Bjana – Cuvée Prestige, 2016

What a wine we taste tonight! We’re returning to Brda to a house that has become an authentic establishment in its 30 years of production of sparkling wine. We’re at Bjana, and tonight we’ll have a look at their current release of the famed Cuvée Prestige.

Bjana’s Cuvée Prestige is a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and is assembled from the basic wine that has been produced from vines of an average age of twenty-five years. This wine is usually produced with maturation in oak barrels for up to eight months before being bottled for the prise de mousse. Then, after a minimum of four years, it is finally disgorged.

This is the successor to the famed 2015 vintage, and I’m eager of tasting it.

Cuvée Prestige presents with a brilliant, crystal clear, golden yellow colour, in which many tiny and very durable pearls sparkle.

The aromas are intense and combine a wonderful mix of fruitiness and ripening aromas. Ripe yellow apples, lemon, red grapefruit, almond blossom, hints of butter, brioche, and almonds.

A bone dry wine, intense in taste, with an excellent balance between softness and freshness that bubbles help enrich—a structured, sparkling wine of a lasting and noble character.

A wine that is ready for caressing now is a beautiful accompaniment to dishes but has the stamina to last for the next seven years or even more. A bottle will cost you approximately 25 Eur, and you can order it at Merit, Koželj, Vinoteka Sodček, Be wine and Gajbica.