An elegant wine focused on minerality. Restrained lychee, sage and stony mineral character. Light-bodied with crisp acidity, a silky texture and a tense, slightly tight palate due to brilliant acidity. Drink or hold.

Refined and handsomely structured, with elegantly layered strawberry and apple flavors that are laced with notes of spiced nuts and brioche, finishing with lift. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Drink now.

The 2022 Côtes-du-Rhône “Saint Esprit” bottling from Maison Delas is made from a cépages of sixty percent syrah and forty percent grenache, with the wine coming in at fourteen percent alcohol. The wine’s bouquet features scents of fruitcake, black raspberries, grilled venison, distant bonfire, pepper, garrigue and a nice base of stony soil tones. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very nicely balanced for the vintage, with a good core of fruit and soil inflection, moderate tannins and a long, complex and focused finish. This is a very good bottle of Côtes-du- Rhône. 2024-2032.

The brand new Louis Roederer “Collection 244” non-vintage Brut is from the outstanding base year of 2019. This was a ripe year (as was also the case with both 2018 and 2020), but one that has produced truly exceptional wines thus far and looks likely to be eventually considered a great vintage year when those bottlings are released down the road. The cépages of the Collection 244 is forty-one percent chardonnay, thirty-three percent pinot noir and twenty-six percent pinot meunier. Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon notes that the slightly higher percentage of pinot meunier in the blend this year was from cooler Montagne de Reims sites to keep the alcohol a bit lower in this hot summer. Fifteen percent of the vins clairs were barrel-fermented, with only thirty-five percent of the still wines having gone through malolactic fermentation for the 244. The wine was disgorged in January of 2022 and finished with a dosage of seven grams per liter. It offers up a beautifully refined nose of apple, white peach, brioche, fresh almond, chalky soil tones, just a whisper of oak, gentle smokiness and a lovely, delicate topnote of meunier floral tones. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and still quite youthful, with a fine spine of acidity, excellent focus and cut, a lovely core of fruit, fine mineral drive and grip, refined mousse and impeccable balance on the long and nascently complex finish. Like all of the Collection Series releases from Louis Roederer, the 244 is built to age long and gracefully and this is still very early days for this excellent wine. I would opt to tuck it away in the cellar for five or six years and really let it come into its own. Fine, fine juice. 2024-2060.

Cristal 2016 represents a return to purity and classicism for this cuvée, even seen through the lens of 2016's ripe, generous opening. It is characteristically discreet in youth, cloaking its ripeness in long, chalky, stony energy. Gentle mandarin, pale apricot and raspberry fruit sit under slowly maturing notions of floral honey and tight, smoky charm. There's an airy, flowing delicacy and persistence which lifts this cuvée above some other expressions of this year. It's a hugely promising Cristal, likely to stand as tall as the sought-after 2012 and 2013 releases.