Now this half bottle is handy if you wish to toast yourself. Pol Roger is one of the world's power house champagne houses. Famously quoted by the likes of Winston Churchill and the champagne of choice for Her Majesty the Queen. An equal blend of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, with addition of 20% reserve wines. It is impressively fresh and vivacious with more depth than most aperitif styles.

Piper Heidsieck NV is a champagne with great fruit, a good mouthful and a harmonious balance. Fresh fruit dominates the nose, predominantly pear and russet apple with a few hints of citrus fruits such as star fruit. The finish evokes flavours of fresh grapes, and a touch of aniseed, followed by a structured and a full-bodied finish. A juicy, fleshy pear and golden grape texture in the mouth, and the finish narrows to citrus and grapefruit flavours.

At the House of Krug, every vintage is crafted to celebrate the distinctive character of a particular year. Krug 2011 is so opulent yet crisp, the House’s Tasting Committee nicknamed this Champagne “Spirited Roundness”. For Krug, the year 2011 gave birth to a surprising Champagne allying finesse and power with a spontaneous, vibrant side born from this fiery year. Krug 2011 is ample, generous, and assertive. To tell the story of 2011, a selection of Pinot Noir plots’ wines constitutes almost half (46%) of the blend, imparting beautiful structure and magnificent balance, while Chardonnay plots’ wines (37%), most affected by the heat spikes, imbue ripe and juicy fruit aromas, and Meuniers (17%) add a wonderful freshness with elegant bitters. The striking profile of Krug 2011 comes after 12 years in the cellars, gaining in expression, harmony, and finesse. As all Krug Champagnes, Krug 2011 will continue to gain with the passage of time.

In some ways, this is the emblematic wine of the domaine. It was Michel Bettane, the influential French critic, who encouraged Francis Egly to bottle this single-vineyard wine separately, with the first release based on the 1989 harvest. This latest offering was bottled after the 2017 base had spent close to one year in cask before blending with 50% reserve wines from the 2016 vintage. The vinification and aging for both vintages took place in barrel. The fruit comes from old Pinot Noir vines in a single terroir known as Les Crayères. The vines here were planted in 1946, so they are now 75 years old (vines of this age are extremely rare in Champagne). The soil is barely 30cm deep, then it’s chalk, hundreds of metres down—hence the name of the site (craie is French for ‘chalk’; crayères references chalk quarries which likely once existed here). Les Crayères is situated mid-slope with a full south-facing exposure, not far from the estate’s cellars. The old vines are deeply rooted, giving the wine a classic mineral energy that weaves its way through the powerful, layered Pinot Noir fruit. The deep concentration is a product of the ripeness and low yields that the site and its ancient vines confer. The 2017 base is a tribute to the greatest sites of Ambonnay and the Egly-Ouriet domaine. Houses that emphasise blending may consider a 100% old-vine Ambonnay like this to be too intense; Egly gives it to you full throttle! This release has both profound depth and incredible finesse. It’s still early days for the nose (if you open it now, give it time), while the palate is already stunning: a layered yet chiselled, mineral mouth bomb. The dosage is only 2 g/L, and it’s invisible. As always, this unique expression of a singular terroir is built for food and aging. Give it two to three years, and it will be even better.

Disgorged July 2024. Minéral is blended from two adjacent vieilles vignes plots (50-plus years old) on the border between Avize and Cramant, where the vine roots plunge straight into the chalky bedrock. The fruit from Le Champ Bouton in Avize fermented in tank, while the component from Les Bionnes in Cramant was vinified in 600-litre oak casks—“barrels for the expression of minerality and tank of the precision”, as Pascal puts it. The wine spent over five years on lees and was dosed at 3 g/L. Typically the saltiest, most mineral wine in the Agrapart range, this is also incredibly deep and vinous this year—Meursault-like but with an iodine/salinity that is uniquely Côte des Blancs. A great release of this wine!