Rich old gold in colour. Profoundly aromatic, even a quarter of a century later: honeysuckle, cream, peach and nectarine. Voluptuous and seductive: the aromas shimmer out of the glass. There's enormous sensual charm on the palate, too, in this gracious, buxom Champagne.

But charm doesn't mean a lack of complexity: all the blessings of the earth seem sewn up in here somewhere. Flowers, summer sunlight, the orchards of the north. The wine grows rich with these allusions in the middle palate, then becomes more vinous and mineral at the end (not so much chalk as powdered marble). No sense of imminent demise. Magisterial.