Christine Havens

9.5

As stately as I expected it to be (can one really expect anything less of a wine as legendary as Cristal in one of Champagne's most celebrated vintages?) glinting pale gold, the color of a freshly-minted coin. The 2002 Champagne Cristal Brut Millésimé is imbued with soaring notes of pear and smoke, brioche and chalk. Disgorged in 2009, this is a precise wine—it has a sort of crystalline weightless density, with fruit buoyed by a fine mousse, and edgy saline-tinged minerality emerging at the close. 10 grams dosage.

"You must be as precise as a Swiss watchmaker, I tell my team," our host, M. Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, Chef de Caves at Roederer stressed. Precision in spades. — 10 years ago

James Hart

9.5

Spicy, liquorice plums, wrapped up in cedar wood. Very long finish. Top notch. — 12 years ago

K H

9.6

Top notch champagne $120 per bottle and worth it — 13 years ago

Jonathan Hird

9.8

This is up there in the top 5 wines I've tasted. — 13 years ago

Greg Gregory

10

Spectacular! Mind blowing. One of my top 10 of all time. On every serious wine lover’s bucket list, and here we had a nigh perfect bottle. While aromatically a little recalcitrant, you still got some of the Margaux violets and potpourri on the nose, hints of clove, all trying to shake off their doldrums. But on the palate, it was timelessly ravishing. The finesse, richness, balance and smoothness, with an underlying, almost flabbergasting mixture of complexity and delicacy, was just astonishing. The finish is marvelously sweet and intense, with chocolate and cassis and utterly seamless tannins. This is a miracle of wine making and an exaltation of vintage and terroir besides. Wow! And bravo! We can only pray for an encore of such a wine. — 10 years ago

Gary Westby

Champagne & Sherry buyer K&L Wines

10

Three pounds of prime top sirloin and a mag of Montebello- report to follow. — 13 years ago

with Cleora

Andrew

9.7

Le Bernardin, your chef Eric Ripert is right about Bordeaux and French fish. — 11 years ago

Guy Lunardi

8.9

1990 Rieussec as part of a four Sauternes horizontal tasting. Drank end of December 2014. Deep deep caramel color for the bottle we had. A cork soaked to the top and ready to collapse. The bottle might not have been stored in the best of conditions. Still, an excellent Sauternes. Watch for oxidation from leaky corks. — 12 years ago

Scott Stephens

9.8

Ulee's Cabin, on top of the mountain in Crested Butte, only accessible by Snow-Cat. — 13 years ago

Nicolas Ratsey

9.1

Wine spectator top 100 2013 — 13 years ago