Browse Tag

champagne

Sorbée course

Vouette & Sorbée Champagne Extra Brut “fidèle” (Champagne) — Disgorged 9 October 2013. One of my absolute favorite Champagnes of all time, this is so vinous and delicately red-fruited, yet retains the essential dancing vivacity of Champagne rather than stomping into dark-fruited meunier-land. Brilliant, flawless, and the absolute best partner for Vacherin Mont d’Or you could ever possibly imagine. (7/16)

Persevere

Thomas Perseval Champagne “Tradition” (Champagne) — Disgorged March 2015. Planar. Rinds, piths, crystals. (7/16)

Couche ball

Couche Champagne Dosage Zéro (Champagne) — 80% pinot noir, 20% chardonnay, disgorged 5 February 2015. Bones, empty rooms, and silence. In other words, showing one of the common failures of no-dosage Champagnes. I’m not feeling this. Will time help? Is there anything here that age might improve, or will it just grow more skeletal? (5/16)

Mignonette

[mignon]Christophe Mignon Champagne Brut Rosé (Champagne) — Disgorged 26 February 2013, dosage somewhere under 8 g/l. Gentle fluffs of drifting fruit-lint. There’s a bit of nerve here, but you have to search to find it. The first bottle I opened, right after receiving a half-case, was better, and so based on this performance I’m going to let the balance rest for a while. (5/16)

Rachais, chantais

[boulard]Francis Boulard Champagne Brut Nature “Les Rachais” (Champagne) — 100% chardonnay, 2005 harvest, disgorged 11 April 2011. Peanuts, mild oxidation, broadness, length, depth. I wouldn’t hold it, but it’s fascinatingly iconoclastic right now. (4/16)

Kruggerand

Krug Champagne Brut “Grande Cuvée” (Champagne) – Rich and heady, but really not all that complex or interesting. It’s like gilding and jewel-encrusting a turnip, frankly; yes, it’s all shiny and sparkly, but what’s the real point? It’s still a turnip, and doesn’t want to be gilt. The wine’s elegant, and maybe the point is that one should feel elegant while one drinks it, but that’s really much more about the drinker than it is the wine itself. (4/11)

Long-playing

Laurent-Perrier Champagne Brut Cuvée Rosé (Champagne) – Pink, and tastes of it. Sharp, fruity, clean, soon dead. Next. (11/12)

Mr. Latte

Feuillatte Champagne Brut “Réserve Particulière” (Champagne) – Broad and uninteresting, its cute little apple and ripe lemon decorations ultimately adorning nothing of actual substance. (11/11)

Delamotte-picquet

Delamotte 1999 Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs (Champagne) – My long-standing preference for noir-based Champagne has taken a fairly major hit over the last few years from a passel of grower-producers doing unquestionably brilliant work, but this reminds me why I once held the preference in the first place. Grapey, lemony, gauze-wrapped apple, filtered and only lightly yeasty…I’m sure there’s more to come later in its life, but this is a sip-while-conversing Champagne that doesn’t hit any of my sweet spots. (11/11)

Roses for Jeanne, bulles for her

Bouchard 2005 Champagne La Bolorée Blanc des Blancs “Roses de Jeanne” (Champagne) – Difficult to know, difficult to like. I don’t mean that I don’t like it, at all…rather that my experience of it is more of an appreciation than something more visceral. It seems like it wants to be pretty, but there are so many rigidities and barely-hidden edges to it that it really can’t be, and instead what it ends up being is sharp to the point of aggressivity, and rather abrupt as well. There’s also a sense that it’s trying a bit too hard. If this note reads as a lot of vague characterization without anything in the way of organoleptic specificity, that’s because that’s how the wine expresses itself to me: no “fruit” as such, structure mostly just bite and snap, ultra-fine electric-shock bubbles, and quite a bit of attitude. (9/11)