The 2006 Cristal shows rich and ripe (tropical) fruit on the nose along with delicate brioche notes. Round and textured on the palate, this is a generous but fresh, fine and salty Cristal with a very long and greatly finessed finish. Tasted in New York, November 2018.

During the Matter of taste event in New York, when we celebrated the 40th birthday of The Wine Advocate, I gave a Louis Roederer Cristal master class together with Roederer’s chef de cave, Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon. This master class was a great chance to close some gaps in our database. Most of the wines had not yet been reviewed, and those that had been reviewed previously ended up receiving a higher score than right after the release. I did not write new reviews/tasting notes for on the vintages that we published only recently, but the vibrantly chalky and energetic 2008 Cristal is really on a great path.

by Stephan Reinhardt, November 2018, for Wine Advocate

Roederer’s 2006 Brut Cristal is striking in its sense of lift and delicacy, serving as one of many instances where those bringing preconceptions of this vintage’s warmth and ripeness of fruit to their experience may be pleasantly surprised. A nose of fresh apple, fennel and cucumber sets up associations with a slaw or salad that are crisply, lusciously and refreshingly redeemed on the palate. A garland of honeysuckle and heliotrope complements subtle suggestions of raw almond and vanilla, while alkaline and iodine notes as well as cooling but pungent green herbal notes add to the soothing yet stimulating finish. This exceptionally poised, refined, and buoyant performance is apt to gain depth with a few years’ bottle age.

Owners of vast vineyards (totaling some 500 acres) that supply the majority of their fruit, Roederer also presides—by design as well as due to that vastness—over a mind-bending number of micro-vinifications, divided entirely between tanks and foudres, supplemented by a concomitantly deep and diverse range of reserve wines. But for all of the variety that these phenomena entail, scarcely any lots undergo malolactic transformation.

by David Schildknecht, November 2013, for Wine Advocate