Coco Methode Traditionelle Brut NV
A French Sparkling without the Champagne price tag!
Madame Coco is a very spiffy little number from Fourth Wave Wine.It’s well packaged, well priced, well made and well easy to quaff. It’s a blanc de blancs sparkling white wine grown in France’s Aude Valley.It’s made with chardonnay (50%) and chenin blanc mostly, though thereare some small inputs from other high acid white varieties. It spends 12 months on lees. It’s made properly – methode traditionelle – none ofthis tank-gassed-fermented business. If you go through a bit ofsparkling wine, you’re pretty much mad not to jump onto this.It’s French, it’s bubbly, it’s under $20 and it’s a whole lot of fun. In many ways, there’s no need to sayanything more. It’s musky and lemony, alive with fluffy bubbles andflavoursome enough. I know it’s a blanc de blancs but I saw some Turkish delight characters in it; though that said, I drank a bit too much ofthis a bit too quickly, so maybe my judgement was impaired. It’s thatkind of wine. Buy.Campbell Mattinson.
Coco is sourcedprimarily from the Aude Valley, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Thehigh altitude and mountain proximity results in cool evening breezes and nights that allow the creation of elegant sparkling wines. The regionhas been producing sparkling wines since the sixteenth century, aheritage that pre-dates Champagne by over a century. Madame Coco is made exclusively from white wine grapes. Chardonnay is over 80% of the blend and gives a core of pristine fruit, length and depth of flavour.Smaller amounts of Chenin Blanc and the indigenous Mauzac provideelegance and mineral acidity.
Grapes are hand harvested and whole bunch pressed with the finest free runjuice given a slow, cool fermentation. Once vinified the base wine istransferred to the sparkling wine specialist, Veuve Ambal, in Burgundy.The wine is made using “Methode Traditionelle”, undergoing secondaryfermentation and then an average of twelve months on lees in bottlebefore disgorgement.