It was notable at yesterday's annual giant champagne tasting in London that a very high proportion of the wines on the long table devoted to current vintage-dated releases were of precisely the same vintage as last year - suggesting that superior champagne is not exactly selling like rockets... 'Where are all the 1996s?', cried my wine writer colleagues who had come expressly to fill in the gaps from last year's tasting at which mainly the lesser houses had moved on to this exciting, long-term vintage.