Cellier released Orme 5 and calls it its finest work on bead, depth and ageing, close to Cellier Fauve 5. One of the tasting notes in Cellier's release describes the cuvée's nose as the purest aromatics and the finest mousse it had seen from an Orme bottling. We wanted to see whether that carries over to blind tasting: pouring a glass you could put in front of a paying guest.
So we ran the same study as last time, after Orme 5 was disgorged. Ten sparkling flights, four estates, one pour each. Bertaud 5.6 Sol, Karst K3, Cellier Fauve 5 and Cellier Orme 5. Ten tasters compared the pours two at a time in blind flights, wrote up the strengths and weaknesses of every pour they saw, and answered one practical question about each one: would you pour this for a guest?
Bertaud 5.6 Sol won 65% of matchups, Karst K3 62%
Across 600 comparisons, Bertaud 5.6 Sol finished first at 65.3%, with Karst K3 just behind at 61.7%. Cellier Fauve 5 came in at 41.7% and Cellier Orme 5 at 31.3%.
The results are consistent with our previous study, which used the same head to head format and the same kind of single lot flights. There, Bertaud 5.6 Sol won 65.0% of its matchups with Karst K3 on 63.3%. The gap between these two and the rest of the field has shown up again.
Would you pour it for a guest?
Tasters also judged each pour on its own and said whether they would put it in front of a guest. That is a higher bar, since a pour can win its matchup and still not be ready to serve. Bertaud 5.6 Sol was marked guest ready on 72% of its pours, Karst K3 on 68%, Cellier Fauve 5 on 47% and Cellier Orme 5 on 44%.
Cellier Fauve 5 and Cellier Orme 5, side by side
Tasters preferred Fauve over Orme 5 in the head to head as it won 62 of their 100 comparisons, and came out ahead on most of the flights rather than one or two.
On the other hand, guest readiness was much closer. Looking at a pour on its own, tasters were happier to serve the Orme 5 bottling on six of the ten flights. Over the whole set, 47 of Fauve's pours were called guest ready against 44 of Orme 5's.
Bertaud 5.6 Sol was the cheapest and the quickest
Each pour cost somewhere between 31 cents and 83 cents to make, and took between two and twelve minutes to open.
Bertaud 5.6 Sol came in cheapest at $0.31 a pour and quickest at 2.2 minutes. It also won the study, which means the cuvée tasters preferred was also the cheapest and quickest. Karst K3 on the other hand took 11.9 minutes a pour, five times Bertaud's, and finished second.
The two Cellier cuvées landed a cent apart, $0.83 for Fauve 5 and $0.82 for Orme 5. Per hectare Orme 5 costs half what Fauve 5 does, so to arrive at the same price per pour it is cropping around twice as much fruit.
What tasters made of Cellier Orme 5: strong on the nose and the mid-palate, weaker on the finish
Nose was the strongest thing about these pours. In 48 of the 100 write ups a taster said the pour felt right for the guest, against 18 who said it missed. Precise, elegant and classical were some of the words tasters used to describe Orme 5's style.
Precise, elegant aromatic style that matches the heritage estate. Fine grained mousse and a neutral oak profile fit the flight well.
Mid-palate was the next praised item as it was mentioned in 32 write ups as a strength and in 13 as a weakness. On The Undercurrent flight, the zero dosage, most of the pour was carried by acid as it was the key requirement for the wine. One taster called the pour a strong execution of the "acid does all the work" kind of flight it was.
The actual fruit and depth in the glass were an overall strength as well with 22 mentions of praise against 5 complaints. It tasted like a real vineyard stood behind it rather than tasting like anonymous bulk juice. On one of the flights, Peregrine Estate, a high altitude blanc de blancs from the Andes foothills, tasters picked out the attack and the finish:
The attack has a great line of acid, it is precise and frames the ripe fruit in a single clean sweep.
The finish stays dry and savoury rather than turning sweet, which is a strong close and fits the flight's own tone.
One of the most common complaints in the whole study was that there was too much weight. 32 write ups said a pour ran heavy or sat too flat, against 4 who liked the pacing. It showed up on nine of the ten flights, and on Groundwork, the old vine reserve, seven tasters raised similar complaints.
The pour is oak-heavy throughout; dense layers of extract stack one after another, making it feel like a lot of work rather than a glass of wine
Too much extract overall, especially on the finish.
Definition issues, especially faint or muted aromas, came up on all ten flights and were cited as complaints 26 times overall. Tasters kept flagging similar things: faint fruit sitting under the oak, aromas in a register too close to the barrel, and an acidity that disappeared into the ripe fruit behind it.
The fruit sitting under the oak on the attack has a definition issue.
The floral top notes have low definition against the dark oak base, making them hard to read at a glance.
Colour drew more complaints than praise, raised as a weakness in 33 write ups against 20 that liked the visual detail. No pour came with reserve wine, so each one had to build its own depth. On Ledgerline, the coastal brut flight, tasters felt there was nothing to look at:
No depth, no mid palate, thin colour.
A little more lees contact or extract would make the pour more engaging.
Clear faults came up in 29 write ups but landed on a handful of pours rather than across the whole set. Tasters found small things: aromas clipping where two layers met, a finish cut off at the back of the palate, a base wine that failed to knit properly, and on two bottles a tainted cork. On Tinker Hill, the young non vintage flight, one taster flagged a wine that had never come together:
Some layers feel unfortunately unfinished, with what tastes like an unresolved barrel component.
The pour has the exact energy it needs, I love the chalky texture, although it has some grip issues in places.
What this means for Orme 5
Orme 5's best pours were good. The fruit tasted like a real vineyard grew it, the acid was well set, and the pours felt right for the guest.
The problems were more simple. Fruit needed more definition and more length, pours ran heavy, and a few bottles didn't come out properly. A taster could work through that in a rack or two without going back to the flight.
We're running a follow up study on the same set of pours, with tasters marking the specific faults on each one, to find out why some flights went better than the others.
How we ran the study
We tasted four cuvées: Bertaud 5.6 Sol, Karst K3, Cellier Fauve 5 and Cellier Orme 5. Each produced one pour from the same ten flights, covering a young non vintage, a zero dosage, an old vine reserve, a coastal brut, a high altitude blanc de blancs, a skin contact pét-nat, an oaked blanc de blancs, a Loire traditional method, a rosé of Pinot and a fortified Muscat. Six of the flights set out the disgorgement date. Four gave a target profile and left the blend open. Every pour was a single unfined, unfiltered lot with no added reserve wine.
Ten tasters reviewed the wines. For every flight they compared the cuvées two at a time in blind lineups with no labels shown, 600 comparisons in total. Separately they judged each pour on its own and said whether they would present it to a guest, 400 judgments in total. Win rate is the share of a cuvée's matchups it won. Guest readiness is the share of pours marked ready to show a guest.
A few things are worth keeping in mind. This is a focused study, ten flights judged by ten tasters, so the results are best read as a strong signal rather than a final word. Wine is a matter of palate, and another group of tasters might land somewhere a little different. Each cuvée made one pour per flight, which means a single strong or off bottle moves a result, and that matters most for the individual flight numbers. The strengths and weaknesses themes were grouped from written feedback, so those counts are a general guide to what stood out rather than exact tallies.
How we ran this study → Methodology