1996 Le Clos Saint-Hilaire
France
Mareuil Sur Aÿ
Champagne
Sparkling White
Pinot Noir
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2014 - 2020
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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 magical evening continued into a delicious dinner blessed with a stunning array of wines. The menu, prepared by Grissini Restaurant and served al fresco, was simple, tasty and very nicely done, as always.
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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 - 2013
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Billecart-Salmon, based in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, makes wines in a style that is all about timeless elegance. These Champagnes are characterized by their supreme elegance and balance. All of the 2008 vins claires I tasted showed remarkable harmony and transparency of site. Much of the aromatic complexity of the wines can be attributed to a preference towards cold temperatures in fermentation, which keeps the wines fresh. The domaine uses Burgundian oak barrels for a portion of the wines. The exact amount of bâtonnage and malolactic fermentation depend on the vintage. Prior to being bottled the wines are blended in a large steel tank to insure consistency, something the estate takes very seriously. In general the non-vintage wines receive 7-9 grams of dosage, while the vintage wines have 5-7 grams, depending on the year. Among current releases, I found the 1998s here to be brilliant, while the 2000s, from a much more challenging growing season, comes across as less refined. The estate does not disclose disgorgement dates, but a code on the foil wrapping which can be traced back to a date.
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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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