Domaine Carneros: Tasting Le Reve

Elin McCoy recently tasted vintages of Domaine Carneros' top sparkling wine, Le Reve, including the 'prototype' 1988...

Domaine Carneros at a glance:

Ownership Champagne Taittinger

Founded 1987

Hectares under vine 162

Soil Thin, shallow soils, predominantly clay

Location Los Carneros, Napa and a tiny bit in Sonoma

Scroll down to see Elin’s Le Reve tasting notes & scores

2018 is the 20th anniversary of Domaine Carneros’ first sparkling blancs de blancs, Le Reve (‘the dream’), one of California’s most expensive tete de cuvées. It’s aptly named – creating a great blanc de blancs in the state was the dream of Claude Taittinger of Champagne fame, and so he founded Domaine Carneros in 1987. Taittinger was one of several Champagne houses – including Roederer, Mumm and Moët & Chandon – that saw potential in Northern California and arrived during the 1970s and 80s.

What’s unique about Domaine Carneros, though, is continuity: Eileen Crane has been there since the beginning, arriving right after Claude Taittinger bought 56ha in Carneros and founded the brand with the Kobrand Corporation. Crane oversaw everything, from building a winery modeled on the Chateau de la Marquetterie, south of Epernay, to the winemaking. Domaine Carneros now produces eight excellent, vintage-dated sparklers made by the traditional method, but Le Reve has always been the winery’s standout. It’s fruitier and broader than Taittinger’s Champagnes, but the tasting revealed that a thread of understated elegance and delicate sophistication runs through all the vintages – Crane calls it ‘Audrey Hepburn style’. With age, the wines develop a mineral, toasty dimension and exceptionally long finish.

Of the several dozen producers of sparkling wine in California, only a few – such as Roederer Estate’s richer, more voluptuous L’Ermitage – have as much finesse, complexity and longevity as Le Reve.

The tasting

To demonstrate just how well Le Reve ages, winemaker and CEO Eileen Crane staged a retrospective in the Lalique design showroom in New York. We sipped a span of vintages from an 1988 prototype to the 2011, all from Lalique wineglasses and surrounded by Art-Deco-inspired chandeliers and furniture. It seemed a great fit for the style of the wines.

The wines in the tasting had all been disgorged six months earlier. The 1988 prototype is rustic compared to the others, possibly because of its 20% Pinot Blanc. Over the past two decades, Crane has reduced that to 2% or less and constantly experiments with different clones of Chardonnay. The bubbles have gotten finer and tinier, and the dosage lower, now at 8-9g/l.

But another key to Le Reve’s character is location. Carneros, Crane reminded us, was the first California AVA to be determined by climate. Though warmer than Champagne, it’s cooled by maritime breezes and fog flowing up from the San Pablo Bay, ensuring grapes retain the kind of acidity essential for sparkling wines to age.

To me, Le Reve is best after 10 years; my favourites in the tasting were from the very cool 1992 and 2005 vintages.

Elin’s top 6 vintages of Le Reve:

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