The new Louis Roederer Brut Collection is numbered as a series, just like Krug Grande Cuvée and Laurent Perrier Grand Siècle. The Collection 245 is based on 2020, which makes up 55% of this bottling. It also includes 35% of the ambitious perpetual blend that Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon, Frédéric's cellarmaster adds to each year; in this blend it has 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 in it. The last 10% of the wine comes from back vintages of oak-aged reserve wines (from 2012-2019) from the young vines on the Cristal estate. The champagne is meant to reflect the terroir of the whole region, and is a blend of 1/3 each of the Côte des Blancs, the Mountain of Reims and the Valley of the Marne. The final composition of the wine is 41% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Noir and 24% Meunier and the dosage is very low at just 7 grams per liter. If this is the future of Louis Roederer, we absolutely love it. The results are a wine that is both more complex and expressive than the Brut Premier that it replaces, but surprisingly also much fresher. The dosage has been dropped to around 7g/L and the balance is perfect. By adding the collection number to the founding date of the house, 1776, you get the year it was bottled. If you subtract one from that number, you get the base vintage, for this fourth release, it is 2020.