1996 Cristal
France
Champagne
Sparkling White
58% Pinot Noir, 42% Chardonnay (2016 vintage)
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2015 - 2030
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Roederer has been experimenting with a late-disgorged Cristal program for a number of years. Historically, these bottles were only opened at the house, but the 1995, set to be sold this year, will be the first official release of Late-Disgorged Cristal. Readers might also enjoy this vertical of Cristal Rosé, which includes notes on the 1995 and 1996 Cristal Rosé (Late Disgorged).
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2014 - 2030
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This wine was part of a retrospective tasting 1996 Champagne – For The Ages.
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Over the last few months I have had the chance to revisit a number of Champagnes from the celebrated 1996 vintage. My first retrospective on the 1996s, published last year, found many of the wines in great shape. Today, only a year later, a number of bottles are finally beginning to show hints of their ultimate potential. Many of these wines have been on the market for some time but only now, fourteen years after the harvest, is it possible to taste a complete range of the tête-de-cuvées from all of the major houses.
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This wine was tasted during collector Bruce Fingeret's birthday party, July 2010
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This wine was tasted over dinner at Eleven Madison Park in June, 2009.
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1996 remains one of the great modern-day vintages for Champagne. The wines possess a combination of bright acidity and high sugars that is extremely rare. The best 1996 Champagnes are bold, racy and exuberant, in both absolute and relative terms, something that has also come across in numerous recent tastings, including verticals of Dom Pérignon, Cristal, Krug and Dom Ruinart. For all of these houses 1996 is one of the more powerful, extroverted vintages of the last 15 or so years. To be sure, the vintage also has its critics. Those who are skeptical of the vintage claim that some producers harvested too early and that a number of wines possess excessively austere and lean personalities that will never soften. My experience with the Champagnes below and others, however, has mostly been extremely positive and I am convinced the best wines have enough balance of fruit and acidity to age gracefully, in some cases for decades.
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2013 - 2026
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Cristal, first created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II of Russia, is one of the most iconic wines of Champagne. Sometimes lost in the glamorous image the wine has acquired over its long history is the fact that Cristal also happens to be a serious Champagne that is capable of aging extraordinarily well. I recently sat down with Chef de Caves Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon to survey a collection of vintages. The wines were grouped in pairs meant to represent Cristal in three distinct stages; mature, peak and young. This was an incredible opportunity to compare some of the legendary Cristals side by side, and to revisit a few personal favorites, like the 1979, which was one of the standouts in a recent horizontal tasting that included nearly all of that vintage's top wines.
Lecaillon's goal with Cristal is to make an ageworthy Champagne that is fresh and floral when young, but that is also capable of considerable development with bottle age, qualities the finest Cristals have in spades. Unfortunately because of its rabid following the vast majority of Cristal is drunk upon release, which is ironic, if not downright tragic, considering Cristal is a wine that starts peaking around age 15-20, and that can last much longer under ideal storage conditions.
Much of Roederer's success with Cristal (and the other wines in the lineup) can be attributed to a reliance on 214 hectares of estate-owned vineyards that supply all of the top bottlings. In recent years the focus has been on consolidating plots within the best appellations as well as a move towards a more natural and sustainable approach to viticulture. Cristal is always a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay sourced from the house's finest plots, with Pinot playing the leading role. For Cristal the Pinot comes mostly from Aÿ, Mareuil, Verzenay and Verzy, although on occasion a touch of Bouzy fruit is used as well. The Chardonnay is sourced from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Avize, a pretty impressive collection of villages, to say the least.
In most vintages a portion of the wine is aged in oak, with frequent stirring of the lees, a technique used to give the wine an added dimension of richness. The exact amount of wood aging is a function of the qualities of the fruit each year. The estate takes a similar approach to malolactic fermentation, which may or may not take place, depending on the vintage. Dosage is generally around 12-13 grams. In recent years dosage has come down slightly as Lecaillon believes that today's weather conditions allow for better ripening than was possible in prior generations, and therefore the wines require less dosage. Roederer does not believe in a late-disgorged approach, but some bottles are kept on hand for tastings such as this one that have been disgorged relatively recently. Lecaillon says these bottles “preserve the memory of the vintage.” Recently disgorged bottles of Cristal see about 8 grams of dosage, which is quite a bit less than what is used for current releases. Fans of Cristal can look forward to vintages 2004, 2005 2006 and 2007. At this early stage it is too soon to tell, but 2008 will at the very least be a vintage year at Roederer.
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This wine was tasted as a part of wine collector Bruce Fingeret's 50th Birthday Party, July 2008.
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Previously reviewed: 1995 Cristal Rose (95+) (Maisons Marques & Domaines, U.S.A., Oakland, CA)Also recommended: NV Brut Royal.
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