Our first look at champagne for the year. Readers will be aware that champagne regularly features here at Quill and Pad, and we are shamefully late in covering it for 2025, for the first time (fear not, we have more in the pipeline).

Usually, we look at the very finest prestige releases, but today, a mere vintage. In addition, we have covered Pol Roger and their champagnes on numerous occasions, so why bother with this one?

Pol Roger Brut Vintage 2018 champagne

The simple answer is that the Pol Roger 2018 vintage is a stunning champagne that deserves to be in every cellar. It drinks better than many prestige champagnes which cost twice the price.

Readers will know that this House is one of my absolute favorites and has been since my first sip of it (which was also my first sip of champagne) many years ago. It never disappoints and usually thrills.

The House of Pol Roger Champagne in Epernay, France

Okay, just one disappointment. For the life of me, I cannot understand the fuss over the 2016 vintage Pol Roger. It was not a bad wine, but for me, it fell well short of Pol’s usual stellar level of quality.

It is a little pedestrian, but then I find that throughout the champagnes from that year. I don’t understand –if one takes the beancounters out of the equation – why they ever released it, and the same can be said for a great many Houses. For me, it added nothing to their legacy.

Even more puzzling to me is that when I look back at the global champagne experts, many of whom I know and greatly respect, scores for the 2016 and 2018 sit largely on par.

We all know the old saying about opinions and everyone having one, but on this occasion, I think that many fellow critics have two things wrong. They overrate the 2016 vintage and grossly underrate the 2018.

I’m talking Pol Roger, but it certainly applies more widely. I’m seeing quite a few scores around the 93 and 94 mark for the 2018 Pol (bizarrely higher in some cases for the 2016 – I’m no fan of the 2016 vintage and not even Pol can turn that around for me). For me, that is criminally low. And yes, I accept that I do occasionally mark a little more exuberantly than some.

Perhaps there is something hidden which I cannot see – that has certainly happened before. 2000 seemed to me to be a decent but hardly thrilling year. It has proved to far exceed initial expectations.

Perhaps 2016 will do the same, but I won’t be loading the cellar. 2018, on the other hand, back up the truck!

Anyway, this week’s grumble is over.

Label of the Pol Roger Brut Vintage 2018 champagne

Some readers might be thinking we are a little late to the party as the wine has been released in some markets for almost a year, more recently in others. This is a little early for Pol, in terms of time on lees, and I am not certain that the wine would not have been even better with longer, but it is what it is.

I have seen reports detailing that the 2018 spent 96 months on lees, which is a little strange, given that if it were true, the wine would not be released until next year earliest. Whatever period it is, the 2018 will certainly live and improve for many years in good cellars.

Pol originally released this wine last year in London in conjunction with celebrations for their 175^th anniversary and the 150^th anniversary of the birth of their most famous customer, Sir Winston Churchill.

Pol Roger vineyards

The price will sit around the A$175 mark, varying in many countries due to several factors, not least tax (for those who will be impacted, perhaps jumping on this before tariffs take effect might be wise).

The 2018 vintage is becoming an almost legendary one, even in these early days. It will certainly sit with 2002, 2008 and 2012 as one of the superstars of the century to date (and likely 2019, and 2020 in time), and may well be the best vintage since the glorious 1988.

It is no surprise the last time we looked at a standard vintage release, rather than what might be termed ‘prestige’, was for the 2012 Pol Roger.

Curiously, the ‘8’ vintages have given us some of the most extraordinary years in champagne’s history – 1928, 1948, 1988, 1998, 2008, and now 2018.

By coincidence, the 1928 vintage was Churchill’s favorite, and the wine he drank when he met the famous Odette Pol Roger, starting a friendship that lasted their lives and even led to Pol’s prestige release being named after the great man.

For information on champagne vintages, Charles Curtis MW has the definitive tome with his “Vintage Champagne: 1899 to 2019”. He gives 2018 four stars – personally, I think in time that might climb to five, certainly for me. He describes it as a generous year, though perhaps a little light on acidity.

Curtis  does acknowledge that it really is too early to make a final conclusion. The year was the hottest on record to that stage, but it did not get a damaging heatwave, such as happened with 2003 (awful year). For what it is worth, Charles gives 2017 zero stars but he treats 2016 very kindly with three – something I simply can’t see.

2017 ended wet and with snow, leading to a cold February. April to June revived hopes of a good year, resulting in flowering ten days earlier than for the ten-year average. July and August continued the great weather, with that hot summer. Pol Roger reported that the grapes were in perfect condition when the harvest began on August 20^th. It continued for a further four weeks.

Pol Roger champagne cap

As is traditional with Pol Roger, the blend for the vintage is 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay from twenty Grand and Premier crus vineyards, located in the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Blancs. The wine has seven grams/litre dosage. The dosage has been ever so gradually reduced over the years, starting with the 2002 vintage.

The company has been hard at work making those 1% improvements across the board. As quality has been steadily improving across the region, this has been necessary if they were to maintain their position as one of the very best Houses. The wines are as exciting as ever.

Winemaking remains the same. The grapes are pressed on arrival at the cellar, with the must then cooled to 6ºC for a day. Fermentation is in stainless steel tanks at just 18ºC. The discrete plots are all made separately.

Malolactic fermentation then takes place. Blending occurs, before the typical second fermentation, whereupon the bottles are stored thirty-three metres underground at 9º C, for however so long they are on lees.

It’s worth noting that the 2018 Rose is also getting some serious attention, and many argue that they prefer it, even to this wine. One of those choices to which there is no wrong answer. I love them both, but this would be my winner.

It all begs the question of just how thrilling the Sir Winston Churchill 2018 will be when it is eventually released.

Pol Roger Brut Vintage 2018 champagne

Tasting notes: Pol Roger Brut Vintage 2018

The color is a deep lemon straw hue. This is a glorious nose – complex and yet fresh, intense and wonderfully fragrant. There are red fruits here, with touches of hazelnuts, florals, stonefruit, crushed herbs, a flick of strawberries, spices, and pink grapefruit.

There is a slight whiff of fresh brioche. It is tight, poised, youthful, refined, and simply sheer class. There is a hint of honeycomb on the finish and with time in the glass, evidence of little tropical characters. Bright acidity, a seductively creamy texture, immaculate balance, elegance, focus, and a very long finish.

A brilliant champagne that one simply falls head over heels for, it will easily handle the best part of twenty years in a good cellar, over which time the complexity will grow.

For me, this deserves 97, no less.

For more information, please visit www.polroger.com/en/champagnes/3/brut-vintage/2018

You might also enjoy:

Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2015 Champagne: “My tastes are Simple, I am Easily Satisfied with the Best”

Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2008 Champagne: Harvested To The Sound Of Gunfire; Drunk To The Sound Of Trumpets – Then And Now

Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 2006: From A Long And Complex History

Pol Roger 2012 Champagnes: Grand Releases For Perhaps The Grandest Vintage