Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
This is a soft, finely formed wine, ripe, smooth and creamy. It has elegance, a light touch of fruit and acidity with some minerality from the Chardonnay in the blend. It's a vintage that is already drinkable, with just a touch of toast suggesting maturing. A beautiful wine, drink now.
-
Wine Spectator
Well-knit and elegant, with a creamy mousse the texture of raw silk, this features a delicate mesh of lemon meringue pie, dried apricot, slivered almond and fresh ginger. The bright acidity carries the range of flavors through to the mouthwatering finish. Drink now through 2026.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A successful expression of carefully managed champenization that is at once both rich and nuanced, this nicely made effort overlies elements of minerals and lemon cream with a good bit of yeast albeit with a lighter hand. Its tiny, pin-pointy bubbles lend it a fine, creamy feel, and it conveys an ongoing sense of proportion and balance from beginning to end. Despite being a bit older, it has lost nothing in energy, and, in this case, age has resulted in real polish.
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.’