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Champagne Ayala presents new bottle shape and blend

27 January 2023 By Louis Thomas

Champagne Ayala has unveiled an updated, Chardonnay dominant blend for its Brut Majeur, with a sleek new bottle design to match.

For the Brut Majeur, the proportion of Chardonnay has increased from 45% to 55% (the remainder is now 30% Pinot Noir and 15% Meunier). The blend now also contains more than 70 crus, 50 of which are Chardonnay, sourced from terroirs across Champagne, and there is now a greater proportion of reserve wine used (40%). The dosage is, as is to be expected from Ayala, very low, never exceeding 6g/l.

Chardonnay will now make up the majority in Ayala’s other non-vintage blends too: Brut Nature and Rosé Majeur.

The new bottle shape, which will be used for all three wines, is inspired by the La Perle bottle, launched in 1995. The wider body of the bottle has been designed to help the wine’s development by optimising lees contact.

On the front label there is a different description for each wine:

Brut Majeur – “Assemblage de 70 crus”

Brut Nature – “Zero Dosage”

Rosé Majeur – “Assemblage de 24 crus”

Both the bottles and gift boxes they come in are 100% recyclable and, aside from the corks, the raw materials were all sourced from France, within a 350 kilometre radius of the Maison.

Hadrien Mouflard, managing director of Champagne Ayala, said: “The launch of Brut Majeur in Ayala’s signature bottle shape reflects the Maison’s chief ambition: to embody what expertise and excellence can achieve when producing Chardonnay in Champagne. It is a project of passion and craftsmanship that reveals the very ‘essence’ of Chardonnay in its purest expression.”

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