Background & History

In the early 1980’s, Jean-Claude Rouzaud, the fifth generation head of the highly respected French Champagne House Louis Roederer, decided to take up the challenge of producing the best sparkling wine in California.

After a two-year search in California for suitable vineyard land, he selected the fog-shrouded Anderson Valley, 125 miles north of San Francisco. This cool region, just a few miles inland from the rugged Mendocino coast, is ideal for growing the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay needed for classic sparkling wine. This wine named 'QUARTET' since the property is divided into four distinct vineyards. 

Along with over 200 years of “methode Champenoise” expertise, Roederer brought to America its philosophy of total vineyard and quality control. All the grapes used in QUARTET are grown on the estate, and the winery overseas every aspect of the vineyard management and winemaking process, including the implementation of many innovative techniques such as the lytre trellising system.

Wine Making

Dr Michel Salgues, QUARTET’s winemaker, applies his vast technical knowledge and experience to the task of winemaking in California’s Anderson Valley. In the finest tradition of its parent company, QUARTET contains a proportion of reserve wines. Selected from the best wines of each harvest, the reserve wines are set aside to mature slowly for five years in oak casks, specially reserves from several vintages is added to the cuvee, creating a multi-vintage Californian sparkling wine with a great French heritage. QUARTET has been widely praised in America for its body, finesses and depth of flavour.

QUARTET is made exclusively from grapes grown in the estate’s four vineyards in the cool northern Californian region of Anderson Valley.

A blend of the noble grape varieties, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the superb quality of QUARTET is in some part due to the proportion of oak-aged reserve wines contained in the blend.

Light golden in colour, QUARTET is an unusually complex Californian sparkling wine. Beautifully balanced, the wine has a creamy texture, fine fruit flavours in harmony with crisp acidity, and a long, elegant finish.

Jena-Claude Rouzaud’s Californian sparkler has received numerous accolades form wine critics. For Robert Parker, well-known American journalist, it is “the best sparkling wine yet made by a Champagne company that has set up housekeeping in California’. Tom Stevenson of Decanter has long urged its release in England, writing that QUARTET is “the first world class sparkling wine I have tasted outside of Champagne”