Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 2002

Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill was just recently released in Italy where I have been spending most of the summer, and after trying some, it underlines just how great the 2002 vintage is for Champagne. It's the last of the great cuvée Champagnes to be released on the market following Salon a few months earlier, and I think it is one of the best ever from Pol Roger.

The 2002 Sir Winston shows surreal aromas of dried apples, cream, mangos, and ginger that follow through to a full palate with a velvety texture and a lively finish. It opens with air, which suggests decanting. (Yes. You can decant Champagne!) It's extremely enjoyable to drink now, unlike a number of the top 2002 Champagnes at the moment that still need more bottle age. Don't miss this one if you love Pol Roger. It's a classic.

The 2002 Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill is developing superbly in bottle, and the wine is beginning to show wonderful complexity, wafting from the glass with scents of green apple, orange rind and pear that mingle with hints of warm biscuits, freshly baked bread and iodine. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, broad and fleshy, with ripe acids, appreciable structuring dry extract and concentration and a long, vinous and expansive finish. Readers with the 2002 Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill in their cellars should be very happy indeed. Drink 2020-2040.

There's a sense of quiet elegance and grace to this harmonious Champagne. Refined and lacy in texture, with finely wrought acidity lending focus and length to the spice- and graphite-laced flavors of ripe apricot and blackberry, lemon meringue pie, chopped almond and briny mineral. Drink now through 2029. 500 cases imported.

Magnum. Dense and savoury with a distinct flavour of confit lemon and a dry finish after a rich, lively mid palate. Full and opulent but saved by that dry finish.

After tasting six younger vintages in magnum, this 75-cl bottle leaps forward in maturity – both in colour and in fruit character. There's a slight bruising to the apple fruit but only in the most charming and succulent way – that sweet smell of decay, like leaf litter and undergrowth. Still going absolutely strong, but certainly entering the mature phase of development with more tertiary than primary flavours. Drink 2012-2042.

The lauded 2002 vintage often shows its weightier side at this level of maturity and this magnum obliges with decadent butter caramel, charry sourdough toast and dried raspberry aromas. There’s still a relatively youthful, fragrant precision here, though, with heaps of perfumed Pinot berry fruit still pushing through the sucrosity of the vintage and the post-disgorgement ageing. Rich, energetic and fine, this is open for business and far from showing signs of tiring. Tasted from magnum. Drink 2025-2030.