The Busy Wine Lover's Guide to Louis Roederer

© Eric Zeziola/Louis Roederer | One-quarter of Louis Roederer's vineyards are farmed using biodynamic methods.

History

In 1833 Louis Roederer inherited the Champagne house Dubois Père et Fils from his uncle, Nicolas-Henri Schreider, for whom he had been working since 1827. Upon acquiring the company, Roederer changed its name and set out on a quest (unusual at the time) to purchase vineyards in some of the best growing areas of the Marne. After his death his son Louis Roederer II took over the running of the house and began to export his Champagnes to the United States and Russia. In 1876 he became the sole supplier to the Russian Court when he created the cuvée "Cristal", in a clear bottle without a punt, especially for Tsar Alexander II.

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Following Louis' sudden death in 1880, the company was passed over to his sister Léonie, and her son Léon Olry-Roederer took over the reins when she died eight years later. When Léon died in 1932, his much younger widow Camille held on to the near-bankrupt house against all odds. For the next 42 years her shrewd, entrepreneurial character would nurse the house back to a profitable enterprise through the Great Depression and World War II. She continued the tradition of buying great vineyards, when prices had dropped after the war.

Her lavish receptions at the Olry-Roederer's family home in Reims introduced a whole new generation of wine-loving royals to the joys of her Champagnes. Fans included Gustav V and VI of Sweden, Frederick IX of Denmark and Queen Elizabeth II. Upon Camille's death, her grandson Jean-Claude Rouzaud ran the house until 2006, when his son Frédéric took over.

Today Louis Roederer is the largest independent, family-owned and -managed Champagne house.

The vineyards

Louis Roederer has always invested in their vineyards. Today the house owns 240 hectares (593 acres), predominantly from grand cru and premier cru villages. The estate vineyards account for 70 percent of production and only the non-vintage Brut Premier and the Carte Blanche include purchased grapes and wines.

The original Louis Roederer familiarized himself with his different vineyard parcels and subsequent generations have retained a firm focus on the vineyard. Roederer has now split up the vineyard holdings so that specific plots are designated for particular cuvées, and the aim is to have the same people tending the same vines year after year. They have always farmed as sustainably as possible and, in 2002, were the first Grande Marque house to adopt biodynamic farming. Twelve years later, more than a quarter of their vineyards are farmed this way; with 65 hectares, they are today the largest biodynamic producer in Champagne.

© Eric Zeziola/Louis Roederer | Cristal was originally made in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II of Russia.

The wines

The non-vintage Brut Premier and the Carte Blanche are traditional three-way blends of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier with the addition of minimum 20 percent reserve wines. The only difference between them is the dosage level – Brut Premier is dry and Carte Blanche is lusher in style.

However, Louis Roederer is particularly known for its vintage Champagnes, made exclusively from estate grapes with the range comprising Blanc de Blancs, Brut Vintage, Brut Rosé Vintage and of course Cristal. Each of its 410 plots are vinified separately, and then carefully "combined" for each cuvée; Cellarmaster Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon does not like the word blending. "My 500 tanks are different shades on a painter's palette – I add different colors until I am happy with the combination," he says.

Cristal is often considered as the first prestige cuvée in Champagne because it was a custom-made wine for Tsar Alexander II. In the reign of his grandson, Nicholas II, more than 600,000 bottles of the wine were shipped to Russia annually until the October Revolution of 1917. Production came to an abrupt halt once the Bolsheviks took over. No Cristal was made until 1928, when Léon Olry-Roederer produced a small batch. The Champagne was released by his widow in 1938 in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

In 1974, Jean-Claude Rouzaud created Cristal Rosé and, in October 2014, Frédéric added the latest vintage cuvée to the portfolio, the 2006 Brut Nature. According to Lecaillon this wine has been made by completely turning their backs on everything he and his team have always done. The collaborating designer Philip Starck wanted to create a modern Champagne – a wine of the future. He was particularly looking for authenticity in its most natural state, to reveal the very heart of the wine. This inspired Lecaillon and his team to go against all classic rules of Champagne making. The wine is made from a single year, one terroir (their biodynamic vineyards with clay soils in Cumières), picked in one day, co-pressed and co-fermented, with less mousse (1.5 bar lower pressure than normal) and no dosage. The essence of this cuvée is its uniqueness. Even if Lecaillon feels they can make a similar wine in sun-drenched years, he stresses that "the next vintages will be different, as the aim of the cuvée is to express the essence of a specific place in a specific year."

The people

In terms of wine style, Jean-Claude Rouzaud has probably left the biggest mark. At Roederer he was actively involved in the winemaking process and introduced the Cristal Rosé 1974. He also invested heavily in other wine properties. In 1982 he created Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley, California; in 1990 he purchased Ramos Pinto in Portugal; and in 2003 he bought a second California sparkling wine specialist – Scharffenberger Cellars in California's Anderson Valley. Over his years at the helm the house also invested in several premium French estates: Château de Pez and Château Haut-Beauséjour in Saint-Estèphe, Domaines Ott in Provence and, closer to home, Champagne Deutz.

Frédéric Rouzaud took over from his father in 2006, and he is the seventh generation of the family to manage the house. He was the instigator behind the Brut Nature project, which he launched as soon as he took over.

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon joined Roederer in 1989. After several stints at Roederer's subsidiaries abroad he returned to Reims in 1994 to work as chief enologist. In 1999 he became chef de cave and has been a leading force in Roederer's biodynamic approach.

© Louis Roederer | Jean-Claude Rouzaud (L) was actively involved in the winemaking at the house, while his son Frédéric worked on the Brut Nature project with Philip Starck (far right).

Not a lot of people know

Jean-Claude Rouzaud is a passionate diver and pilot. He combined both passions in 2003 when he was part of the team that salvaged the wreck of writer and pioneering aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s plane off the coast of Marseille. The plane had gone missing in 1944 after Saint-Exupéry had left Corsica.

Eight years earlier, in May 1995, he was involved with another diving expedition, which resulted in the salvage of the head of a statue of Empress Sabine, the wife of Roman Emperor Hadrian. The statue had originally been discovered in 1875 in Carthage, but the warship Magenta carrying it back to France was shipwrecked. All pieces but the head were salvaged and the statue was displayed headless in the Louvre. After the salvage of the head and subsequent restoration, the Louvre was able to display the complete statue.

What the critics say

Most critics speak very highly of Roederer's wine. Essi Avellan describes Cristal as her "desert island wine", Tyson Stelzer admires the "attention to detail in the vineyard and winery", and Michael Edwards describes Lecaillon as "the most creative chef de caves of the grandes maisons, always ready to think outside the box of conventional assemblage; this is particularly the case for the vintages and of course Cristal".

Several celebrities also had a weakness for the wine: Cristal was the Champagne of choice of rappers Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G. and 50 Cent until Frédéric Rouzaud's unfortunate remark in 2006 about rap culture. Oprah Winfrey chose the Cristal Rosé to celebrate her 50th birthday and sent a handwritten note to Jean-Claude Rouzaud to thank him.

Roederer's – and specifically Cristal's – continuous commercial success, even in the face of the last recession, proves that the customer agrees with the critics and the celebs.

Prices worldwide on Wine-Searcher (US$, ex-tax, per 750-ml bottle):

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