This has a pale apricot color and aromas of baked apple, spiced pear, honey and croissant. It’s creamy and flavorful, with soft and rounded bubbles and a lightly spicy finish.

Like many Charles Heidsieck Champagnes, this bottling has a fine poise between freshness and maturity. So coming through the yeasty aroma are rich white fruit and textured, toasty flavors. It is full and now ready to drink. (RV)

The new release of Charles Heidsieck “Rosé Réserve” non-vintage Brut is from the base year of 2018 and was disgorged in 2023. It is characteristically a quite pale salmon color. The wine includes twenty-five percent reserve wines in the blend, which are a blend of solely chardonnay and pinot noir. For the wines from 2018, they are an equal blend of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier. This makes the final cépages of the wine forty percent pinot noir, thirty-five percent chardonnay and twenty-five percent pinot meunier, with five percent of the blend being also composed of still red wine made from pinot noir. The wine delivers a bright and youthful nose of tangerine, cranberry, chalky minerality, rye bread, dried roses and incipient smokiness in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and racy, with a lovely core of fruit, fine mineral undertow, elegant mousse, bright acids and a long, complex and beautifully balanced finish. This is certainly quite tasty today, but like all of Charles Heidsieck’s wines, it is built to age and will be an even finer drink three to five years down the road. Fine juice.