Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
With its beautiful rose color and delicate flavors, this continues the elegant tradition of Amour de Deutz. It's one of the Champagne house's three prestige cuvées and the most refined. This crisp wine, with its soft acidity, ripe strawberry fruits and tang of citrus is ready to drink, although it will age in bottle for many years.
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Wine Spectator
A rich, vivacious Champagne, with toasted brioche and smoked walnut accents, this offers flavors of black cherry pâte de fruit, pickled ginger and poached apricot on a lively bead. Shows fine minerally cut to the lingering finish. Drink now through 2026.
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James Suckling
This has some impressive complexity and layering to it, smelling of bright light cherry fruits and grapefruit citrus with fresh pastry and hints of grilled cashews too. The palate has a nicely cut shape, crisp and even. The acidity is fine and runs deep, and flavors follow the same berry citrus mix seen in the nose.
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.’