Wafting from the glass with notes of pear, citrus oil, wheat toast, iodine, smoke and dried white flowers, the 1996 Dom Perignon P2 is medium to full-bodied, layered and incisive, with a chalky, tight-knit core, excellent concentration and racy acids, concluding with a long, sapid finish. The 1996 is still quite reserved, but in all its various incarnations—from the original release, the Oenotheque and the P2—it has been consistently superb. Readers with bottles in their cellars need be in no hurry to pop corks, as the wine still has a long future ahead of it.