Winemaker Notes
Blend: 50% Chardonnay, 38% Pinot Noir, 12% Pinot Meunier
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Ravishing swirls of red fruit and coated nuts dance joyously over the nose and palate with a melting lemon-pith acidity and billowing foam. Smart and complete with chalky mineral and savoury notes on the long finish.
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Tasting Panel
Still fresh as a daisy, this blend of 50% Chardonnay, 38% Pinot Noir, and 12% Pinot Meunier from Grands and Premiers Crus in the Montagne de Reims opens with heady scents of salted baguette, hazelnut, wet stone, dried apple, and touches of lime leaf and green melon. On the attack, mouth-filling acidity subsides to glide elegantly around a compact core of citrus and white cherry, enhanced by a bit of white fig on the rich and lively finish.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2015 Champagne Palmer & Co. Grands Terroirs is complex, generous, and lasting. TASTING NOTES: This wine excels with aromas and flavors of earth, tart citrus, and rocks-in-the-desert. Enjoy this complex and outstanding Champagne with oven-baked lobster in a decadent cream sauce. (Tasted: September 20, 2022, Napa, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
A blend from premier and grand crus on the Montagne de Reims, this is an elegant Champagne. The Pinot Noir gives the wine weight and richness, contrasting with the vibrant white fruits and acidity. It is a balanced, fine wine that shows some maturity.
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James Suckling
A chalky and mineral Champagne with aromas of blanched almonds, chalk, seashells, biscuits, lemon pith and dried apples. Creamy mousse. Dry and bright, with a rounded finish. Drink now or hold.
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Wine & Spirits
Markedly youthful in its smoky reduction, this wine sees its sulfur blow off quickly, leaving a flinty scent and an impression of clarity. It’s bright with pretty scents of black tea and herbs, firmed up by strong acidity.
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Wine Spectator
A balanced Champagne, with a creamy mousse and flavors of cherry, poached pear, lemon pound cake and minerally chalk and smoke backed by soft orange peel acidity.
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.’