2006 Louis Roederer

(L036720D100203): Light, bright yellow. Intensely perfumed bouquet of melon, pear, jasmine and iodine, with mineral and buttered toast accents. Deeply pitched, palate-staining orchard and pit fruit and lemon pith flavors are brightened by zesty acidity and pick up a smoky nuance with air. Powerful but lithe, finishing with excellent thrust and lingering floral and mineral qualities.

The 2006 Brut literally jumps from the glass with rich layers of deep, resonant fruit. A big, broad-shouldered wine, the 2006 impresses for its sheer volume and size, but at the same time it retains the characteristic Roederer finesse. The elegant and sheer polish of the finish is more than enough to make it impossible to resist a second taste. This is an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous wine from Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon and his team. The 2006 is mostly Pinot from the north-facing Verzenay, which gives the wine much of its tension and sheer energy.

Orange zest, bruised apple skin, coriander seed, and hedge flowers rise from the glass of Roederer 2006 Brut, a 70-30 Pinot-Chardonnay blend a third of which was aged in cask with weekly lees-stirring. The palate impression here is at once richly expansive and tactilely pungent, with apple and peach fruit sappy and ripe but prominently marked by the piquancy of pips and pit. A roughly ten gram dosage emphasizes the impression of fresh ripe apple in a long, juicy finish, if with a result that some may find a tad divisively sweet-tart. It would certainly be interesting to follow bottles for a couple of years to see whether further depth emerges. Nov 2013, www.robertparker.com