“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.”

This chardonnay grows at a southeast-facing slope, a 1.36-acre parcel farmed by Roederer in the lieu-dit Volibarts, in the Côte des Blancs grand cru village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. The fruit ferments without added yeasts, after one-third of the lot macerates on the skins, encouraging the saturated flavors of beeswax and honey in the wine. It ages for 16 months on the lees, with 44 percent of the lot in sandstone tanks, the balance equally divided between new barrels and stainless steel. The ripeness of the 2020 vintage comes through in a chardonnay at 12.9 percent alcohol (where else in the world could you make that statement?). Pale chamomile scents infuse the wine's toasty richness, its pedigree apparent in the stamina and flavor depth this displays as it opens over the course of days.