Louis Roederer Collection 244

When Chef de Cave Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon relaunched Roederer's non-vintage as Collection, the deliberate signal was terroir transparency: each of the 410+ parcels across Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne, and Côte des Blancs is vinified separately in small stainless-steel tanks or oak vats sized to just one or two hectares, preserving individual plot character before blending. The soils tell the story — shallow chalk topsoil of roughly 20 cm over pure chalk bedrock at Verzenay and Verzy, limestone mid-slopes at Avize and Cramant — and that chalk substrate drives the wine's signature mineral tension and precise, saline finish. The blend runs ~40% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, 20% Pinot Meunier from 50+ villages, with ~20% reserve wines aged in 150+ used oak barrels folded in for textural continuity across disgorgements. Minimum 3 years on lees plus 6 months post-disgorgement, dosage at ~9 g/L. What sets Collection apart from peers of comparable scale is that Roederer sources roughly two-thirds of total production from its own 240-hectare estate — a grower-like self-sufficiency almost unheard of among Grandes Marques — giving each disgorgement lot a traceable, site-specific backbone rather than a purchased-fruit average. The 244 designation tracks the cumulative number of reserve wines incorporated, encoding the blend's complexity directly in the name; drink now through 2028.