Ratings and Reviews

“Bubbly doesn’t get much better than this elegant, grand and sumptuous rosé. The color is pale salmon, while aromas showcase an exotic blend of spices and flowers. The flavor is vivid and enticing but not as simple as just saying cherries and ginger. Though this is dry, it’s so mature and rich that it almost tastes sweet. A wonderful, ginger-cookie flavor lingers a long time on the finish. This will improve in a cool cellar through at least 2020.”

This is an exquisite sparkling wine made from 52% Chardonnay and 48% Pinot Noir, concocted into a special blend and aged for almost six years in oak cask. After disgorgement it was given another five months to sit in bottle before release. It has such freshness on the palate, such enviable acidity, that it’s hard to believe the grapes were picked so long ago. Crisp apple dominates, with just a trace of yeastiness on the nose and palate. This is a delicious wine.

Roederer knows rosé. This one is a blend from the top selections of pinot noir and chardonnay grown at their 540-acre estate in Anderson Valley. The blending team attains the color and flavor depth by including a small amount of pinot noir still wine, one that goes through a long cold soak, then finishes fermentation off the skins to minimize the tannic extraction. The result is a rosé that has flavor depth without tasting fruity. It achieves the stylistic goals of Roederer’s wines from Champagne: freshness and finesse. This wine is delicate, with hints of caramel, subtle earthy complexity and fruit depth to balance it. Fine bubbles carry the flavors on a clean line. Classical, if such a thing can be said of a California sparkling wine.

2003 was a great vintage for Roederer Estate. This, their top vintage wine, is very great, and the price is an absolute steal for this world class sparkler. It’s enormously rich in the strawberries from Pinot Noir and the limes from Chardonnay, while the toast and rich lees combine for a perfect champagne-style smokiness. And so smooth, it’s like a kiss of silk. At the age of eight years, this wonderful wine is just getting started.

Racy, a term often used to describe Champagne, rarely applies to California sparkling wine. Roederer Estate’s second release of L’Ermitage Rosé is one of the few exceptions-racy, as well as delicate, layered, savory and gently sweet. It’s a compelling take on a clean sparkler from the California coast, with the feel of the cold ocean and something of the taste of the sea creating tension and motion in the wine. If I were to describe the color as the pink blush on a golden apple, I would only diminish it to a cliché. The color is as brilliant as the wine itself. This is a breakthrough wine for California, and perhaps the ultimate match for Dungeness crab. Don’t miss it.

This wine combines remarkable freshness with elegant richness, so that even after it’s been open for several days, the flavors are still evolving, the fruit still brisk as an autumn breeze. It needs that time for the blunt chalkiness of the structure to mellow, for the cool apple and pear flavors to develop and lengthen. Built to age, this is an exceptional vintage of L’Ermitage.

Always one of the top sparklers in California, L’Ermitage defines the rigorous selection that marks the best vintage-dated, ageworthy wines. The 2000 is about 50 – 50 Chardonnay and Pinot, and is very rich and flavorful in yeast, smoke, strawberry, citrus and vanilla flavors, but it’s also a very young wine, tight and minerally. It wants bottle age. Should begin to fantail out by the end of 2007 and continue to develop for 4 to 6 years, if not longer.

Much more robust and full-bodied than the L’Ermitage brut, but still elegant and fine. Offers yeast, smoke and vanilla-tinged strawberry flavors, in a slightly rugged texture. Age through the end of the decade.

Extraordinarily fine for its smoothness and finesse, and the way the wine glides over the palate with a yeasty creaminess that turns smoky and spicy on the finish. The dosage stands out, yet this bubbly is also very acidic now. It should age well for at least 10 years.

Among the top sparklers in California, the wine this year is even more smooth and polished. It’s positively French in its classic structure and elegance. Feels ultra-refined in the mouth, with subtle flavors of dough, smoke and fruit.