Top Recommendations: 1996 Champagnes
Vintage 1996 is second only to the 2008 as the best ever recorded Champagne vintage (according to Wine Advocate). Champagnes from this vintage are exceptionally long-lived and rewarding, and most are now starting to enter full maturity (although with probably one to two decades of improvement ahead of them). These Champagnes are increasingly hard to source, and we regard these as some of the best investment buys in all of Champagne for the next decade, mainly on the strength of the vintage on and difficulty of buying them today.
Top Recommendations: 1996 Champagnes
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Vinous (98)
Dom Pérignon’s 1996 Rosé P2 is rich, vertical and explosive, with that combination of structure and inner perfume that makes it so alluring and so flat-out delicious.Inc. VAT£1,470.80 -
Vinous (99+)
Light gold. Remarkably perfumed nose projects an exotic bouquet of deep, leesy yellow fruit, minerals, honeycomb, smoked meat and flowers, with Asian spices building expanding in the glass. Almost painfully concentrated, offering a surreal parade of orchard and pit fruits, smoked meat, toasted brioche and marrow braced by intensely salty, stunningly incisive minerality. Imagine a Frankenstein's monster of Chablis Le Clos and Clos Ste. Hune-but one with perfect balance, of course-and you get an idea of what I found in my bottle. The energetic, stony character builds exponentially on the finish, which didn't seem to, well, finish. The best analogy I can come up with for the intensity, focus and clarity of this Champagne is liquefied barbed wire. Utterly hallucinatory and one of the most amazing wines I've ever been fortunate enough to drink. At the risk of sounding completely out of touch with reality, this is a value.Inc. VAT£1,739.21
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Vinous (98)
Dom Pérignon’s 1996 Rosé P2 is rich, vertical and explosive, with that combination of structure and inner perfume that makes it so alluring and so flat-out delicious.In Bond£1,223.00 -
Vinous (99+)
Light gold. Remarkably perfumed nose projects an exotic bouquet of deep, leesy yellow fruit, minerals, honeycomb, smoked meat and flowers, with Asian spices building expanding in the glass. Almost painfully concentrated, offering a surreal parade of orchard and pit fruits, smoked meat, toasted brioche and marrow braced by intensely salty, stunningly incisive minerality. Imagine a Frankenstein's monster of Chablis Le Clos and Clos Ste. Hune-but one with perfect balance, of course-and you get an idea of what I found in my bottle. The energetic, stony character builds exponentially on the finish, which didn't seem to, well, finish. The best analogy I can come up with for the intensity, focus and clarity of this Champagne is liquefied barbed wire. Utterly hallucinatory and one of the most amazing wines I've ever been fortunate enough to drink. At the risk of sounding completely out of touch with reality, this is a value.In Bond£1,444.00