Cristal Vinothèque: The ultimate luxury fizz?

One of the most recognisable wines in the world, Louis Roederer’s Cristal is well-known as a symbol of luxury and status, yet it’s also one of the greatest Champagnes being made today, and its true merits as a wine are often overlooked. Unlike most of Champagne’s famous prestige cuvées, Cristal comes exclusively from vineyards owned by the house, which allows Roederer to craft a highly specific character for the cuvée, with maximum control over its viticulture.

This is true for all of the house’s vintage Champagnes, in fact: Roederer’s 242 hectares of vines are divided into seven different ‘domaines’, each of which is tailored – in soil type, vine age, grape variety and even viticulture – to producing a specific cuvée. The parcels in the Cristal domaine lie in some of the finest terroirs of the Montagne de Reims, Grande Vallée and Côte des Blancs, selected for the extreme chalkiness of their soils, and the final wine includes only fruit from vines that are at least 25 years of age.

Cristal Rosé comes from entirely different vineyards, and actually just four: Gargeotte and Bonotte-Pierre-Robert in Aÿ for the Pinot Noir, and Pierre Vaudon in Avize and Montmartin in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger for the Chardonnay. The Pinot Noir is lightly macerated before being blended with the grand cru Chardonnay, and the result is a rosé champagne of unparalleled finesse. Since 2008, all of the vineyards for Cristal Rosé have been farmed biodynamically, and as of the 2012 vintage, Cristal blanc is also 100% biodynamic.

Cristal Vinothèque

One of the hallmarks of Cristal is that it’s released very young, needing years – even decades – in the cellar to reveal its full potential. It’s only natural, then, that the house would create a Vinothèque program, featuring re-releases of older vintages. However, these are not merely later disgorgements of the same wines, but rather, they reflect a different approach to the idea of champagne ageing.

‘When I took over the winemaking in 1999, I had two goals,’ says Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, Roederer’s chef de cave: ‘One was in the vineyards, working on the long-term health of the vines, but the other was in the cellar, focusing on longer lees ageing and working on texture and aroma.’

This eventually resulted in the Vinothèque concept, launched in 2017 with the re-release of the 1995s. This year sees the release of the 1999s, the third vintage of Vinothèque and Lécaillon’s first that he made as chef de cave. The 1999 vintage was a warm one in Champagne, producing generous, fruit-forward wines that were delicious in their youth, but that have also aged remarkably well. While the original releases of 1999 Cristal and Cristal Rosé were disgorged in 2007 and released in 2008, the Vinothèques were both riddled in December 2008 but stored sur pointe, upside down, slowing autolysis and preserving more freshness of fruit.

The bottles aged in this manner for another eight years before being disgorged in December 2016, and then were aged on their corks after disgorgement for an additional three and a half years before release in late 2020. This results in wines that are markedly different from their original interpretations, offering a fascinating perspective on the role of these diverse types of ageing in Champagne.

With just 1,000 bottles of Cristal Vinothèque 1999 and fewer than 500 bottles of Cristal Rosé Vinothèque 1999 for the entire world, the real challenge will be getting your hands on one, and as expected, the prices reflect the wine’s rarity: £950 for the blanc and £1900 for the rosé in the UK. Yet they are undeniably terrific Champagnes, and worth tracking down.

Cristal Vinothèque tasting notes & scores: