A delicious collaboration with France's guru designer of cool, this goes against the grain of Louis Roederer and has no dosage, making it very dry. It's dense and powerful with layers of fruit. It’s also full and almost spicy with a long and powerful finish. Soft texture too. If you closed your eyes, it tastes like a red. Starck actually was involved with the blend; he says it's so good you almost don't need the bottle. But the bottle makes it. A blend of two-thirds pinot noir and one-third chardonnay. No malo. Drink now.

Philippe Stark and Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon collaborated on the concept and philosophy behind this wine, a blend of three parcels on what Lécaillon calls a “single coteau” in the deep, cold clay soils of Cumières. He harvested all the grapes together, at the optimal moment for pinot noir, when the meunier was a bit overripe and the chardonnay less than perfectly ripe, crushing and co-fermenting them (half the lot in large oak vats, half in stainless steel), eventually bottling the wine with low pressure (4.5 kilos of pressure rather than the typical six). It’s a wine that needs decanting, gaining depth and roundness as it opens from extremely dry cider apple and barely ripe nectarine to red fruit flavors, roses and vanilla bean. The texture is what Lécaillon believes ties this wine to Roederer’s style; here, that texture seems to me to fall somewhere between the cottony abrasion of chalk and a mouthwatering, cloud-like mist.

Disgorged December 2014) The first release of a non-dosé wine from Louis Roederer, the 2006 Brut Nature was produced entirely from fruit grown in the house’s parcels in the vineyard of le Chèvres in Cumières. It is a blend of fifty-five percent pinot noir, twenty-five percent pinot meunier and thirty percent chardonnay, with all of the grapes co-fermented. Half of the vins clairs were barrel-fermented and half were fermented in stainless steel, with none going through malolactic fermentation in 2006. Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon decided to bottle this at a lower pressure, and it was disgorged after seven and a half years on the lees, with both decisions obviously intended to prevent the wine from being unduly tensile on the palate when released. The wine is absolutely excellent, as it offers up a superb bouquet of pear, apple, a touch of menthol, salty soil tones and a topnote of dried flowers. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and beautifully balanced, with a fine core, elegant mousse and a long, racy finish where the acids are very well-buffered by depth of fruit and bottle age. A very, very auspicious first bottling of Brut Nature from Maison Louis Roederer. (Drink between 2015-2030)

Sleek and minerally, this firm Champagne is softened by a swathe of silky texture, offering a tapestry of persimmon, pear, chalk and lemon zest flavors, with rich hints of pastry and chopped almond. Graceful and ethereal, this features a lasting saline impression that echoes on the finish. Drink now through 2026. 250 cases imported. –AN