| Score: |
98 JG.
"The 1996 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne has been a stunning example of the vintage since day one and at age twenty it is still not fully at its apogee of peak maturity. I had not tasted a bottle in five years and in the ensuing time the wine has started to really come into its own, with secondary layers of maturity starting to color the stunning bouquet of pear, delicious apple, brioche, complex, limestone minerality, toasted almond, orange zest, gentle smokiness and a lovely topnote of fresh nutmeg. On the palate the wine is deep, pure and utterly seamless, with its full-bodied format vivid and focused. The core is rock solid, the soil signature is exemplary and the finish is endless, electric and very complex. The wine is just now entering its plateau of maturity, where it should cruise along for decades and decades. One of the finest vintages of Comtes de Champagne I have ever had the pleasure to taste." John Gilman, View From the Cellar, Sep/Oct 2016, Issue #65 |