The mousse gives it away first. Last year the bubbles sat next to the wine, as if they had been added at the last minute. In this glass they are part of it: creamy, fine, and they hold on the palate instead of collapsing straight away.

This is the De Boe Rosé Brut 2024, the second sparkling wine from Wijndomein De Boe on Walcheren. Bruno Suter sent the bottle. I bought the first vintage myself at the estate and wrote that it was lively but still short on depth. That sentence can go.

Two months you can taste

The 2023 spent nine months on the lees. This 2024 spent eleven. It sounds like a footnote and it is the most important thing that changed about this bottle.

Lees ageing, sur lie, means the wine rests on the spent yeast cells after its second fermentation. Those cells break down slowly and hand over texture: the bready note of brioche and toast, and above all a finer mousse that belongs to the wine. Short on the lees and the bubbles stand apart. Longer and they merge.

The blend moved too, from 70/30 to 75 percent pinot noir against 25 percent pinot noir précoce. Précoce is an early-ripening mutation of pinot noir, useful in a climate where autumn does not always cooperate. Its share went down, which suggests the ordinary pinot noir ripened well enough in 2024 to carry the wine on its own.

Tasting Note

Tasting note

Appearance

Copper-pink, with a powerful mousse that behaves finely and holds.

Nose

Ripe cherry leads, with raspberry and strawberry alongside it. Underneath sits a clear savoury streak that runs towards rosemary and thyme. Then butter, a dairy note somewhere between cream and yoghurt, and a small touch of brioche and toast. Never heavy-handed, just enough to register that this wine has been lying somewhere.

Palate

Creamy, and the mousse is creamy with it. Red fruit and citrus hold each other in balance, with a light bitter edge that keeps things sharp. The lees ageing shows more clearly than last year without the bread taking over the fruit.

Finish

Fresh and decent in length, that bitter edge lingering.

Quality

Where the 2023 was enjoyable, this one holds together. The integration of the mousse makes the difference, and you owe that to those two extra months.

A rotten season you cannot taste

2024 was a worse growing season than 2023. Very little of that reaches the glass.

The autumn of 2023 was already wet, nearly 140 millimetres above average, and through 2024 the rain kept coming, another 200 millimetres or so on top of the annual mean. A mild winter and an even milder spring pushed the buds out far too early, and on 23 April a light frost crossed the vineyard. Fire pots kept most of it off. Cold, windy weather in June caused poor fruit set, and from July onwards the constant rain pushed disease pressure above normal. Picking happened on 7 September and 5 October, and the rain stretched the harvest to nearly the end of October.

So the fact that this wine turns out better than its predecessor says little about the vintage. It says something about what you do afterwards with a healthy batch of fruit.

Still a German cellar

What did not change: the second fermentation again did not happen in Zeeland. As with the first vintage the wine travelled to Schaufelberger Sekt in Brauneberg on the Mosel, a Sektmanufaktur that runs the méthode traditionnelle for small growers.

The label reads “bottled in salty Zeeland”. That remains a generous line for a wine that took its bubbles six hundred kilometres inland. For a second vintage it is still defensible, because building your own sparkling cellar costs a fortune and most Dutch producers do exactly the same. But anyone buying this bottle for Zeeland craftsmanship is buying Zeeland fruit and German craft.

Twenty-eight euros, for the second time

The price held at €28 while the wine got better. That is the whole verdict in one line. For the same money as last year you get a bottle whose mousse works, which makes the fight against Domein Holset or an entry-level crémant far less lopsided than it was for the 2023. It still does not win on complexity. The vines are too young for that, and full production is not expected until around 2027.

That €28 is also nearly double the estate’s own still whites at €17.50. Anyone wanting to get to know De Boe can start cheaper.

Two reservations. Residual sugar sits at 10 grams per litre, near the upper limit of what brut allows. The wine reads fresh and that sugar never registers as sweet, but it is working: it fills in acidity that is still young. Put a brut nature next to it, with no dosage, and you taste where the roundness comes from.

Then the volume. 241 cases, so 2,892 bottles. This is not a wine you build a habit around. If you want it, order now, because the Blanc de blancs Brut 2024 that recently joined it at €30 will pull away a share of the same buyers.

Eleven months did this, so I want to know what fourteen months do.

Wine details

Producer: Wijndomein De Boe
Wine: Rosé Brut 2024
Region: Walcheren, Zeeland
Grapes: 75% Pinot Noir, 25% Pinot Noir Précoce
Method: Traditional method, 11 months on the lees
Alcohol: 12.4%
Residual sugar: 10 g/l
Production: 241 cases (2,892 bottles)
Price: €28

Sources

Primary source: Fiche technique Rosé Brut 2024, Wijndomein De Boe (July 2026)
Additional: Wijndomein De Boe webshop (prices checked 1 August 2026)
Additional: own tasting notes, and Sparks episodes 16 (Bruno Suter) and 17 (Jochen Schaufelberger)

De Boe Rosé Brut 2024: Eleven Months Change It