2015 Roederer Estate L'Ermitage Brut Anderson Valley Champagne Blend

2015 Roederer Estate L'Ermitage Brut Anderson Valley

97 JS

From the critics:

96 WE

94 JG

Featured Review

This is a powerful and dense sparkling wine that is first and foremost a classic-quality wine. And then you think about the bubbles. Full-bodied with lots of brioche, pie crust and bread dough. Great finish. Five years on the lees. 52% chardonnay and 48% pinot noir. Drink now. James Suckling

James Suckling | 97 JS

This grand, special-occasion wine is wonderfully complex and layered, but also powerful in the way its toasted walnut, Bosc pear and fresh bread flavors start out strong in the aroma and keep pumping on the palate and through a lingering finish. Nice and dry, tangy but mouthfilling, it’s a sophisticated indulgence. Best now to 2028.

Wine Enthusiast | 96 WE

(Roederer Estate “l’Ermitage” Brut Vintage (Anderson Valley)) The 2015 vintage of l’Ermitage has continued to open up nicely over the course of the last eight months since I last had the pleasure to drink the wine. It is certainly going to be one of the more powerful and long-lived vintages of this flagship bottling, but it is already quite open and enjoyable to drink in its relative youth. As is customary, the wine’s cépages is slightly tilted to chardonnay, with the blend being fifty-two percent chardonnay and forty-eight percent pinot noir. It was finished with a dosage of eight grams per liter in this vintage. The wine remains youthfully complex on the nose, offering up scents of apple, pear, a lovely base of soil tones, gentle smokiness, warm bread and a bit of incipient nuttiness just starting to show in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, crisp and soil-driven, with a superb core, elegant mousse, excellent focus and grip and a long, complex and utterly refined finish. Fine, fine juice in the making. (Drink between 2022-2070)

John Gilman | 94 JG

Type of Wine	Sparkling : Sparkling wines have a unique identity among the various wine categories. As their name suggests, they're carbonated, which creates an interesting, compelling texture and combination of flavors. The flavor of a great sparkling wine is so lush, refreshing, and smooth; it goes down like soda water while tasting infinitely sweeter.
Varietal	Champagne Blend : The Champagne blend is one of the most distinctive styles of winemaking in the world. This illustrious blend of grape varietals hails from northeastern France, in the winegrowing region of Champagne. The magical combination of varietals perfectly marry to the terroir, climate and topography of the region, creating a sexy, seductive and fascinating sparkling wine that is synonymous with success and celebration. The primary grape varietals cultivated in Champagne and most used for blending are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. In fact, there are seven permitted grape varieties in the Champagne AOC (controlled designation of origin) though the other four are so rarely used they are often forgotten (Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc Petit Meslier and Arbane). The three grape varietals of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier account for about 99% of the region’s plantings. Chardonnay is planted to 10,117 hectares, Pinot Meunier is planted to 10,521 hectares while the most widely planted, Pinot Noir, covers around 12,950 hectares. Chardonnay brings crisp and refreshing nuances to the effervescent wine blend. When used as a single-variety offering, the wines are named Blanc de Blancs, and account for only around 3% of all Champagne bottlings. Pinot Noir is the staple in Champagne blends and interestingly, is planted in more hectares in Champagne than its ancestral home of Burgundy. It is one of just two allowable red grapes in the region. Pinot Noir brings body and mouth-filling structural texture to the blend. When used as a single-variety its creation is called Blanc de Noirs (white wine made from black-skinned grapes). Pinot Meunier, the other red grape permitted in Champagne brings red berry flavors and balances the overall blend. Though historically a blending grape, 100% Pinot Meunier Champagne wines are becoming increasingly popular. Champagne has privileged environmental influences that give the wines produced here specific, unique characteristics that are often imitated but never duplicated. Its northern location, rugged climate, distinctive soil type and hillside vineyards makes Champagne terroir the only one of its kind. The first distinguishing factor is that Champagne enjoys a dual climate influenced by oceanic currents and continental winds. The oceanic currents help to keep the temperatures cooler, while the continental influence brings precipitation which are both essential for quality grape production. Terroir is the second major component to the success of the grapes of Champagne to grow and prosper. It is composed mostly limestone (75%) chalk and marl with a limestone subsoil. The fissured medium provides good drainage, promoting the health and development of the vines. Each soil type is important to the stages of development. The chalk in Champagne consists of granules of calcite formed from fragile marine shells and micro-organisms. This highly porous compound assists in water movement into the root system. The limestone, being less porous allows the right amount of water to be collected while restricting erosion. Marl is just as important and contains highly rich minerals which allows the growth of berries with intense flavors. The third distinguishing factor is the gift of Champagne’s natural landscape where the rugged and hilly terrain greatly assists in water drainage and root growth. The average gradient is around 12% with some of the slopes reaching grades as steep as 59%. The higher elevations receive greater sunlight than lower elevations at the same latitude. This feature alone creates diverse micro-climates within the region allowing grapes grown in different locations and at different Champagne houses to have unique characteristics. The varietals of Champagne, the terroir of the region along with the oceanic and continental climatic influences come together to create one of earth’s most breathtaking wine styles. From the many styles and offerings, Brut (dry, raw or unrefined) to rose, vintage to non-vintage, Champagne blends offer to the world a euphoric, effervescent experience that cannot be matched.
Country	US : As one of the most prolific and innovative wine regions in the world, America is a joy to explore. Most wine connoisseurs will agree that the nation's finest and most compelling wines are being produced today, which means that we have front-row seats to one of the most inspirational stories in wine history. While other regions tend to focus on specific wine styles and have somewhat strict rules as to which varietals you could grow, areas like California have few such restrictions in place. As a result, creative visionaries behind America's most reputable estates have been able to develop compelling, unique, and innovative styles, with a level of terroir expression that rivals even France's largest giants.
Region	California : With a history of wine production that dates back to the 18th century, California currently sits as one of the world's most prolific and reputable wine regions. With an area as vast as California, you can expect a colorful collage of terroir profiles, a series of microclimates, and micro-environments that give the wine a unique, memorable appeal. The region's produce is far from homogenized in that sense, and it would take you countless hours to sample all of it. While the region boasts scars from the Prohibition era, it went through what can only be described as a viticultural Renaissance sometime after the 1960s. At that point, California went from a port-style, sweet wine region to a versatile and compelling competitor on the world market. Today, no matter which way your taste in wine leans, you can find a new favorite producer among California's most talented. Notable sub-regions include legendary names like Napa Valley and Sonoma County, places that any wine lover would die to visit. California's quintessential warm climate allows for incredibly ripe fruit expressions, a style that provides a stark contrast to Old World-inspired, earthy classics. Even where inspiration was clearly taken from staple French appellations, Californian winemakers put their own unique spin on the wine.
Subregion	Anderson Valley

