taittinger blanc de blancs comtes de champagne

Taittinger

Taittinger, Blanc de Blancs, Comtes de Champagne, 2013

Name: Taittinger, Blanc de Blancs, Comtes de Champagne
Brand: Taittinger
Price: 691.93 GBP

96/100

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

95/100

The Wine Independent

98/100

Vinous

Available Vintages

all 2011 2013

delivery

in bond

Broking

2013
6x75cl
DP
£691.93

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

A triumphant rendition of this iconic Taittenger Blanc de Blancs. Brimming with all the energy and tension you’d want to see in a long-lived Comtes release. It’s a wine built up out of fine layers of flavour, a concentrated composite that floods the palate in multiple dimensions. It is full of rich ripe fruit yet feels driven and controlled by a salty, acid driven energy; a combination that leaves your palate both seduced and uplifted. The composition for the blend features Chardonnays from the heart of the Cotes de Blancs – the five Grand Cru Villages of Avize, Chouilly, Cramant, Mesnil-sur-Oger and Oger, a narrow strip of terroir whose soils provide minerality, strength and aromatic delicacy. Vinification is primarily done in stainless steel tanks to retain freshness and purity. However, 5% of the wine is aged for four months in new and second fill oak barrels, to increase depth and complexity. The key factor in the poise and finesse of Comtes though, is the nigh on 10 years it spends ageing sur lie in the bottle. This contributes abundant autolytic character; brioche, vanilla cream and toast accents, that make this wine so alluring. We’re big fans of the best of the 2013s, an extremely late vintage by today’s standards and one of the few to see harvest arrive in October. Taittenger Comtes 2013 is a captivating rendition of the year, a wine of precision and focus, more intense than concentrated, open and full of energy. Ripe citrus fruit, lemon cream and peach stone juxtapose the enticing vanilla infused pastry notes that envelop the palate. It tightens up on the finish to leave a persistent taste imbued with ginger, liquorice and lemon sherbet with a saline, mineral lift that lingers beautifully. Drink it now or cellar it for a decade or more.

delivery information

GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of utmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.

Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.

We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.

We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.

The Journey

Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.

This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.

While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.

Further Reassurance

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.

Critic Reviews

98/100

Antonio Galloni,

Vinous

The 2013 Comtes de Champagne is a towering Champagne, as it was last year. Rich, sumptuous and explosive, the 2013 soars out of the glass with a captivating mix of tropical fruit, apricot, passion fruit, baked apple tart, mint and yellow flowers. It is one of the most explosive, extroverted Comtes I have ever tasted. Impressive.

drinking window 2025 - 2053

date of review 03/2024

96/100

Yohan Castaing,

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2013 Brut Blanc de Blancs Comtes de Champagne's bouquet is compellingly fresh and minty, revealing aromas of white fruitnotably pear and applemarzipan and sweet spices, as well as a light touch of citrus mingled with classy autolytic notes. On the palate, this is a structured, tensile and ethereal Champagne with high aciditya sign of a classic vintageanimated by a mousse of striking finesse and delicacy. Although already enjoyable, it should develop well for several decades.

drinking window 2023 - 2045

date of review 09/2023

95/100

Sarah Mayo,

The Wine Independent

Taittinger’s 2013 Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs captures an abundance of finesse from Champagne’s cooler 2013 vintage. Mineral-rich and taut, it opens with honeyed notes of ripe citrus, poached nashi pear, butter wafers, and crème fraiche that gradually gain aromatic intensity as it unfurls. Light to medium-bodied, it has well-heeled, vibrant acidity that lends an energetic tension and freshness to the long, toasty finish. This subtly assertive and refined Comtes de Champagne should evolve beautifully with bottle age for 15+ years. Drink 2023-2040.

drinking window 2023 - 2040

date of review 09/2023

product details

Specifications

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abv:

12.5%

allergen information

This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.