Winemaker Notes
Ideal as an aperitif. Goes perfectly with bouillon of crayfish and grapefruit, poached turbot with sauce hollandaise, scallop carpaccio, rack of lamb with foie gras, creamed Bresse fowl with truffles, mountain comte at least 18 months old.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a single parcel in Urville, the 2008 Brut Grande Sendrée is exceptional, opening in the glass with incipiently rich aromas of crisp yellow orchard fruit, brioche, marzipan and wheat toast that seems to be on the cusp of acquiring more nutty complexity. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, deep and tight-knit, with superb concentration and structural tension, built around racy acids and concluding with an attractively chalky finish. In keeping with the vintage, this is quite a tensile, reserved Grande Sendrée, but its potential is considerable. Readers should plan on forgetting the 2008 for another four or five years if they wish to catch it at the beginning of its plenitude. It's a blend of 55% Pinot Noir and 45% Chardonnay, one-third of which was fermented in barrel; it was disgorged after seven years sur lattes with five grams per liter dosage.
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Wine Enthusiast
This ripe wine offers great balance between the rich, structured Pinot Noir and the mineral Chardonnay. From a very fine vintage, it reveals intense flavors, layers of ripe apple and a taut texture that promises further aging. The wine can be drunk now, but it will be so much better from 2018.
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Wine Spectator
Very minerally on the nose, with brine and smoke accents leading to flavors of cassis, mandarin orange peel and dried white cherry on the buoyant, creamy mousse. Bright and harmonious, with a rich, lasting finish of toast, chopped hazelnut and spice. Disgorged May 2015. Drink now through 2028.
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James Suckling
A step up on the previous release (2006), this has good punchy, assertive and focused style to it with ripe lemons and peach fruits, some blueberry pastry, plenty of autolysis and honey. The palate's smooth and dense, has impressive phenolic shape and drive, and balances neatly through the finish. Drink now and for 5+ years.
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Decanter
Dynamic drive and energy and delightful complexity of flavours, from lemon curd, marzipan and grapefruit to baked black cherry and ripe plum fruit; great persistence.
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.’