Louis Roederer's chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon is redefining non-vintage champagne as we know it to meet the challenges of climate change.
The second is riper grapes. As the Champagne region warms up, the harvest has pushed forward by a month, producing riper, healthy, vintage-quality grapes. Roederer is not the first to espouse a vintage-based cuvee. Jacquesson and Krug walked this path before him. The front label of grower champagne Telmont tells the whole story. CEO Ludovic du Plessis cites transparency as one of his core values, inspired by the whisky industry's specific labelling standards. "My wine's label is its ID," he says. "I wanted everything on the front of the bottle, not just the back."
Roederer's new reserve perpetuelle, a solera-style collection of wines from 2012, is maintained in a reductive stainless-steel environment without MLF. New wines from recent vintages are added yearly, increasing the complexity and acidity of the reserve.