Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Brut Rosé Champagne 2015

The widow Clicquot gave us Champagne’s first rosé by the assemblage method in 1818. Almost 200 years later, the Veuve Clicquot house is using a plot of Pinot Noir – the Clos Colin in Bouzy – owned by Madame Clicquot’s husband to make a red wine, 13% of which is added to the white Grande Dame blend to make La Grande Dame Rosé. Just like the white version, this shows the best of 2015, its juicy strawberry shortcake fruit is friendly and warm up front. Tucked inside are intriguing layers of allspice, pink grapefruit, satsuma and jellied fruits, with a touch of brown bread richness, but little overt creaminess or butteriness – yet. There is an edgier, cranberry and hedgerow-fruit side too, which shows the vintage, but it stops well short of some of the harshness of 2015, showing the potential to surprise greatly with further ageing. Impressive. Drinking window: 2025-2035. Score – 95. (Tom Hewson, decanter.com, May 16, 2024)