Plenty of freshness with citrus notes, such as grapefruit, followed by Russett apple and crunchy, juicy pear. An ample and intense Champagne, it spent a minimum of three years on its lees, giving the wine further complexity and fine bubbles.
When Piper-Heidsieck completed their new winery in 1995 it gave the winemaking team the best equipment in the region with which to fashion great Champagne. There are 200 fermentation, storage and blending tanks: necessary as the Brut NV wine is made from a blend of over 100 wines, each cru and grape variety is kept separate until the final ‘assemblage’.
Daniel Thibault, responsible for designing the winery, was the first winemaker at Piper-Heidsieck to win the International Wine Challenge Sparkling Winemaker of the Year trophy – he won it six times in total. In 2014 the present winemaker Régis Camus won it for the eighth consecutive year, the ninth time in total – an amazing personal achievement and one which highlights the quality of the house’s wines.
Régis is keen to apportion credit for his Sparkling Winemaker awards, he sees it as a team effort and claims, ‘It would not be possible to win it without a dedicated winemaking team’. The award is made each year in recognition of the quality of the house’s wines and the medals they receive at the I.W.C. competition that year; Régis sees this award as being recognition of the quality of the wines from both Piper-Heidsieck and the Champagne region. In an article on Wine-searcher.com, December 2013, Tom Stevenson lists Piper-Heidsieck as one of his five most under-rated Champagne producers.
Over the last two decades Régis has been building the collection of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir reserve wines often from Grand Cru sites, and at the same time increasing the proportion of these in the Brut NV blend to around 15% as he believes this is a key component to give the wine generosity on the palate.
Ethical productionAll Piper-Heidsieck Champagnes are made without the use of animal derived products and are suitable for both vegetarians and vegans.
