There’s change afoot at Champagne Laurent-Perrier, with a new cellar master and a team that’s been built around promoting the brand’s prestige cuvée: Grand Siècle.
For those who know Laurent-Perrier, particularly in the UK, it tends to be for its rosé – a non-vintage pink Champagne that combines class-leading quality with beautiful and distinctive packaging. Indeed, within the famous, stubby, dark green bottle is a fizz made using only Pinot Noir, which gives the wine its colour due to a brief skin-contact with the black grape – an unusual approach when the vast majority of pink Champagne is made by blending a touch of red wine with white. But less well-known within the Laurent-Perrier range is its pinnacle expression. Called Grand Siècle, it too comes in a distinctive and beautiful bottle, and also eschews convention in Champagne – when almost all prestige cuvées hail from a single harvest, Laurent-Perrier’s top fizz is a blend of vintages. In fact, it is always a combination of three years, chosen for their complementary qualities. And there are a further two aspects to the prestige cuvée: it is Chardonnay-dominant – using grapes from a selection of 11 grands crus – and it spends a minimum of 10 years ageing on its lees. The result is a Champagne that has enough depth to make it instantly-appealing, as well as the freshness to give it a long-life post-release: Grand Siècle ages extremely well. While the product and its appearance are exceptional, Grand Siècle’s level of
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Champagne
