their Champagnes. “Rather than the hushed pop of the cork and the silken rush of bubbles,” he wrote, “these Champagnes suggest soil on the boots and dirt under the fingernails.”