Description
This is your chance to buy Louis Roederer Cristal Brut 2008. As you can see in the reviews below, it is a standout wine. Maybe the best ever Louis Roederer Cristal Brut 2008.
Louis Roederer is a family-owned Champagne House. 7th generation Frederic Rouzaud is at the helm. The Domaine extends over 240 hectares. Louis Roederer has a policy of production coming from 70% family-owned vineyards. This is a key factor in the quality of their wines. Another quality factor is 65 Ha of their Domaine vineyards are biodynamic and organic. The wines at Roederer are elegant, fine, acid-driven. Often they need some time in the bottle to develop fat on the bones.
Louis Roederer Cristal Brut is made in the years where ripeness is achieved. Often a blend of Chardonnay (around 40%) and Pinot Noir (around 60%). Cristal ages for at least 6 years en tirage and a further 8 months after dégorgement. The key to Cristal is balance, refinement and length. Silky, mineral, with white fruit and citrus notes. Cristal is a wine that keeps well.
Champagne
A wine region of France approximately 160km East of Paris. It is also the name of the wines produced from the area. Most famously it is a sparkling wine that undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle and is aged on lees. Although there is the occasional still wine you can find around particularly Pinot Noir. The fantastically named Bouzy Rouge is one such example. It is possible to find them but very rare are single vintage, single vineyard, single variety Champagnes (I can only name one and it was produced only 47 times between 1900 and 1999). Why? Due to the large area the region covers, and the challenging weather the houses blended wines to produce a consistent and reliable product every year. This is where the growers come in. They relish the chance to show off vintage variation and small plot wines.
Pinot Noir
This is the most elusive grape. It is relatively early ripening and extremely sensitive to terroir. Its perfect place on earth is the Cote d’Or in Burgundy. So haunting are great red Burgundy’s charms that growers everywhere try to emulate them. Pinot Noir is not just a one-trick pony, it can make great reds, rosé, sparkling and even sweet wines, whites on occasion and I’ve tasted a decent fortified Pinot Noir too.
Chardonnay
The grape that you can plant anywhere, in any climate and do anything to and it will still taste like an OK wine. When people hit the sweet spot of site, climate, cropping and winemaking, Chardonnay becomes a magical wine that will age gracefully but charm you at any age. Chardonnays can range from cool climate lean and citrusy to warmer climate tropical and overt. Oak and lees can add flavouring as can malolactic fermentation.
Louis Roederer Cristal Brut 2008 Reviews
“The 2008 Cristal is a real head-turner. Powerful, ample and explosive in all of its dimensions, the 2008 takes hold of the sense and never lets up. There is a crystalline purity to the flavors that is simply remarkable. Although still a baby, the 2008 looks like it will soon take its place alongside the greatest Cristals. Today, it is breathtaking. Drink 2020-2058.” 98+ points Antonio Galloni – Vinous
“Disgorged October 2016 and will be the first Cristal to be released ten years from harvest when it is offered in 2018. 35 parcels used from a possible 45 in this vintage. The assemblage is 60% pinot noir and 40% chardonnay. This is so fresh and tense and mineral with extremely exuberant chardonnay notes on the nose of white peach, lemon and yellow grapefruit, and hints of almost brambly sous bois aromas. The yeast characters are also super fresh, and there are subtle woody notes, with a hint of vanilla bean and light spices. The palate is super long, and very pure, powerful and focused. It drives deep and taut. Pinot noir is a strong core and the chardonnay sits at the edge offering lemon and white nectarine sorbet flavors. Staggeringly concentrated, yet the balance makes it seem airy and light. Acidity is perfectly positioned, and the power is intense and long. This is an ultra precise Cristal, finishing with a mere suggestion of savoriness and warmth to come. Impressive on release, this will be at its best drinking from 2025.”100 points JamesSuckling.com
“The 2008 Cristal is a perfect wine, and Champagne simple does not get any better. This incredible wine offers a beautiful perfume of clean, crisp fruits, layers of complexity in its toasted spice and white flowers, and an utterly seamless, yet powerful style on the palate. This is a rich, decadent expression of Cristal yet it’s still crystalline and elegant, with no sensation of weight, and it just glides over the palate. Haut Couture at its finest and this majestic, profound, legendary Cristal can be drunk anytime over the coming 2-3 decades. Drink 2018-2038.” 100 points JebDunnuck.com
“This latest incarnation of the famous brand is a superb wine. It is on par with, maybe even better than, the already legendary 2002. Its balance is impeccable: Apple and citrus flavors working with the tight minerality to give a textured yet fruity wine. Produced from Roederer’s own vineyards which are mainly biodynamic, the wine has its own intense purity and crispness. It has amazing potential and is likely to age for many years. Drink from 2020. *Top 100 Cellar Selection 2017 #5* (RV)” (12/2017) 100 points Wine Enthusiast
“This is not the only exceptional aspect of the 2008 Cristal, as this is one of the very, very few vintages of this iconic wine that has included a small percentage of vins clairs that have gone through malolactic fermentation, as Monsieur Lécaillon observed that sixteen percent of the blend in 2008 is composed of wines that went through malo. The results are magical, as this small part of the blend that has undergone malolactic fermentation seems to have rounded off the snappy acids of 2008 a bit and given the wine an unprecedented textural accessibility out of the blocks that was not found in a similarly racy vintage like 1996, which was tensile and hermetically sealed when first released. Twenty percent of the vins clairs for the 2008 Cristal were barrel-fermented and the wine was finished with a dosage of 7.5 grams per liter. The wine is flat out stunning, offering up a pure and youthfully complex bouquet of apple, lemon, warm brioche, stunningly complex, chalky minerality, a touch of orange zest, fresh almond and a floral topnote redolent of lemon blossoms and mimosa. On On the palate the wine is deep, fullbodied, complex and utterly seamless in its balance, with a great core, laser-like focus, utterly refined mousse and a very, very long, racy, complex and seamlessly balanced finish. This is a breathtakingly beautiful wine in the making!” (05/2018) 99 Points John Gilman
“Cristal 2008 is on a roll to yet higher levels of exquisite purity and precision of fruit in a paradoxical balance of weightlessness and depth of flavour, permeated with minerals and a salinity reflecting the greatest terroirs of the Roederer estate. Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon believes that 2008 is his best effort to date, and it’s easy to see why. It’s from a cooler, maritime vintage that came right in the end, with one of the longest harvests ever, running from mid-September to early October. The colour is a stylish pale gold flecked with green. Aromas of white flowers are joined by a cleansing citrus vigour and richer tones of peach and mirabelle. The palate is still quiet, but a tender creaminnes shows through, and there’s so much concentration to come if you drink if after 2021. The greatness of the wine owes everything to the influence of organic and biodynamic precepts in the field – and Lecaillon’s sleepless perfectionism in the cellar towards finer fruit and a careful brake on too much yeasty expression. The acidity is vibrant but better integrated in the 2008 than in the 1996. Magnificent. Dosage 7.7g/l. (ME) ” (06/2018) 98 Points Decanter
“Cristal 2008 is the ultimate and absolute embodiment of Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon’s fanatical work in the winery and, most of all, in the vineyards – a magnificent, towering monument to the lofty chalk aspiration that defines Cristal. In line and length it is other-worldly, hovering motionless literally for minutes, at once lighter than air, yet thunderingly expansive, soaring to the epitome of Cristal heights. A true masterpiece by every definition, quintessential Cristal and unreservedly the greatest I have tasted. It will not attain its full potential until at least 2038, and its mesmerising spectacle will continue for at least half a century.” ** points tysonstelzer.com, 20 December, 2019
“This is truly a magnificent wine and a great Cristal. Unusual for it to have any malolactic, but this had 16% , and whereas Cristal is normally disgorged after eight years on lees, this had 10, and was released after the ’09. It’s a very precise, refined, tensioned wine which echoes the chardonnay and chalk much more than the 2002, which was tasted beside it, the ’02 being a more pinoty style (although both are 60% pinot). With aromas of small flowers, mineral and almost alarmingly fresh, it has penetrating flavour and tremendous length. A wine of magnificent harmony, dexterously combining finesse and power.” The Real Review, 24 June, 2019 Huon Hooke 99 points
“This is the most critically acclaimed, highest-scoring Cristal ever released, and it’s not hard to see why. It has a gorgeous pale gold colour and impossibly fine, tiny bubbles. And although it’s not as aromatically expressive as the other two champagnes reviewed here, it is extraordinarily concentrated and intense, with an almost saline vinosity that hangs around for ages. A few more years in the cellar will see it develop even more layers of flavour and complexity.” Max Allen Australian Financial Review, 12 July, 2019
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