Vilmart - Champagner Coeur de Cuvee Brut 1er Cru (Degorgiert März 2016) 2009

ANTONIO GALLONI: "A racy, exuberant wine, the 2009 Coeur de Cuvée offers up a super-appealing mélange of apricot, butter, baked apple tart and vanillin. The combination of the ripe, warm vintage along with fermentation and aging in small French oak barrels yielded an especially opulent Coeur de Cuvée with plenty of exotic and tropical overtones. The 2009 will be ready to drink with minimal cellaring. Disgorged March 2016. Dosage is 8 grams per liter."

THE WINEADVOCATE: "Disgorged in May 2016, Vilmart´s 2009 Coeur de Cuvée is predictably superb, wafting from the glass with a lovely bouquet of lemon oil, verbena, dried white flowers, walnut oil and wet stones. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied and fleshy but precise, with a voluminous mousse, incisive acids, superb concentration and more energy and tension than many examples of this vintage—no doubt amplified by Vilmart´s use of only the best press fraction for this bottling—concluding with a long, elegantly chalky finish. The blend is 80% Chardonnay and 20% Pinot Noir. This is a wine that merits ardent pursuit."

WINESPECTATOR: "Mouthwatering acidity is finely meshed with a minerally overtone and spiced flavors of poached apricot, mandarin orange peel, pastry cream and toasted brioche. Richly creamy in texture, with a lasting, lively finish. Disgorged May 2016. Drink now through 2029. 150 cases imported."