Pol Roger
Vintage Brut
Champagne
1996

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

The traditional house vintage blend is 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay from 20 Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards in the Cote des Blancs and Montagne de Reims. Full malolactic fermentation takes place to soften the mouthfeel, and the wine spends several years ageing in bottle on the lees in the house’s deep cellars.

Only produced in limited quantities, the Vintage cuvee strikes a very good balance between freshness and liveliness, and the bready richness contributed by the autolytic ageing on lees.

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.