CHAMPAGNE HENRIOT, BLANC DE BLANCS, CHAMPAGNE, FRANCE, NV

Overview of the Wine
Founded in Reims in 1808, Champagne Henriot is one of the few remaining family-owned houses with over two hundred years of independence. Over the years, the house has cultivated an audacious approach and a distinctive, luminous style of its own, guided by the pursuit of the purest expression of Chardonnay.

The Henriot family’s strong relationship with Cellar Master Laurent Fresnet and partner growers is essential in creating each Henriot cuvée and maintaining its uncompromising quality standards. With the use of an exceptionally high proportion of reserve wines, as well as predominantly Premier and Grand Cru vineyards, Champagne Henriot produces a distinguishable freshness and quality in each cuvée.

In 1880, when Paul Henriot, 4th generation of the family, married Marie Marguet, from a family owner of Grands Crus in the  Côte des Blancs, a new grape variety joined Maison Henriot’s vineyard: Chardonnay. In order to pay tribute to it, the Henriot family decided to make a Champagne with the same blending philosophy established by Apolline Henriot in 1808.  Henriot Blanc de Blancs is thus a blend of all the vineyards planted with Chardonnay, expressed through different periods of life.

Grape / Blend
Chardonnay

Origin
Champagne, France

Winemaker Notes
Tasting reveals an exceptionally fresh minerality, enhanced by the significant proportion of reserve wines, with the promise of excellent cellaring potential.

The nose expresses freshness with delicate citrus fruit and white fleshed peach notes. The freshness continues on the palate with great clarity as the lemon hint continues and melts into notes of buttery brioche. Beautiful length and wonderfully rounded in the mouth.

93 Points – Wine Enthusiast
This is great Champagne, in the bottle-aged Henriot style. It’s a classic Chardonnay, ripe, creamy, packed with yellow fruits, and finely balanced with a great waft of toast. A high percentage of older vintages in the blend gives this wine richness, maturity, without ever losing its crisp edge.

93 Points – Tasting Panel
This all-Chardonnay assemblage is made up of 30% reserve wines, mainly from the Côte des Blancs. After an introduction of honeyed floral aromas and delicate pastry scents, the fine bubbles dissipate quickly to release notes of key lime, orange blossom, toasty egg bread, and an array of citrus and stone fruit. It finishes on a mineral note—breezy and lean

91 Points – Wine Spectator
Lightly toasty, with a hint of grilled nut lacing the poached apple, fleur de sel and lemon pastry cream notes. Fresh and balanced, with the fine mousse carrying the flavor range on the creamy finish. Drink now through 2022.

90 Points – Wine & Spirits
This wine’s light chamomile scent and spiced apple flavors give it a pure chardonnay profile. That, plus its powerful leesy grip, led one taster to describe it as “Chablis on steroids.” It’s rich and creamy, taking on fresh depths of pale chalk and pea-tendril flavors as it opens. The blend, including 40 percent reserve wines, is seamless.

90 Points – James Suckling
A nicely captured reductive edge here, this holds white peach and apple aromas fresh with dried white flowers and a very gentle nutty, cashewy thread. The palate’s bright, creamy and fruity; it throws big fruit flavors upwards with crunchy acidity.
D90Decanter
Rich, creamy, full-bodied expression offering lifted toast, bread crust and brioche aromas and fruity quince, apple and mineral flavours; long and harmonious.

Product size: 750ml