“Tasted from magnum, the 2013 Cristal Rosé is ravishing. Dense, creamy and powerful, the 2013 captures all the qualities of the vintage, specifically the interplay of rich fruit from the warm summer and cooler inflections from a year that started late and ended late with a rare October harvest. Today, the 2013 is deep and beautifully seamless, but it is also young – far too young to be at its best. Dosage is 6.5 grams per liter, a bit less than for the standard bottlings, a decision taken to balance longer aging on the lees and a bit more residual sugar that is always left in the magnums after fermentation. Readers who can find the 2013 in magnum will experience one of the greatest thrills in wine.”

“Features rich, focused flavors of peach tart, poached apricot and mandarin orange fruit, plus accents of toasted brioche, pastry cream, pickled ginger and pink grapefruit sorbet. Exudes an overall vibrant impression, with a fine interplay of elegance and complexity, showing deft integration of the vivid acidity and the satiny mousse. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Drink now through 2038.”

The 2020 Coteaux Champenois Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Hommage à Camille is a beautifully precise, incisive wine, unwinding in the glass with notes of white peach, sweet citrus fruit, freshly baked bread and flowers. Medium-bodied, pure and racy, with a tightly wound core and a long, saline finish, it's the best rendition yet of this cuvée from Roederer.

The finest release of this cuvée so far is the 2020 Coteaux Champenois Mareuil-sur-Aÿ Hommage à Camille, an intensely flavored but weightless red that offers up aromas of dark berries, spices, cinnamon and cloves. Medium-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, with lively acids and powdery structuring tannins, it concludes with a delicately oak-inflected finish. As readers will remember, it derives from a 0.43-hectare parcel in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ lieu-dit Charmont that was planted with Burgundian Pinot Noir selections in 2002 and farmed with the intention of producing a still wine. It's matured in one-third new oak, including some 500-liter barrels, from Taransaud, Séguin Moreau and Lagrange.

“This is part of Louis Roederer’s limited-edition lineup created in collaboration with Philippe Starck where they focus on zero-dosage wines. This is a blend of all three major Champagne grapes, but with a focus on Pinot Noir, which makes up 50 percent of the wine. The result is a mineral-driven wine with focused notes of guava and honeysuckle. The palate is angled, with sharp corners softened slightly by that round Pinot Noir fruit. There's an electric acidity that really brings this rosé to life.”