(2019) With 40% of reserve wines in the blend, from harvests up to 15 years old, this is always one of the most complex of the Grande Marque Brut NVs. The wine is also unusual in that the 60% of the base vintage is made from one-third each of the three main Champagne grapes. It has a sumptuous nose, creamy, toasty, with fig and hazelnut, a hint of ripe peach then onto the palate where that toastiness is alluring, but the sweet nectarine of the fruit fills the mid-palate before excellent, shimmering acidity gives great accuracy to the finish.
(2019) Fine pear and baked apple aroma, and there is lovely perfume here, with apricot and peach overflowing onto the palate, the palate is mouth-filling and luscious, but there’s a cool minerality, a touch of leafiness adding a bightness, very juicy and streaking with mineral and salts acidity.
(2016) Real violet and kirsch lift. A fine, elegant fruit, a strawberry sweetness but lovely bite of plum and cherry, taut with its tight tannins and cherry skin acidity, smoothed by some of that creamy, chocolaty depth.
(2015) Ex-Formula 1 race engineer Lawrence Warr's estate was planted in 2007, again with classic Champagne varieties, this vintage dominated by 70% Chardonnay and having spent 46 months on the lees. There's a more developed, slightly more oxidative character to this, with those truffle and bruised fruit notes that are so authentic and so attractive, then a creamy and sweeter-feeling palate that is delicious sippable - indeed gulpable - before a long and charmingly fresh finish. Another beauty from the 2010 vintage.
