Roederer Estate L'Ermitage 2011

Professional Ratings

• 95 Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
  COMMENTARY: Roederer Estate L'Ermitage is one of the world's top sparkling wines. In tasting through the years, I have always found the wines to exhibit superb balance and breed. TASTING NOTES: The 2011 L'Ermitage by Roederer Estate shows precise green apple and mineral aromas and flavors. The wine's palate is finely structured. Pair its crisp finish with fresh salmon sashimi with a light accent of lemon zest. (Tasted: April 4, 2018, San Francisco, CA)
• 95 Wine Enthusiast
  Dry and nicely mature, this complex wine is always among California's best bubblies. It combines great balance, tiny bubbles and some very interesting flavors that make it as appealing as a well-cellared white Burgundy at its peak. Hints of toast, butter and almond fill the aroma, and lemon, crisp apple and baking spices fill the palate. It has lively acidity that's softened by a good sense of body. Editors’ Choice
• 95 Wine & Spirits
  When Jean-Claude Rouzaud searched out a site for Roederer’s California sparkling wine estate, he settled on a cool spot for chardonnay and pinot noir—where vines could deliver flavor depth in their grapes before sugars rose to levels unsuited for sparkling wine. This 2011 is a vindication of that decision, a fragrant, elegant sparkling wine from a cool season, with flavor depth that sets it apart. Notes of fresh apple, honeysuckle and jasmine layer over an herbal austerity that tightens up the wine’s fruit, ending savory. That length of flavor is amplified by a small addition of reserve wines (four percent), aged five years in oak. Arnaud Weyrich blended it in a style formed and determined by its site, resulting in an honest, clean sparkler destined to become a classic.
• 94 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  Made with about nine grams per liter dosage and disgorged in March of 2017, the 2011 L'Ermitage Brut is drinking beautifully now but has plenty of room to grow. The nose opens shyly, slowly offering candle smoke, mushroom and toast with underlying red apples. The palate is surprisingly layered and very long, its savory notes opposed by saline notions and fresh acidic lift and enlivened by a creamy mousse. Winemaker Arnaud Weyrich says 2011 was the second time that grapes in Champagne were harvested before those in Anderson Valley, when the season there was a touch warmer than in Anderson Valley.

• 93 Wine Spectator
  Opulent and lush, but elegantly complex, with vivid fresh ginger, cinnamon roll and red berry aromas opening to rich, seamless apple and almond flavors that unfurl on the long finish. Drink now.