NV Champagne Larmandier-Bernier Longitude Premier Cru Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs (3 L) Double Magnum

No bubbly punches above its weight more than Champagne Larmandier-Bernier—and nothing could be more celebratory than this bubbly in double-magnum.

Made by hand and plowed by horse, it's hard to find a more carefully crafted example of grower Champagne, but we love it because it's a damn good bottle of wine that's going to bring a lot of people a lot of joy in the next few years. Perfect now if you like your Champagne racy, with chiseled abs and a square jaw. Celestial after a couple years of aging, when it'll be just as lively and mineral but with more ample orchard fruits softening the edges of the frame.

The fruit in Longitude comes from four locations, in Cramant, Avize, Oger, and Vertus,  which line up neatly along the 4th meridian, lending the wine its name. The name also references the wine's length and purity, the frank terroir-driven style. Just over half of the blend in this bottling comes from the 2015 vintage, with the remainder consisting of reserve wines from previous vintages. 

Every house approaches the reserve concept for multi-vintage wines a little differently. Larmandier-Bernier keeps a perpetual blend going, somewhat like a solera, containing a fractional amount of vintages dating back to 2004. This method gives the wine great consistency from one bottling to the next, so that if members fall as hard for the Longitude as we did, they know future bottlings will be every bit as awesome as this one.