The score for NV Jacques Selosse La Cote Faron Ay Extra Brut Grand Cru is 98 from Robert Parker and the tasting note - One of the highlights of the range this year is the NV Extra-Brut Grand Cru La Côte Faron, based on the 2016 vintage and disgorged earlier this year. Bursting with notes of pear, buttered citrus fruits and peach mingled with beeswax, iodine, fresh pastry and vanilla pod, it's medium to full-bodied, pillowy and incisive, with a deep core of fruit, ripe acids and a long, sapid, chalky finish. This is one of the most seamless, refined lieu-dit bottlings in this collection. Over the years, Selosse has increasingly come to focus on what he describes as the "one gram of mineral substance in a liter of grape juice, not the 250 grams of organic matter. Scientists say the vines don't take minerals from the soil, but no one has ever been able to explain to me where that one gram of mineral salts comes from." From this perspective, biological aging and oxidation, informed by a relationship with the wines of Spain—especially the biological maturation of Jerez and the long élevage of Rioja—which began when Selosse first visited the Iberian peninsula in 1972, become ways to "burn away" the organic matter, leaving only the terroir-derived mineral residue that interests him. For the same reason, he privileges texture over aroma. "In the old days, with the tastevin, texture was all-important