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Bring on Roederer’s Collection series. But not quite yet. This week, Cristal, and then next time, we will look at what may well be the future of Champagne.

Louis Roederer Cristal 2015 champagne

But as we said, before that we have the 2015 Cristal. Few houses release their prestige champagne from as many vintages as do Roederer. Again, this is partly Lécaillon, but it’s probably more the fact that Roederer has their own vineyards and understand them in a way that is difficult to do if buying from growers. They know which vineyards will perform in the conditions of each vintage and can use this to source grapes of such a high standard that they can make Cristal in years when other houses step away.

Champagne Louis Roederer

So a 2015 declaration? We have had the brilliant 2012 vintage and the better than expected 2013s and 2014s. There are some superb vintages waiting in the wings – 2018, 2019 and 2020 will make champagne lovers very happy. 2015 won’t be universally declared but there will be some fabulous champagnes from it (2016, not so much, and 2017 even less so). 2012, 2013 and 2014 Cristals are all magnificent, though very different.

2015 is a return to a classic Cristal style and, while early days, this is the best 2015 champagne I have yet seen.

If we turn to the bible of champagne vintages (again), Charles Curtis’s “Vintage Champagne: 1899 to 2019”, the overview of 2015 was a “hot, dry year without the excess of 2003”. I know that there are people out there who have high opinions of 2003 as a vintage, but I am most definitely not one of them, and if climate change is sending the region down this route, that would be a very sad day indeed. I know I am not alone in this. 2003 is hot, clumsy, blowsy with only a handful of the very best producers making anything worth your time, and even less worth your money. So many better champagnes around.

Curtis believes it was rain at the end of August that saved 2015. There is a ripeness and richness to the wines, so producers had to be very careful that they were not lacking in acidity. 2015 was hotter than both 1976 and 2003 and, even with that late August rain, one of the driest.

Riddling champagne bottle at Louis Roederer

If we revert to Lécaillon’s thoughts at the time of the 2015 harvest, he declared it a “dream year! Sunny, dry, no downy mildew, no rot, 98% of our vineyards could have been organic! This has all the criteria to be vintage: ripe, no rot, good balance and concentration…  analysis puts it close to 2002, but concentration and dry extract are more like one of a vintages of the late 40’s and 50’s”.

More recently, Lécaillon has been quoted as suggesting that the vintage gave us a Cristal of “featherlight intensity in a sunny and dry year”. He has described it as a “soil vintage”, with the thinking being that this Cristal shows salinity and chalk, drawn from the vineyards.

Horse working the biodynamic vineyards at Louis Roederer

Cristal is now sourced from biodynamic vineyards. Roederer has 45 plots which are considered for inclusion, out of a possible 70 plots – those which are not yet up for consideration for Cristal simply do not have the deep rooted vine system necessary and they need more ageing.

Lécaillon will start with all 45 plots in a blend and then work out if the wine can be improved by the removal of any of the plots. We need to go back to the great 2002 to find a Cristal where all 45 plots were included. Until the 2015. Lécaillon said that he simply could not make the wine better than it was with every plot included.

The deeper roots that are part of the effect of biodynamic farming bring a balance to the grapes. He has also used a little more older oak in vinification. He is keen to draw forth the saline characters that can emerge with the Chardonnay.

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