Piper-Heidsieck Champagne Brut Rare Rose Millesime 2008

The 2008 Champagne Rare Rosé is straight-up sensational. Only the second time they’ve produced this cuvée, it offers a deep, full-bodied, powerful yet chiseled and laser-focused style carrying loads of wild strawberry fruit as well as notes of orange blossom, spice, and crushed rocks. Backward, austere, yet simply loaded with potential, it needs a solid 4-5 years of bottle age and will drink brilliantly for two decades or more.

A vibrant Champagne, ballet-slipper pink in color, featuring intense flavors of nectarine, ripe raspberry, grilled nut, espresso and graphite, with a touch of dried sage, all riding the finely detailed mousse. Like a ballerina, this offers power in a graceful form. A beautiful skein of spice unravels on the lasting finish. Drink now through 2033.

The 2008 Brut Rosé Cuvée Rare is the second rendition of this cuvée ever produced, and the wine is showing very well, unwinding in the glass with a youthfully shy nose featuring white cherries, blood orange, Meyer lemon, honeysuckle and dried white flowers that offers the promise of considerable complexity to come. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, racy and tight-knit, with good concentration, beautifully integrated acids and a fine mousse, concluding with a long, saline and delicately phenolic finish. This is really quite reserved after its recent disgorgement but should develop beautifully with a few years on cork.