Staff Notes:
"The new release of Champagne Doyard’s “Cuvée Vendémiare” non-vintage Blanc de Blancs Brut is from the base year of 2014, though this only comprised fifty percent of the blend. The remainder is thirty percent from 2013 and twenty percent from the vintage of 2012. Only fifteen percent of the vins clairs go through malo, with the forty percent of the wines raised in older Burgundy barrels prior to bottling up for secondary fermentation. It was aged sur latte for fifty-six months and finished with a dosage of four grams per liter. The wine delivers a superb nose of pear, golden delicious apple, chalky minerality, crème patissière, spring flowers and just a hint of buttery oak. On the palate the wine is brisk, full-bodied, focused and complex, with a rock solid core of fruit, superb mineral drive and cut, refined mousse and a long, perfectly balanced and extremely promising finish. This bottling is always built to age well (I have had superb examples with twenty years of cellaring) and the new release, though approachable now, really deserves some time in the cellar to start to deliver some of its secondary layers of complexity and soften up its acids." 92 Points John Gilman, View from the Cellar