Essi Avellan: Deep, bright lemon-gold. Full, soft, beautiful toast-complexed nose. Buttery-creamy with plenty of fruit. Noticeable but carefully crafted use of oak without any oxidation. Highly full-bodied, rich and impressive. Velvet-smooth and concentrated. Beautiful succulent acidity and very long length. Excellent in a blockbuster style. 18.5

Simon Field: A generous nose combines spicy oak with orchard fruit, harmonious from the outset. The palate marries ripe-fruit natural sweetness with soft oaky support and will appeal immediately to those who wish for a whisper, but absolutely no more, of oak in their Vintage Champagne. This is a very sound philosophy to my mind. 17

Tom Stevenson: Intensely flavored, Pinot-dominated, extraordinarily fruity in a yeast-complexed, kindly sulfidic mode—i.e., reductive rather than oxidative. Will be a great Champagne, but you do need to keep this a year or two before its true potential starts. 18.5