Producer	Roederer Estate : The great Louis Roederer, founder of the eponymous and world-renowned Champagne house, insisted that all great wine depends on the quality of the soil, a passion for tradition and an astute vision of the future; a strategy that remains a core component of the house’s continuing development. Building on a 200-year tradition of fine winemaking, Roederer Estate Brut became the first California sparkling wine produced by Champagne Louis Roederer, debuting in 1988 and changing the landscape of both, sparkling wine and California winemaking. The storied Champagne house launched their Anderson Valley estate in 1982, and has since established its reputation as one of California’s premier sparklers, remaining true to the heritage of excellence and style of its French origins. The genius behind Roederer Estate, Jean-Claude Rouzaud (former president and CEO of Champagne Louis Roederer) understood that first-rate estate vineyards create exceptional sparkling wines, which is why he selected the original 340-acre Anderson Valley AVA (American Viticultural Area). Located 125 miles north of San Francisco near the Mendocino Coast, Anderson Valley (officially recognized as an AVA in 1988) offers the cool climate and well-drained soils that are ideally suited for crafting fine wines, especially cool climate varietals essential for the production of sparkling wine. The premium grape growing region’s proximity to the ocean gives rise to a gentle cycle of warm days and cool foggy nights. The fog created by the contact of the cool and dry inland air with the humid marine layer allows grapes to mature slowly on the vine and develop full varietal character. Using only Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes grown in its own vineyards, Roederer Estate vinifies wines in the classic method as practiced in Champagne. Several steps occur before the second fermentation (a necessary step in the production of sparkling wines) including a meticulous pressing process in order to extract the juice but also carefully prevent the grape skins’ bitter flavors and color (in the case of black grapes) from seeping into the juice. Once the base wine or “cuvee” is prepared, the art of blending occurs in which reserve wine (older wine intentionally held back from previous vintages) is added, which may consist of 100 to 200 different wines, each offering their own unique attributes and character. This is the process in which their Roederer Estate Brut (Multi-Vintage) comes to fruition. In addition to the Brut, the estate produces Brut Rose, L’Ermitage and L’Ermitage Rose. Annual production at Roederer Estate eclipsed 100,000 cases in 2010 and is ever increasing given their continuous efforts in acquiring new vineyards. The wines of Roederer Estate have garnered the attention of consumers and critics alike, regularly receiving exceptional reviews and ratings by top industry reviewers and magazines. The estate has managed to find itself in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines for the past 10 years and is drawing praise from the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Robb Report, among others. Tim Fish of Wine Spectator commented “Roederer Estate is arguably the best and most consistent sparkling wine producer on the West Coast.” (July 2022).