Grape: 63% Pinot Noir and 37% Chardonnay 
Region: Champagne, France
Perfect with: Excellent with fish, such as salmon; meat, such as lamb, veal, guinea fowl, and even pheasant; and soft cheeses, such as Chaource and Brillat-Savarin. It can also be served with red fruit based deserts that are less sweet, such as a red fruit zabaglione or a red fruit gratin.
Ageing Potential: Drink now - 2030
Size: 750mL 

Why you’ll love it?

Louis Roederer Rosé Champagne 2014 vintage is a pink hue in colour with beautiful golden tints. Gorgeous beads of even and soft bubbles. The nose is fresh but intense and fruity with hints of tangy red fruits, slightly sweet but underpinned by more concentrated, jammy and citrus notes. The palate is dominated by crunchy, ripe, plump red fruits. The fruity structure is gradually elongated by a chalky, mineral freshness that creates a lingering sensation of lightness and harmony on the finish.

Today Louis Roederer remains one of the very few remaining family owned Houses in Champagne with 7th generation Frederic Rouzaud at the helm.

This wine, like all of the vintage dated Champagne from Louis Roederer, is entirely estate, and is also farmed specifically from plots selected to create rose. It is composed of 67% Pinot Noir from the south facing slopes of 1er cru of Cumieres, which benefits from sitting directly on the banks of the marne. The powerful Pinot Noir is tempered with an infusion of 37% Chardonnay, mostly from north facing plots in the grand cru of Chouilly. In 2014, chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon used 17% oak cask fermented lots when creating the blend. All of the Pinot Noir is macerated together with a small amount of Chardonnay juice; a unique method for producing rose. Mr. Lecaillon explained to me that he “acidifies” the ripe Pinot of Cumieres with the north facing Chouily Chardonnay.

Tastes Like?
The Cumières signature that is always found in the Louis Roederer vintage Brut Rosé is very much apparent in this excellent 2014 version, as this village always produced a riper interpretation of the grape and which works so beautifully in Rosés. The cépages this year is its customary blend of 70% Pinot Noir from very chalky vineyards in Cumières and 30% Chardonnay from the village of Cuis in the Côte des Blancs. Twenty percent of the vins clairs this year are aged in larger oak casks prior to blending and bottling. The wine offers up a beautiful young bouquet of tart strawberries, peach, sourdough bread, a touch of caraway seed, a beautiful base of chalky soil tones and a discreetly smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and beautifully balanced, with a fine core, excellent soil signature, elegant mousse and a very long, very pure and classy finish. This is approachable today, but it will really be a waste of bottles to not give it a few more years of bottle age prior to really drinking it with abandon! - John Gilmann