Winemaker Notes
Essentiel is a multi-vintage cuvée featuring a blend of three varieties. Its magnificent structure, balance and freshness ensure that this Extra Brut represents the iconic style of the house.
Perfect with appetizers and to accompany a meal. A magnificent complement to fish and white meats.
Blend: 50% Pinot Noir, 30% Pinot Meunier, 20% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
The Piper-Heidsieck Champagne Essentiel Brut is bright, alive, and zippy. It excels with aromas and flavors of earth, stone, and stone fruit. Enjoy it with a raw shellfish platter. (Tasted: December 4, 2024, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
Blending the three principal Champagne varieties, this Champagne has a fine touch of cashew-nut maturity. The aroma brings out that nuttiness, while to taste the wine has rounded the corner and revealed maturity.
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Wine Spectator
There’s abroad-shouldered, structured feel, yet this refreshing version is sleek and well meshed, integrating a firm spin of citrusy acidity with flavors of black currant and cherry fruit, lemon curd and brioche.Lightly spiced and creamy on the long finish. Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A bright medium yellow hue, the NV Champagne Essentiel Extra Brut is the base 2019 and consists of 36% Pinot Noir, 25% Meunier, and the rest Chardonnay, with 29% reserve wine. This should be the most accessible of these Champagnes, because it’s not overly cerebral and has a more oyster shell minerality, with notes of white peach and delicate, pretty red fruit. Medium-bodied, it has structure and will drink well over the next several years. It’s a food-friendly wine.
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James Suckling
Very toasty style with pastry, red fruit and gunpowder. Light-bodied with a tight palate and refreshing acidity
A term typically reserved for Champagne and Sparkling Wines, non-vintage or simply “NV” on a label indicates a blend of finished wines from different vintages (years of harvest). To make non-vintage Champagne, typically the current year’s harvest (in other words, the current vintage) forms the base of the blend. Finished wines from previous years, called “vins de reserve” are blended in at approximately 10-50% of the total volume in order to achieve the flavor, complexity, body and acidity for the desired house style. A tiny proportion of Champagnes are made from a single vintage.
There are also some very large production still wines that may not claim one particular vintage. This would be at the discretion of the winemaker’s goals for character of the final wine.
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.’