Champagne house Louis Roederer is retiring its long running Brut Premier and debuted a new creation of Collection, a multi-vintage blend Champagne, that will open a new chapter for the house.
With Collection, Louis Roederer combines its longstanding pursuit of excellence with a new spirit of freedom to achieve its constant objective: to create the best possible champagne with each blend.
Collection 242, the first release from the Collection, is crafted from 34% Perpetual Reserve, 10% oak-aged reserve wines from the 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 vintages, complemented by 56% of the finest wines from the 2017 harvest: the Chardonnays in general and Pinots noirs and Meuniers from the Vallée de la Marne in particular.
The Collection number, which represents the number of blends since the foundation of the Louis Roederer Champagne House in 1776, will allow champagne lovers, like collectors, to choose their champagne according to their preferred degree of youth or maturity, says Louis Roederer.
The wine is available in Hong Kong through its exclusive distributor Links Concept.
The new concept is testimony to both the Louis Roederer founding vision, that of a winemaking approach founded on the long ageing required to craft remarkable wines, and the capacity for constant innovation and reinvention that has led it to continuously explore new territories.
Thus, this new wine is in line with the other Louis Roederer creations while expressing an evolution in structure, form and style that marks an important milestone in its history.
“Since 1776, Louis Roederer has continually opened up new avenues, innovating to take the expression of its terroir ever further. This quest is that of a family-owned and independent Champagne House that has always placed great value on freedom as it allows to create and revisit tradition in order to keep it alive and constantly moving forward. Today Collection, a new wine that is very much aligned with its times, is a perfect testament to the Champagne House’s mission to be the best possible interpreter of the great terroirs of Champagne,” said Louis Roederer CEO, Frédéric Rouzaud.
“The times we live in, climate change, the importance of practising a sustainable viticulture that respects the living environment are all factors that we wanted to take into account. These are what have given us the impetus to take the quality of our blends to the next level, allowing ourselves to take a bold and uninhibited approach,” Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, Cellar Master.
For Collection, Louis Roederer has taken the fine art of plot selection even further. From the heart of the Champagne terroir and with a focus on sustainable growing, it has selected the vineyard plots that are perfectly suited to the identity of the new wine and the most appropriate for the year’s specific blend.
Each bunch of grapes that goes into Collection is carefully selected both upstream – in the vineyards – and downstream, at the time of harvesting and pressing, in order to retain only excellence.
The creation of Collection is also influenced by the introduction of a “Perpetual Reserve“, which began with the 2012 vintage and has been enriched each year with wines from the latest harvest stored in large capacity oxygen-free stainless-steel vats. Over the years, this Perpetual Reserve will be further enriched with new wines from each new harvest to create a template of infinite complexity, freshness and energy.
In parallel, Roederer has greatly increased the proportion of oak-aged reserve wines contained in the blends. These wines from previous years and young plots on the Cristal estate, aged in large French oak vats (foudres), are a Louis Roederer hallmark. They provide a perfect point of balance with the freshness created by the Perpetual Reserve, giving the wine greater intensity and honing its salinity.
The new Collection 242 also comes with new packaging.
The boxes are 100% recyclable and crafted from FSC-certified paper. They highlight the Louis Roederer’s visuals, which are directly inspired by Nature and bear witness to the creative partnership that Louis Roederer has always enjoyed with Nature.
