Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque 2006

Professional Ratings

• 95 Wine Enthusiast
  This is a full-bodied and ripe wine, showing some toastiness as well as the delicious, concentrated apple and peach flavors. There is a crisp edge to this opulent and rich wine. It has a great future: it is drinkable now but will continue well into the 2020's.
• 92 Wine Spectator
  Tightly knit flavors of poached apple and apricot, lemon parfait, spun honey and ground anise are wrapped around a core of minerality in this harmonious Champagne. The refined, raw silk—like texture carries the smoke and chalk accents on the long finish. Drink now through 2027.
• 92 Wine & Spirits
  A soft and approachable 2006, this wine has casual elegance, integrated sweet scents of cinnamon toast, touches of pale red fruit and tighter seashell minerality. Well made and firm, this is a festive wine for Dungeness crab.
• 92 Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
  One of the most romantic bottles on earth, the 2006 Perrier-Jouët is one of the most approachable grande marques one could ever find. Perhaps that is why this is so good now. One does not have to wait. Just find the right occasion and unleash the genie. Medium straw color, tiny refined beads, dried apple aromas, a hint of yeastiness, alluring and gentle complexities; medium bodied, a fine ease on the palate; dry for sure, but pleasingly soft in acidity, well balanced; fine apple, light yeast in the flavors; long finish, smooth in the aftertaste. (Tasted: September 29, 2014, San Francisco, CA)
• 91 Connoisseurs' Guide
  Rich and yet not at all lavish and, in fact, a touch tighter in its basic construction, this slow-to-show effort gradually reveals a keen bit of autolysis neatly matched to its vital, if comparatively subdued fruit. Its tiny bubbles are many and wonderfully well- sustained, and it ends with a terrifically long finish, and, every step of its way, it suggests a little more depth than most and has the potential to gain in both richness and range for a good many more years.