1996 Champagne Louis Roederer, Cristal Vinothèque, Rosé, Brut

Another positively stellar wine, 1996 Cristal Rosé Vinothèque is powerful, tightly wound and in need of considerable time in bottle to fully come together. Today, the fruit and the mid-palate are very, very shy. Whereas the Blanc is incredibly expressive today, the Rosé appears to be going through a reticent phase. This is the least accessible of the bottles I have tasted so far. Even so, the intensity and delineation of the flavours is just stunning.

Cranberry, rose petal, mint and chalk open up in the glass, but the Rosé is above all else a Champagne of structure. The 1996 Cristal Rosé Vinothèque spent ten years on its lees, flat sur latte), and another four years upside down sur pointe), the first period to get a slight oxygenation, and the second to bring the wine back into a slightly reductive state.

The dosage is 7 grams per litre, using a custom liqueur made from bottled wine and liqueur, as opposed to the Cristal from a cask that is used for the first release of Cristal and Cristal Rosé. The 1996 Cristal Rosé is the first Champagne Chef de Caves Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon blended at Roederer. That year, the pH was so low 2.82) that the malolactic fermentation should not have worked, but it did.

Drink 2021 - 2046

Wafting from the glass with aromas of mandarin oil, warm bread and raspberries, mingled with notes of clear honey, blanched almonds and pastry cream, the 1996 Cristal Rosé Vinothèque is showing superbly. It's full-bodied, tensile and searingly chalky, but this concentrated and intense wine's racy spine of acidity is beautifully integrated. This was the first blend Lécaillon presided over as a Roederer employee—three years before he was appointed chef des caves in 1999—and it was clearly a harbinger of great things to come. Amazingly, the finished pH is fully 2.82, yet the wine is perfectly balanced.

Drink 2019 - 2050