It shows fresh, laser intensity, with aromas of peach, red candy apple and baker’s yeast on the nose. The midpalate offers concentrated mandarin orange, cotton candy, raspberry-rhubarb, racy acidity and a dry supple finish. Decant these bubbles for aeration. Yes, bubbles can be decanted—especially those with complexity.

When a house from the prestigious region of Champagne takes interest in making wine in the U.S., it's a big deal. When the Roederer family arrived in California they headed north of the famed Napa and Sonoma to the cooler climate of Anderson Valley in Mendocino County. L’ Ermitage is a special cuvée, made only in exceptional years. The wine has a river-rock minerality on the nose, with hints of sliced pear and vanilla bean. The palate is liquid gold with notes of roasted pear and cream and an elegant mouthfeel.

The 2017 Roederer Estate “l’Ermitage” Brut Millésime is crafted this year from a cépages of fifty-two percent chardonnay, forty-six percent pinot noir and two percent pinot meunier. It was finished this year with a dosage of 7.5 grams per liter and offers up a beautifully refined and complex nose of apple, bread fruit, bread dough, a lovely base of white soil tones, gentle smokiness and a topnote of dried flowers. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied, focused and still youthfully brisk, with a fine core of fruit, excellent soil inflection, elegant mousse and a long, complex and impeccably balanced finish. This is already tasty, but like all of the past releases of l'Ermitage from Roederer Estate, this wine is built for cellaring and it will be an even finer drink five to ten years down the road! 2025-2055+.

The 2020 Clark Road Vineyard bottling is the second new single site cuvée from Roederer Estate. It is effectively the mirror image of the Apple Alley bottling, as the cépages here is pinot noir dominant, with seventy-seven percent of this varietal augmented by twenty-three percent chardonnay in this vintage. The wine includes ten percent vins clairs that were barrel-fermented. The wine was disgorged in February of 2024 and finished with a dosage of five grams per liter. The wine’s aromatic constellation is refined and complex, wafting from the glass in a mix of apple, tart white peach, pâtissière, a fine base of soil, incipient smokiness and a nice touch of white flowers in the upper register. On the palate the wine is bright, young and full-bodied, with a fine core of fruit, excellent mineral undertow and grip, elegant mousse and a long, complex and very well balanced finish. This is excellent wine in the making, but give it a bit of cellaring to allow its secondary layers of complexity to emerge. 2027-2050+.

The 2020 vintage marks the very first time Roederer Estate has ventured into producing single vineyard bottlings from its vineyard holdings in Anderson Valley. The Apple Alley Vineyard takes its name from it having been a former apple orchard, as Roederer Estate chose to keep all of the apple trees that line flank the road into the vineyard. The wine is crafted from a cépages of seventy-four percent chardonnay and twenty-six percent pinot noir, with eight percent of the vins clairs having been barrel-fermented. The wine was disgorged in February of 2024 and finished with a dosage of six grams per liter. The wine delivers a refined bouquet of apple, quince, a lovely base of soil tones, bread dough and a topnote of dried flowers. On the palate the wine is crisp, focused and full-bodied, with a lovely core of fruit, excellent soil signature, frothy mousse, a firm spine of acidity and a very long, complex and impeccably balanced finish. To my palate this is still a young wine and truly deserves at least a few years in the cellar to properly blossom. It is an important new wine from Roederer Estate and certainly looks likely to soon be one of the benchmark sparkling wines produced in the US! 2027-2050+.