Essi Avellan: Medium lemon-green. Nose is attractive, sweet and fruit-packed, with beautiful toast emerging underneath. Vanilla, cream, vegetal notes, and tropical fruit. Smooth, viscous, gentle palate with great intensity. Mature and mellow already, almost peaking. Fine, comforting, rich and soft style but has some overwhelming lactic and vegetal tones. 17.5

Andrew Jefford: Full lemon-yellow with a delicate, languid mousse. Rather inarticulate initially, but later some shyly attractive aromas emerge—broom and acacia. (The first bottle had cardboardy notes, but the second bottle was better and aromatically purer.) On the palate, it is more elegant and fresher than many of its peers in the Brut class. A lively, graceful, and vital Champagne, and remarkably youthful still, too, with enticing perfumes: The acacia and broom are very well drawn. The only thing holding it back from one of the highest scores is a slight brittleness of style, but this is nevertheless an excellent, lemony-fresh, springtime Champagne, with some miles left under its belt: well crafted and well preserved. 17

Tom Stevenson: First bottle: blown wheat. Second bottle: cleaner, fresher, but with malolactic showing through. 14.5