Louis Roederer - Brut Champagne Cristal 2015 (Pre-arrival)

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Louis Roederer Description

Champagne Louis Roederer was founded in 1776 in Reims, France and is one of the rare family owned companies, which is still managed by the Roederer family. Today, the company is under the helm of Jean-Claude Rouzaud and his son Frédéric who continue to place quality before quantity.

Champagne Louis Roederer is one of the only French champagne producers to own nearly 75 percent of the grapes in the most desirable vineyards in the Champagne.

For each vintage wine, they choose from as many as 40 different wines from several lots for the blend.

A View from the Cellar: 98 Points

The 2015 Louis Roederer Cristal is composed this year from a cépages of sixty percent pinot noir and forty percent chardonnay, with twenty-five percent of the vins clairs raised in oak barrels. As is customary, the still wines do not go through malolactic fermentation for Cristal and the wine was finished with a dosage of seven grams per liter in this vintage, after aging nearly seven years sur lattes. It delivers a beautifully refined aromatic constellation of apple, nectarine, a superbly complex base of chalky minerality, a touch of raw almond, pâtissière, white flowers and a very, very discreet hint of oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and utterly seamless in its perfect balance, with a marvelous core, superb soil signature and grip, zesty acids and a very, very long, focused and complex finish. 2015 is a riper year in Champagne and this seems to have dovetailed brilliantly with the classic Cristal style of mineral signature, precise fruit tones and great structural integrity. This is destined to be a great, great classic vintage of Cristal!

Wine & Spirits: 98 Points

Ripened to fragrant white-peach flavors in the heat of the 2015 vintage, the biodynamically farmed fruit for Cristal transforms that ripeness into a delicate juiciness, the wine both luscious and youthfully concentrated, almost severe in its structure. None of the wine undergoes malolactic conversion, and a quarter of the base wine ages in oak; particularly in this vintage, Cristal is built for the long haul, rather than for drinking on release. Spicy and subtle, this wine’s earthiness is incipient, not yet revealed, like a groundnut—not the peanut, but the native-American tuber with a flavor that might literally be described as a pomme de terre (an apple of the earth). Sophisticated and layered, this wine hums with a quiet energy.

The Wine Independent: 98 Points

Wine Enthusiast: 98 Points

James Suckling: 97 Points

Vinous: 96 Points

I have tasted the 2015 Cristal three times so far - once as part of an extensive vertical I will be reporting on shortly, and then later in my office. Those tastings paint a portrait of a complex Champagne that is still finding its center. Tasted at the maison, the 2015 is rich, dense and explosive, with tremendous textural intensity and also a good bit of energy to back it up. Citrus confit, spice, ginger, chalk and dried flowers abound in a Champagne endowed with tremendous aromatic presence in a style that offers notable richness, but lighter than vintages such as 2012. There is a bit of the savoriness that is such a signature of the year, but it is nicely integrated in the wine’s fabric. (AG)