Pol Roger
Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill Brut
Champagne
2008

The producer

The last twenty years have seen continual investment in upgrading or adding to the production facilities, of the Pol Roger house in Champagne, allowing the house to take control over every different parcel of fruit from every vineyard. Currently, owned vineyards total 90ha and make up over 50% of the needs of the house’s production, the rest coming from excellent growers mostly in the Marne with whom the family have long standing relationships.

Pol Roger’s raw material is second to none and allows for the largest proportion of any house in the production of vintage wines compared to non-vintage. The NV is consistently outstanding, while the rose and blanc de blancs are always vintage wines alongside the (much better than standard) vintage wine. The prestige Cuvee “Sir Winston Churchill” stands among the finest in Champagne.

The wine

Sir Winston Churchill was such a big fan of Pol Roger that the Pol Roger house produced a 500ml bottle for his preferred consumption – half a bottle not enough, full bottle too much, we know how he felt. The famed Prime Minister’s preference in Champagne has without a doubt aided the popularity of the Pol Roger house with the British people, over the years. Pol Roger in turn has honoured this connection by naming their prestige cuvee accordingly. 

The blend is a house secret but predominantly Pinot Noir with a decent splash of Chardonnay, all from old vines in Grand Cru vineyards. A profound, richly layered wine with chalky minerality that ensures beneficial extra ageing.

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.