POL ROGER 2012 BRUT CUVEE WINSTON CHURCHILL

You know Pol Roger must be doing something right when top-grower producers like Pierre Gimonnet and Diebolt-Vallois proudly sell them their grapes. The reason of course is the firm’s unsurpassed quality. The key is Director Laurent d’Harcourt’s ability to synergistically use traditional practices in concert with “state of art” tools. Everything in the cellar is done by hand, in fact Pol Roger employs four of the nine full-time riddlers remaining in Champagne. These skilled men turn fifty to sixty thousand bottles a day in a process that takes 4-5 weeks to complete. Laurent believes that this painstaking handwork is less invasive and more precise than mechanized riddling. With nearly 50% of Pol Roger’s grape requirements being purchased, the company has wisely cultivated multi-generational relationships with their growers and provided contracts that pay generous bonuses for quality. In the first sixteen years of this century the house invested nearly 20 million dollars to completely modernize its fermentation, storage and bottling facilities. The result is an immaculate world of polished steel and shiny white tiles that has been likened to a NASA assembly room. The firm’s goal is to achieve optimal freshness and finesse in their base wines and believe that undersized, cold-jacketed stainless-steel tanks are the best means to achieve this. Second fermentations are also slow and cool thanks to Pol Roger’s deep (33 meter) caves. The focus on excellence in the field and winery has only burnished this Grand Marque’s sterling reputation as well as increasing demand for the brand. Meanwhile production has stayed constant. D’Harcourt says, “We could increase our size but we would lose our soul.”

WINE ADVOCATE 96+ POINTS - "Pol Roger's newly released 2012 Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill is showing brilliantly, bursting from the glass with youthful aromas of honeyed pears, toasted brioche, pomelo, fresh pastry, green apple and mandarin orange, with hints of stone fruit emerging with time in the glass. Full-bodied, vinous and textural, with an enveloping core of fleshy, concentrated fruit, bright acids and an elegant pinpoint mousse, it concludes with a long, penetrating finish. More muscular and vibrant than the generous and charming 2009, the 2012 ranks alongside the 2008 and 2002 as one of the three finest renditions of Sir Winston Churchill this millennium—and in style it resembles a hypothetical blend of those two vintages." (03/11/21)