Every year the Comité Interprofessionnel des Vins de Champagne, the CIVC association of champagne producers (both houses and growers), comes over to London to show off the current releases of those producers who think the trek is worth it.
This year I concentrated on the vintage champagnes, because at least with these you can easily identify exactly which bottling I tasted (unlike the amorphous mass of unidentifiable non-vintage bottlings). As you can see below, one can find a few 2009s and the 2008s are hurtling on to the market, and there are some very fine wines among them, by no...