Nose shows orange peel, toast,pear, almond and limestone. The palate is wonderfully crisp and rich at the same time. Lime skin, limestone, apple, almonds and just a hint of strawberry or red fruit. Finish is medium length…it’s perfectly effervescent without being creamy…Yum! And much better than last years NV (or was it the year before)…digging it. (92 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
Serving this wine Monday at my wedding reception. So good!
Tony,
This still have the older style label or the newer one? I almost always liked this wine until the release based on 04. The next release based on 05 was better, but still not a great effort IMO. Now, the current one, based on 06 is very good again and after talking with the Peters, I still don’t know exactly why the 04 and 05 didn’t come out that well. Their reserve wine regime is basically a Solera that includes most of the vintages going back to 88. 04 and 05 weren’t bad years in Champagne. The dosage might have been tweaked slightly (it tasted like it was to me, but I was told that it “essentially” remained the same). Regardless, I’m convinced they just hit a bump in the road (everyone hits them even Krug) with the last couple releases of the NV and all is well. Their getting ready to release their first Rose this fall and the Les Chetillons Cuvee Speciale was a top effort in both 2000 and 2001 with the 97 starting to hit a very nice spot as it enters the start of its drinking window (which is a little early for a Cuvee Speciale).
Brad - looks like the older label but not sure I have seen the new one. Do you have pics of the old and new?
Lots of acid in this one but I love that in Champagne.
Tony,
I can’t find a link to the new label, but the old label can be found here at CellarTracker.
I didn’t even realize the lot coding had changed until your post. I then went down to look at my newer bottles and sure enough it has changed. I have no clue how to decode this. All of my bottles of the 04 and 05 based cuvee have the old label and old lot numbering system so my guess would be that you either have a later release of the 05 based cuvee or the new/current 06 based cuvee. If your label is the newer style then I think it would be the 06 based cuvee though it is probably possible some of the old 05 based cuvee came out with new labels and some of the new 06 based cuvee came out with old labels. I realize none of this is probably helping much, but such is Champagne.
Brad - just checked out the bottle and definitely the older label but the coding has changed a bit. Smaller and a little less easy to decipher.
In the lot code on this bottle, the only numbers are 02. So I wonder if this has some 02 wine in it? Who knows. It is very good though and I’m glad we picked up a bottle.
Tony,
It has some 02 in the reserve wine component, but wouldn’t have it as the base (or at least I wouldn’t expect it to), but I can’t find any “easy” correlation between the numbers on the bottle and disgorgement or bottling date. For example, I my 2002 vintage wine has an 01. I’ll have to ask Peter’s about the new coding.