Press

“L’Ermitage is not made every year, but when it is, it’s perhaps the most graceful sparkling wine made in California.”

California’s Roederer Estate should be one of the more familiar names if you’re a fan of fizz. Former Louis Roederer president Jean-Claude Rouzaud founded the winery in 1982 in a then-remote and unrpvoen Anderson Valley. The winery has been one of California’s leading and most consistent domestic sparkling wine producers ever since. Case in point, its precise and pristine Brut Anderson Valley NV has achieved 90-plus ratings for the past ten releases.

“Champagne has a finite acreage in the appellation,” Weyrich said. ​“The family felt that creating its own estate in California with a similar philosophy of its farming and winemaking in France would help expose Louis Roederer to a new generation of fine-wine drinkers in the U.S.”

Guest of honor French President Emmanuel Macron will be treated to an all-American menu featuring U.S. wines with a noteworthy French connection.

Redwood trees are like skyscrapers in the mountains around Anderson Valley, a remote slice of Mendocino County in California that seems unblemished by civilization. It was an unlikely location for Louis Roederer to establish a California outpost in 1982. Back then, most Champagne houses were investing in Napa or Sonoma, and Anderson Valley was a farflung and untested location, with only a handful of wineries and vineyards.

When Champagne Louis Roederer set up shop in California’s Anderson Valley four decades ago, it was a bold move. It’s paid off with delicious wines and a bit of a sparkling boomlet in the valley.

This trove of great sparklers from around the globe is reason enough to celebrate this year. Put a few bottles on ice and toast to better times on the horizon. Happy New Year to you!

Bloomberg’s wine critic takes on the assignment of finding American wines that go well with the holiday feast, are surefire crowd-pleasers, and were made with sustainability in mind.

Wherever you are, your local wineries are producing sparkling wines from unconventional grape varieties or unconventional methods such as pétillant-naturel. If you’re feeling conservative, there are always reliable bubblies from California that put American flair on the traditional model.

Illustrious winemaker Arnaud Weyrich crafts some incredible wines in the Anderson Valley at Roederer Estate, as we taste his very special 2013 L’Ermitage bottling.

Who knew Boonville, California would be the destination of an enviable and legendary sparkling wine enterprise with a centuries long French connection? Correspondent Molly Blaisdell and her associate Jamie Hilgendorf explore, taste and learn about Mendocino Coast’s legendary sparkling wines at Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley.

According to many producers, 2020 was an exceptional vintage. From Santa Barbara to Anderson Valley, good news is rising from the ashes in areas that avoided smoke damage and in sites where harvests were completed before the blazes. Most of California’s premier growing regions, including Napa Valley, Sonoma, Mendocino County, and the Central Coast, experienced low rainfall in early 2020, setting the regions up for a low-yielding season. Not only did this translate to concentrated, high-quality fruit, but it led many vintners to harvest early, escaping the devastation of the fires.

It is hard to believe that one of the California greats in sparkling wines was founded back in 1982. It was the vision of Jean-Claude Rouzaud, president of Louis Roederer, who saw the cool climate and rolling fog of the Anderson Valley to craft some of the region’s finest sparkling wines. The 580 acre estate produces four sparkling wines: the multi-vintage Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut, debuted in 1988, the Brut Rosé and Roederer Estate’s vintage tees de cuvee, L’Ermitage and L’Ermitage Rosé.

With retail prices that range from $14 to $160, domestic sparkling wines offer both quality and value. As for this year’s top sparkling wines, Roederer Estate continues its winning streak. The Mendocino-based winery’s Brut Anderson Valley L’Ermitage 2012 was the No. 5 wine of Wine Spectator’s Top 100 of 2019. This year the Roederer Estate Brut Rosé Anderson Valley L’Ermitage 2012 (95, $75) is effusive with blood orange and lemon peel flavors that show hints of marzipan.

Produced exclusively from estate-grown grapes, and with a healthy dose of reserve wines that have been aged in oak — including a dosage from 2011 that spent five years in barrel— L’Ermitage represents the apex of what Roederer Estate does so well. The blend in the 2013 is 52% Chardonnay and 48% Pinot Noir, and it’s in a remarkable place of its evolution right now, leesy and biscuity on the nose with sweet spice and pistachio aromas anchoring apricot conserve and lemon marmalade. The palate is deep and rich, carrying flavors of marzipan, preserved lemons, apple fritters, Seckel pears, kumquats, a hint of Galia melon, and taut spice and minerality along the spine. It’s layered and maturing brilliantly, and still has another decade and a half of life ahead of it.

This year I thought it would be fun to examine wines that rarely receive much attention: American sparkling wines made in the Champagne style. Roederer Estate, a branch of the Louis Roederer Champagne house, grows all of its grapes in the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County, and carries that appellation.

Champagne house Louis Roederer established this California outpost in 1982, and its tête de cuvée, L’Ermitage, has impressed since its debut with the 1989 vintage. Succeeding founding winemaker Michel Salgues in 2002, Arnaud Weyrich raises the bar with this bottling, the highest-scoring L’Ermitage to date.

Another California sparkling wine estate, Roederer is located in the Anderson Valley. It’s the American winery of Champagne house Roederer. Among the wines…

Roederer Estate in Mendocino’s Anderson Valley, whose winemaker is France-born Arnaud Weyrich, is another house of bubbly that’s known for capturing the essence of Champagne. Roederer Estate Brut Anderson Valley L’Ermitage is among the cadre of consistently outstanding California bubblies, and the 2011 is opulent and lush but elegantly complex, with vivid fresh ginger, cinnamon roll and red berry flavors that unfurl on the long finish.

When you buy a bottle of Champagne, do you buy it because it comes from a certain village? Or do you buy it because you like what the brand offers in terms of the…