2014 Louis Roederer Brut Champagne

The 2014 Champagne Vintage Estate La Montagne Brut is elegant and detailed, offering notes of currant, orange zest, and mocha. The palate is balanced and focused, revealing a spine of energy without being austere. It is pure with cherry liqueur, tangerine, and stony mouthfeel and offers impeccable balance and refreshment, which makes it deceptively easy-drinking now. However, it will certainly continue to improve for those who have the patience to wait. (AF)

The 2014 Louis Roederer Brut Millésime is composed of entirely grand cru fruit, with the cépages this year being seventy-one percent Pinot Noir (all from the village of Verzy on the Montagne de Reims) and twenty-nine percent Chardonnay (from the village of Chouilly in the heart of the Côte des Blancs). Twenty-five percent of the vins clairs were barrel-fermented and aged in cask, and only twenty percent of the blend went through malolactic fermentation this year. The finishing dosage is eight grams per liter. The wine is very refined on the nose, offering up a youthful blend of apple, white peach, chalky minerality (with a touch of Verzy’s steeliness also in evidence), warm bread, just a touch of hazelnut, gentle smokiness and a topnote of dried flowers. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, focused and complex, with bright acids, excellent mid-palate depth and mineral drive, refined mousse and a very long, pure and beautifully balanced finish. Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon and his team at Louis Roederer are at the absolute top of their game right now and this is a stunning wine in the making. It is certainly very drinkable today, but I would be inclined to give it a handful of years in the cellar and let its acids relax a bit more and allow the wine really to blossom!