NV Gaston Chiquet Rosé Premier Cru Brut Champagne 750 ml

When a pioneering Champagne house bottles Grand Cru and Premier Cru fruit into benchmark rosé Champagne that sells for less than $50, we drop everything and hold out our glasses. The Gaston Chiquet Rosé has been an insider favorite for years, led by its obvious and consistent high quality and ridiculously humble price tag. 

But we're on a mission to spread the word far and wide.

Vinous has called this showstopper a "model of finesse and elegance." We wish more houses would follow suit. Gaston Chiquet makes no concessions for fleeting trends and no compromises in their approach, leading them to produce the premier example of angular, clean, dry, and balanced rosé Champagne. It's a singular expression of blended Meunier, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir (in that order) from some of the top lieux-dits in Aÿ, Dizy, and Hautvillers.

This is a handcrafted, low-dosage wine released in a small quantity—at a price that serves up luxurious Champagne taste on an actual beer-bottle budget. Barnburners like this don't last. 

The Chiquet brothers first decided to make their own wine in 1919. At the time, their family had already been tending vines in Dizy for more than 150 years, selling off the grapes to the big houses, as was the norm. There were no grower-producers in Champagne back then. It was a trailblazing decision that would forever change the region, opening the door for all of today's celebrated grower Champagnes. Gaston Chiquet now stands as a leader—not only as the pioneer of a key business model, but the producer of indelible, distinctive wines. 

The Brut Rosé opens with a very fine mousse floating on a pale pour of juice that glimmers between salmon-pink and orange-peel orange. Its aromatics are incredible, splaying out like a buffet of fresh red berries and stone fruits, particularly peach and apricot, garnished by subtle tones of mint and tree blossoms. There's something firm and mineral that runs through this wine, too, even showing itself in the spindrift of excited bubbles, tingling the nose and senses before you ever arrive at the first sip. That enticing edge softens a little through the wine's core, which features an airy, whipped-like creaminess. The fruit never backs off, however, shimmying all the way through the long, ample finish.

While this wine is aged on its lees for between two and three years, it never gives over to overt richness. That may have to do with the lack of oak this wine sees. Nicolas Chiquet, the current proprietor, believes that the purity of the fruit, the weight of the lees, and the wine’s malolactic fermentation provide enough heft to skip the barrel aging. Only tanks. We couldn’t be happier: The result teases out the very thing we love most about great Champagne, a dance that's both delicate and brawny, at once graceful and muscular.

Bottom line: IRL or virtual, this is the ultimate party popper. That it doesn't break the bank is just a bonus.