A sculpted Champagne, with a steely backbone of acidity swathed in a fine and silky texture, offering rich flavors of baked apple and plum fruit, almond financier, crème de cassis, honey and toasted coconut. Long and mouthwatering, and still very, very young.

97 points, Alison Napjus (December 2014)

Medium-light yellow. Toasty/bready and developed with a lot of matured complexity, plus a slight whiff of cork floating over it. Palate is somewhat thin and tart, very acid and lacks balancing flavour. I suspect the cork has scalped the flavour. Searingly tart and tangy, racy and lean as a racehorse. Later: improved vastly in the glass. No longer musty or scalped, but displaying tremendous complexity, lots of toasty-bread character with genuine lees-aged and bottle-aged influences. Palate soft and rich, nutty and toasty, smoothly mellow and dry, with depth and finesse. A very good drop of aged Champagne.

95 points, The Real Review (July 2011)

What a ridiculously good year for Champagne 1996 was...One of my more minor regrets was not buying more...

Honey biscuits, sugar dusted lemon drops, mineral, yeasty flor-like characters and a whiff of coffee are just some of the things I think I’m smelling. In the mouth dry, tight and vigorous with super fine bubbles and minerally flavours, light citrus fruit, yeast and cracked wheat. It’s smooth, elegant and lengthy with a suggestion of hazelnuts and vanilla on the finish. Beautiful wine of supreme balance and charm.

95 points, The Wine Front (August 2008)

As it develops in bottle, this wine retains all its intense acidity. But it has now brought in a toast and yeast character that gives it even greater complexity. It is a wine that is also a Champagne, now in full flow of mineral richness, still with a long way to develop.

95 points, Wine Enthusiast (2010)

Femme is Duval-Leroy's top cuvée. This, from the great 1996 vintage, is as much wine as sparkling experience. It has great depth of flavor and a powerful steely background, with tight acidity. The grapefruit flavor is only superficial, because behind this crispness, the wine shows considerable richness.

94 points, Wine Enthusiast (2008)