🍾 Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 2008

Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 2008 is the 2008 release of Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill by the house Pol Roger, a vintage white Champagne.

According to the house, the cuvée ferments slowly and cool in stainless steel with each variety and each village kept separate, undergoes full malolactic fermentation, and has its second fermentation in bottle in the house's deepest cellars, 33 metres below street level, where it is riddled by hand.

The house Pol Roger dates from 1849, when Pol Roger began selling wine in Aÿ; since 1851 it has been based in Épernay.

The boundaries of the Champagne area were set by a law of 6 May 1919: parts of the Marne, Aube, Aisne, Haute-Marne and Seine-et-Marne departments. The designation’s specification allows seven grape varieties, dominated by Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier; grapes are picked as whole bunches, that is by hand, and the yield is limited to 10,400 kg per hectare.

According to the Comité Champagne, Champagne is served chilled to 8–10 °C, and bottles are kept in the dark at a steady 10–15 °C, without vibration. An opened bottle is best closed with a sparkling-wine stopper and kept cold.

It is sold under the protected designation of origin Champagne: the bubbles come only from a second fermentation in the bottle, and the wine is aged for at least 15 months before sale (36 for vintage). Check the label for the sugar term (brut, extra brut and so on): the house does not state it on the wine's page.

Why it matters to you. The year on the label is the harvest year, so different years of the same line are different wines. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.