Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2002 NPU – Nec Plus Ultra Extra Brut, a 50/50 blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir exclusively from grand cru villages, has a golden color and opens with a beautifully complex and refined bouquet of matured fruit and iodine flavors. Fermented and aged entirely in small oak barrels (pièces) for ten months and then ten years on the lees in bottle, this has lovely oxidation, ripeness and depth. Very pure and fine but wide, highly complex and elegant on the palate, the 2002 NPU combines the famous freshness of the vintage with the complexity of the composition and the bottle aging. The finish is very long, tight, rich and complex but stimulatingly dry, pure and mineral. This is a great Champagne to be enjoyed today or over the next few decades. Total production: 6,200 bottles, plus 300 magnums. The wine I tasted in October 2017 in Hamburg with Bruno Paillard was disgorged in September 2014 and aged another two years in the cellar before it went into the markets.
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Wine & Spirits
While wise Champagne collectors will have stored their 2002s, there are few wines left in the market from this astonishing vintage. Bruno Paillard waited to release his top cuvée until this year, the wine just beginning to transition from freshness to maturity, carrying the scent of a bushel basket filled with apples that only grow more fragrant as they rest into the fall. Its pale gold color is deepening with age, as are its delicate rose spice, scents of honeysuckle and creamy flavors of pear, all intertwined, each note playing off the energy of the others so the wine reverberates with complexity. The brisk freshness sustains those flavors over the course of several days, suggesting this has a long life ahead.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and expressive, with distinctive aromas and flavors of gingerbread, baked white peach, singed orange peel and crystallized honey, carried on the plush and creamy mousse. An opulent version that's firm and focused, with beautiful balance and a long, graceful finish. Disgorged September 2014. Drink now through 2029.
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James Suckling
Fascinating, complex and flavorsome style here. Grilled almonds and dried white flowers dominate the nose with pistachios, nougat and lemons. This is Champagne with expressive character. The palate has a seamless textural build and a minerally kick of smooth peach and lemon-curd flavor. Lightly toasted hazelnuts to close.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Associated with luxury, celebration, and romance, the region, Champagne, is home to the world’s most prized sparkling wine. In order to bear the label, ‘Champagne’, a sparkling wine must originate from this northeastern region of France—called Champagne—and adhere to strict quality standards. Made up of the three towns Reims, Épernay, and Aÿ, it was here that the traditional method of sparkling wine production was both invented and perfected, birthing a winemaking technique as well as a flavor profile that is now emulated worldwide.
Well-drained, limestone and chalky soil defines much of the region, which lend a mineral component to its wines. Champagne’s cold, continental climate promotes ample acidity in its grapes but weather differences from year to year can create significant variation between vintages. While vintage Champagnes are produced in exceptional years, non-vintage cuvées are produced annually from a blend of several years in order to produce Champagnes that maintain a consistent house style.
With nearly negligible exceptions, . These can be blended together or bottled as individual varietal Champagnes, depending on the final style of wine desired. Chardonnay, the only white variety, contributes freshness, elegance, lively acidity and notes of citrus, orchard fruit and white flowers. Pinot Noir and its relative Pinot Meunier, provide the backbone to many blends, adding structure, body and supple red fruit flavors. Wines with a large proportion of Pinot Meunier will be ready to drink earlier, while Pinot Noir contributes to longevity. Whether it is white or rosé, most Champagne is made from a blend of red and white grapes—and uniquely, rosé is often produce by blending together red and white wine. A Champagne made exclusively from Chardonnay will be labeled as ‘blanc de blancs,’ while ones comprised of only red grapes are called ‘blanc de noirs.’