Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rosé 2006

The 2006 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rosé is at once rich and refined, a simply fabulous Champagne Rosè I won’t soon forget. Intensely perfumed, with the Pinot Noir-derived red berry and cranberry flavors that are not just concentrated, but also remarkably pure. It is one of the better Rosé bubbles I have had in the last year.

From a high-maturity vintage that saw a September harvest, the 2006 Comtes de Champagne Rosé—disgorged in 2016 with a dosage of nine grams per liter—is showing beautifully, bursting from the glass with a bouquet that mingles aromas of cacao nib, wild strawberry and sweet spices with hints of burnt, buttered toast. On the palate, it's medium- to full-bodied, ample and vinous, with succulent yet racy acids and a long, perfumed finish. Tasted side by side, the 2006 Comtes de Champagne Rosé reveals a slightly tauter musculature than the currently more overtly gourmand 2009. When Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger reacquired Taittinger, restoring it to family ownership, the house ceased using herbicides from 2006 onward in its estate vineyards, renewing its commitment to cultivating living soils.

Take Taittinger's prodigious chardonnay and add 15% pinot noir to create this masterful prestige rosé that has a mid red hue and plenty of assertive pinot red fruits on the nose. Really impressive aromas of Turkish delight, cherries, chalky minerals and pink grapefruit. The palate has a fine core with some bolder red fruit flavors and pinot noir weight. Really impressive, deep and even, with much to come if you hold for three to five years before drinking.

It is not like I drink seventeen year-old Comtes de Champagne Rosé every day, and here I get to drink the 2006 vintage out of both bottle and magnum within a few weeks of each other! Whereas the 2006 Comtes Rosé is fully into its apogee of peak drinkability in regular-sized format, out of magnum it is still a tad on the young side and could do with a bit more bottle age to allow it to more fully blossom. The bouquet is pure and gorgeous, offering up scents of cherries, blood orange, a beautiful base of chalky soil tones, rye bread, a touch of citrus peel, dried rose petals and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and still quite primary in personality, with a rock solid core of fruit, great mineral undertow, refined mousse, zesty acids and impeccable focus and balance on the long, precise and very promising finish. I cannot believe how young this wine still is out of magnum! 2026-2075.