Gusbourne Brut Reserve 2015

Very full, soft, harmonious and nicely judged. Toasty, autolytic and oxidative, with baked apple married to concentrated red fruits.

A very subtle nose gives hints of ripe yellow apple and a gentle creaminess. Lively but fine fizz on the palate brings out more of the vivid enlivening freshness, now with nuances of green apple and ripe lemon pitched against a gently autolytic background of shortbread. With its long dry lemony finish this is all about subtlety, freshness and restrained elegance. Lovely now but it will evolve. Drink though 2025.

Disgorged in May 2019, Gusbourne's 2015 Brut Reserve is very good, wafting from the glass with scents of pear, toasted bread, mandarin orange, iodine and smoke. Medium to full-bodied, pillowy and enveloping, it's seamless and charming, with lively acids and a youthfully frothy mousse. This isn't as concentrated as its stablemates, but it's certainly long on complexity.