2006 Philipponnat Champagne Clos des Goisses

The 2006 Clos des Goisses has just been released into the market and is quite a classic vintage of this great vineyard, with a cépages of sixty-five percent pinot noir and thirty-five percent chardonnay. After eight years aging sur latte, this is still a youngster by the long-distance standards of Clos des Goisses, but the wine is showing lovely accessibility out of the blocks and this may be one vintage here that is hard to keep one’s hands off of bottles in their relative youth. The outstanding bouquet offers up a ripe and very precise bouquet of pear, hazelnut, gentle smokiness, beautiful limestone minerality, gentle leesiness and a topnote of dried flowers. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, crisp and rock solid at the core, with very refined mousse, excellent focus and balance, impressive nascent complexity and a very long, minerally and intensely flavored finish. This is still quite primary in terms of its development, but it is not overtly steely and dominated by its girdle of acidity out of the blocks and is really very, very easy to drink for such a young Clos des Goisses. Needless to say, it will be even better ten to thirty years down the road. 2016-2050. John Gilman 95. 

The 2006 Clos des Goisses is stellar, but it is also going to need quite a bit of time to come into its own. Powerful and ample in the best of the Goisses style, the 2006 hits the palate with serious intensity. Orchard fruits, lemon oil, white flowers and almonds are some of the many notes that open up in the glass, but, as is often the case with young Goisses, it is the wine's gravitas that is front and center. Even with all of its overtness, though, the 2006 retains striking, crystalline purity. I imagine the 2006 will reward Champagne lovers with many decades of truly exceptional drinking. The only thing the 2006 needs is time. The question is: How much? Vinous/Galloni 96