CRITIC REVIEWS
William Kelley
The 2003 Dom Pérignon P2 is rich and demonstrative, wafting from the glass with aromas of stone fruits, honeycomb and buttered toast that leave more space for the wines generous fruit tones than the more overtly yeasty original disgorgement. Full-bodied, broad and textural, it remains very youthful despite its below-average acidity, with notable precision to its ripe fruit tones and chalky structuring extract that provides, to some extent, a compensating sensation of freshness; its actually evolving more slowly than its 2002 counterpart. Given the wines richness, it works best with food. Chaperon relates that then-Chef de Caves Richard Geoffroy rejected any musts with a pH exceeding 3.3, the only time this metric has been used as a basis for selection for Dom Pérignon, and that the juice was allowed to oxidize before vinification. Im looking forward to seeing the 2003 in its P3 incarnation, as I suspect that the wine will really come into its own when it develops more tertiary notes.
Jancis Robinson
The notoriously daring vintage of Dom Pérignon at 18 years old in recently disgorged form. Rich, broad nose with notes of candied mandarin – not instantly recognisable as Dom P on the nose. Toasty palate entry and still quite rich on the palate, thanks to lower than usual acidity presumably. Again, there was no fear of phenolics when making this wine as the logic was that the phenolics would make up for the softness of the acidity. This is now a gentle wine with very much its own personality. Soft and smoky at the start and then saline and refreshing on the finish. Its more like a bit of told-you-so evidence than, necessarily, the one Dom P you would choose from the current range available. But, boy, does it persist!