Langlois Cremant de Loire Brut Reserve NV

The Bollinger family keeps a pretty tight lip about any projects beyond the flagship bottlings, but since the 1970’s they’ve been quietly investing in and perfecting a special Loire Valley estate that has since become the gold standard in Cremant.

While Bollinger Champagne commands $60-100+ per bottle, their Langlois-Chateau Brut Reserve Cremant delivers extraordinary quality at just $21/bottle (dropping to $18.90 on cases). Even better, despite lax Cremant rules, they treat this special project just like any other – applying the same rigorous standards and following all the same rules required in Champagne.

Langlois-Chateau triples the required aging time to 36 months, hand-harvests all grapes, incorporates reserve wines for complexity, and sources from six distinctive terroirs throughout the Loire. Their approach exceeds not just Cremant standards but even surpasses some Champagne requirements. I’m telling you all of this pays off big time, this is an extraordinary Cremant value that we haven’t seen since the old days of Barmes-Beucher.