Cellar Selection. Maturity gives the wine toastiness while retaining the background of fine fruits and texture. It is an impressive Champagne, as always: rich while also balanced, with a touch of minerality. Drink the wine now.

The 2012 Brut Rosé La Grande Dame is the finest wine I've tasted from Veuve Clicquot in several decades. Offering up aromas of red berries, bee pollen, orange zest and freshly baked bread, it's medium to full-bodied, pillowy and precise, with a deep core of fruit and a vibrant, tightly coiled profile, concluding with a penetrating, sapid finish. This isn't the muscular, powerful Clicquot style of yesteryear, but it's a compelling effort in a fine-boned, more polished register.

A crowd-pleaser for its fine balance and integration, offering a mouthwatering mix of wild strawberry and peach fruit, biscuit and salted almond flavors. Hints of anise, pink grapefruit zest and honey show on the creamy finish. Disgorged January 2019. Drink now through 2027.