The 2016 Champagne Cristal is chalky and pristine, with a crystalline nature and notes of white peach, fresh citrus blossoms, and bright salinity. Tasted for the first time last year, it captures a precise and focused energy that’s unmatched. It boasts the energy and tension of 2002 and the precision of 2008. The wet-stone minerality of fresh chalk texture is profound, opening with medium body, showing pinpoint mousse, and sustaining a weightless energy through the long finish. This is not an obvious wine on opening, but it is by far one of my favorite wines of the year. It is going to require some patience, but it is worth stashing away and should have fantastic longevity. Drink 2027-2050.

Creamy, smoky rose petals on the nose, slowly verge into the warm scent of fresh Genoese sponge. A moment later, the nose is all pink-veined, white peach, scented, and vivid. Aromas shimmer with quiet yet persistent intensity. It therefore comes as a surprise to find the palate so utterly weightless, so delicate and yet so profound. Salinity and chalk, citrus and Genoese sponge notions move like silk chiffon. When tasted again with salty food, a whole new dimension of fruitiness opens up, intrinsic, profound, always chalky, in a dazzling display of ageless beauty. 

This is rich and layered, offering baked peach and cherry fruit alongside singed orange peel and salted Marcona almond flavors, with an underpinning of minerally chalk and brine notes. Yet the concentrated profile is set in an elegant frame of sleek acidity and a fine, satinlike mousse, waltzing across the palate and through the lasting finish. Drink now through 2039.

A smoldering flintiness on the nose is astonishing, giving the impression of incredible youthfulness in the first few moments of smelling the wine. Little hints of evolution appear only slowly, with notions of smoky, briny oyster shell and lemon confit. The palate is super-sleek but expands into chalky depths, lemon-scented, with immense saltiness and the finest, tiniest bubbles. Somehow, the initial tautness just relaxes, melts into creaminess in a lasting and somehow deeply satisfying fashion that rings long. Sipped again, the wine’s precision and linearity become ever clearer, plumbing coolest, oceanic, chalky depths. Its sense of youthfulness is mind-boggling.

“The 2014 Cristal Rosé is fascinating to taste next to the 2015 and a few older vintages, as it is decidedly linear and taut, signatures that are typical of the year. Cranberry, chalk, mint, white pepper and blood orange are all finely sculpted. This is an especially fine showing. I imagine the 2014 will flesh out beautifully with time in bottle. It's not an immediate Cristal Rosé, but more of a long distance runner. Readers should be in no rush here. Dosage is 8 grams per liter. Disgorged: February 2024.”