Winemaker Notes
#20 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2024
Roederer Estate Brut is crisp and elegant with complex pear, spice and hazelnut flavors. It is fresh and lightly fruity with great finesse and depth of flavor.
Blend: 60% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir
The label for Roederer Estate Brut is in the process of changing. You may receive either of these two labels featured above. Specific labels cannot be requested.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
As with previous releases, the NV Brut is a 60-40 blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with a refined mousse and dry, crisp, lengthy layers of green apple, citrus, and a bite of brioche. With 10-12% reserve wine from cask, it represents from five to seven vintages in one bottle, from two to seven years old, the style of the house. The reserve aged in oak adds texture and length, broadening the Chardonnay’s natural citrus-driven notes and lightness of being. Disgorged April 2024, the amount of dosage has gone down year to year and is around 9 grams per liter this time around.
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James Suckling
A chardonnay-dominant, fresh and vibrant wine with aromas of sliced pears, wildflowers, citrus blossoms and wet stones. The plate shows fresh acidity, minerality and subtle, pleasing notes of fresh bread. Citrus juice and peel in the finish. Lovely, easygoing and pleasurable. Mainly 2021 vintage.
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Decanter
Always a solid wine from Anderson Valley, this NV is built of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir and offers pretty lemony and lemon oil notes atop a bed of fragrant white flowers. Very round and complete with an assertive mousse, just-baked bread, and bruised yellow apple fruit. This bubbly has excellent depth and a terrific mineral finish. Aged a minimum of two years on the yeast, clocking in at 10 g/L. 85,000 9-litre cases produced.
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Tasting Panel
Finely wrought and sure-footed, this estate-grown blend of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir (with 10%-15% oak-aged reserve wine) proffers scents of baguette, citrus and citrus blossom, vanilla-poached pear, and hazelnut that harmonize with notes of green and golden apple, lemon balm, and subtle tarragon on the palate itself gloriously silky, with round acidity and a scintillating finish.
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Wine Spectator
Dynamic yet sleekly elegant, with rich strawberry and apple flavors that are accented by spiced cinnamon and yeast roll as this dances toward the vibrant finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The NV Estate Brut is scented of sour lemon, almonds and biscuits with flinty touches. The medium-bodied palate is rounded and creamy with bright, lemony character and a long, mineral-driven finish.
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Wine & Spirits
A purely California sparkler with rich flavors of Rainier cherries, ripe apricots and peaches, all held in a savory structure. It’s markedly clean, with clarity to the cherry-skin flavor that lasts.
Founded in 1982, Roederer Estate is nestled in Mendocino County’s fog-shrouded, Anderson Valley. As the California property of Champagne Louis Roederer, Roederer Estate builds upon a centuries-old tradition of fine winemaking. Roederer's unique winemaking style is based on two elements: complete ownership of its vineyards and the addition of oak-aged reserve wines to each year's blend or cuvee to create complex, dry and harmonious sparkling wines.
The crisp, fresh and rich flavors of Roederer Estate sparkling wines reflect the cool Anderson Valley that is home to their family-owned estate's 600 acres of vineyards. This protected valley in Northern California provides the ideal ripening conditions for their 100% estate-grown Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. The blending team is comprised of the winemakers from the California property as well as from Champagne Louis Roederer, ensuring that Roederer Estate remains the most French of the California sparklers.
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.
Surrounded by redwood forests and often blanketed in chilly, ocean fog, the Anderson Valley is one of California’s most picturesque appellations. During the growing season, moist, cool, late afternoon air flows in from the Pacific Ocean along the Navarro River and over the valley's golden, oak-studded hills. High and low temperatures can vary as much as 40 or 50 degrees within a single day, allowing for slow and gentle ripening of grapes, which will in turn create elegantly balanced wines.
The Anderson Valley is best known for Pinot Noir made in a range of styles from delicate and floral to powerful and concentrated. Chardonnay also shines here, and both varieties are often utilized for the production of some of California’s best traditional method sparkling wines. The region also draws inspiration from Alsace and produces excellent Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris.