Louis Roederer
Cristal
Champagne
2012

The producer

The largest family-owned Champagne house with a wealth of owned vineyards (nearly 250ha) two-thirds of which are Grand Cru. But the revolution of Roederer is initially in the vineyard with organic and biodynamic principles spreading across the holdings. Chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon has steered Roederer through this learning curve for twenty years introducing changes in the vineyards and adopting an approach he calls “a la carte winemaking” in the cellar.

All wines from vintage level up are now made from estate fruit and even the non-vintage wine exceeds 50% ensuring the quality desired throughout the range. The aim is for full ripeness to ensure a clear expression of each vineyard before the blending process begins. Louis Roederer may have lagged behind its reputation last century but is now at the forefront of Champagne houses with a continual philosophy of further improvement which shows in all wines from non-vintage to the prestige Cuvee Cristal.

The wine

Renowned for its clear bottle and golden cellophane wrapper to prevent gout-de-lumiere, Cristal is one of the most renowned and admired prestige cuvees. For many years it was the earliest prestige release but age on lees has increased to six or seven years, depending on vintage. Despite this, the tight, reductive style often demands further aging in bottle, and occasionally very small quantities are re-released. Produced from the finest, and oldest, estate vineyards Cristal seems to get better and better.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.