This Champagne is complex, like a mature white wine, with rich fruit, nutty notes, and a creamy mousse. In mouth, a rich mix of brioche, toasted hazelnut, and dried fruit, with hints of fresh custard and white peach. It’s intense and food-friendly, drinking well now and potentially interesting over the next decade.
Wine Independent Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW: 98 Points
"At Domaine Henri Giraud, the Perpetual Reserve has been the family’s most carefully preserved heirloom for many generations. This perpetual reserve, handed down from generation to generation, represents both a secret and a legacy for the Giraud family. From the beginning of the 1980s onwards, this treasure has been enriched by the passage in small barrels, and this practice was definitely adopted in 1990.
PR 90-20 is a blend of two of the Domaine's perpetual reserves - one nourished by the 'Aÿ Grand cru Füt de Chène' from each vintage since 1990, and the other by the 'Esprit Nature' Henri Giraud. With this, Sébastien Le Golvet - master of time as well as the cellar - introduces amazing energy to a great white wine and opens up a whole new dimension: one in which space and time are suspended, and in which complexity, fruit, and spirituality intertwine with shimmering wreaths of orange blossom shot through with flashes of chalk and bitter minerality.
Channelling this fantastic energy, born of the fusion of Champagne’s hundred-million-year-old twin marine terroirs - Aÿ’s chalk and Argonne’s gaize - into a long, saline river, perfumed with subtle aromas, where emotion, carried to its height, borders on the mystical."
