The Millésime 2018 by Taittinger is a vintage champagne. This vintage captures the expression of a single year's harvest in Champagne.
It's a cuvée that opens on juicy white fruit and delicate floral notes, before revealing, with time, more indulgent hints of brioche and almond. This aromatic evolution comes hand in hand with a round, enveloping texture, carried by a lovely balance of freshness and roundness.
This is a bottle you can pour from the aperitif onwards, alongside comté gougères or smoked almonds, before bringing it to the table with a creamy Bresse chicken or a morel risotto.
Le Terroir
The Millésime 2018 is a blend of:
- 50% Chardonnay
- 50% Pinot Noir
These are Premier Cru grapes that Taittinger sources across Champagne's terroirs, without limiting itself to a single village to compose this vintage cuvée.
Premier Cru classification guarantees an origin among the region's best-situated plots, a mark of quality reflected in the wine's precision. This diversity of plots allows the House to draw on several expressions of Champagne terroir to build the vintage's balance.
Across these terroirs, Chardonnay lends the wine its tension and freshness, while Pinot Noir gives it body and roundness that lend structure to the whole.
La vinification
Alexandre Ponnavoy, Taittinger's cellar master, built this equal blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for the 2018 vintage. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks, a choice that preserves the grapes' natural freshness rather than adding oaky notes. Malolactic fermentation was carried out in full: it softens the wine's acidity and gives it a velvety mouthfeel, rounder than a wine in which it was blocked.
The dosage is set at 9 grams per litre, corresponding to a classic dosage within the Brut category. This measured amount refines the wine's balance without ever masking its freshness, leaving room for clean, precise flavours carried by the fruit and by the cellar master's craft.
Le millésime 2018
Spring 2018 proved especially bright in Champagne, encouraging early flowering: late May for Chardonnay, early June for Pinot Noir. This head start held through to harvest, which began as early as 20 August and continued into early September, in ideal summer conditions. The crop promised to be excellent, with abundant, sugar-rich and highly expressive bunches.
Born of these conditions, the Taittinger Millésime 2018 blends equal parts Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with 70% Grands Crus and exclusively Premiers Crus making up the remainder. It then ages for more than five years in the cellar to reach its full expression. This generous maturation gives a wine that is rich and vibrant, true to the promise of this sun-soaked year.
Opinion of thewine guides