100
Audrey Frick - jebdunnuck.com
The 2016 Champagne Cristal is chalky and pristine, with a crystalline nature and notes of white peach, fresh citrus blossoms, and bright salinity. Tasted for the first time last year, it captures a precise and focused energy that’s unmatched. It boasts the energy and tension of 2002 and the precision of 2008. The wet-stone minerality of fresh chalk texture is profound, opening with medium body, showing pinpoint mousse, and sustaining a weightless energy through the long finish. This is not an obvious wine on opening, but it is by far one of my favorite wines of the year. It is going to require some patience, but it is worth stashing away and should have fantastic longevity. Drink 2027-2050.
98 Wine Enthusiast
"This iconic Champagne, first made in the 19th century for the Tsar of Russia, shows its typical stunning balance and poise between richness and concentration. It has a pure white fruit and honeysuckle aroma and tight, tangy fresh fruit flavors. Just ready to drink, the wine will age well, for at least 20 years. Organic. -RV"
97 William Kelley - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
"The 2016 Cristal is a taut, incisive rendition of this benchmark bottling, unwinding in the glass with youthfully reserved aromas of citrus oil, white flowers, wet stones and subtle hints of sweet, buttery pastry. Medium to full-bodied, chiseled and racy, it's almost as electric as the brilliant 2013, with serious concentration, a pure core of fruit, chalky structuring dry extract and a long, intensely mineral finish. Given its tightly wound profile, my advice is to forget it in the cellar for a few years and work on the more open, outgoing 2014 in the meantime."
96 Wine Spectator
"This leads with pronounced minerality on the nose, but then a bright burst of tangerine, blood orange and Meyer lemon flavors on the palate hold sway, joined by rich hints of crème de cassis, toast point, pastry cream and crystallized honey. Showing beautiful integration and a refined, lacy mousse, this is compact and statuesque, with a sense of restraint and the hint of more to come, while at the same time offering lovely expression in the glass today. Fresh and focused on the persistent finish. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Drink now through 2044. 8,300 cases imported. -AN"
Cristal is a remarkably balanced and refined champagne whose length is inimitable. It has a silky texture and fruity aromas, complemented by a powerful mineral quality with white fruit and citrus notes. Cristal is a wine that keeps well: it can be conserved for over twenty years without losing its freshness and character." - Winery
