Is the more famous vintage definitely better? A version of this article is published by the Financial Times. Above, the discovery of the tasting, Pommery's Les Clos Pompadour vineyard. See more detail in Champagne - 2002 or 2004?
Is champagne poisoning a thing? I don’t expect any sympathy but on Friday 24 November last year I certainly felt as though I was suffering from it. That was the date chosen by the enterprising specialist Master of Wine Dawn Davies of The Whisky Exchange and Speciality Drinks for her big annual champagne tasting in Glaziers Hall overlooking the River Thames.
But the champagne poisoning didn’t take place there. It was a tasting the day before, a giant blind comparison of 2002 and 2004 champagnes, that limited my enthusiasm and capability for Davies’ event. I wandered from table to table in Glaziers Hall weakly trying to work out a bare minimum I could get away with tasting in order to fill the holes in my knowledge of current bottlings.
The champagnes I had tasted the previous day had been chosen by indefatigable London specialist champagne retailer Nick Baker of The Finest Bubble. He is a champagne obsessive. I have participated in many a tasting organised by him at his Islington base or, for bigger groups, at the wine-themed club 67 Pall Mall. These are not presentations of his wares but the exploration of a thesis. Are magnums always better than standard bottle sizes of the same wine? What effect does disgorgement date have on flavour and ageability? All Baker’s questions are designed to be answered on the basis of blind tastings.
And in my experience, when the propositions have been fully tested, he has usually produced yet more bottles of champagne to try – just for fun.
It was notable therefore that after this 2002 v 2004 extravaganza, even Baker did not propose popping any more corks. I subsequently asked Julie Cavil, Champagne Krug’s chef de cave, how many champagnes she and her team would consider an absolute maximum to taste in a single session. Ten was her firm response. Baker’s 2002 v 2004 tasting involved tasting 50 bottles or magnums between three of us.
I bumped into the third participant, fellow Master of Wine Richard Bampfield, a few days later and asked him how he’d felt after the tasting. He grimaced. He had had to leave promptly to get a train to Liverpool. Just as well for him that Liverpool was the end of the line. All I had to do, thank goodness, was walk home and slump in a chair. And this despite the fact we didn’t swallow any of the wines we tasted. Perhaps it is true that bubbles transport alcohol faster into the bloodstream than still wine? Or perhaps the sheer quality of what we were tasting dulled the spitting reflex.
The genesis of Baker’s massive blind comparison was that he, like me, had noticed that, although 2002 has the reputation of being a great champagne vintage, some of the 2004s have been tasting awfully good. When he proposed the exercise, I had assumed we would be tasting just the regular vintage-dated champagnes but I should have thought harder. Of course, being a champagne obsessive, he focused on the prestige cuvées, the top wines from each producer, the likes of Cristal and Dom Pérignon.
The wines were served, in flights of six, completely jumbled up, bottle sizes first and then, according to the spreadsheet sent by Baker afterwards, 15 champagnes that were available only in magnums – as though we needed a double-bottle size. And just for good measure, one or two wines were served twice to keep us on our (increasingly wobbly) toes.
I shouldn’t complain because I always welcome a chance to assess wines blind – especially champagnes, which are so image-driven. (Everyone thinks they have their favourite brand, until they are asked to compare that brand blind with others.)
If I have a complaint about the wines Baker assembled, which would admittedly be ungracious, it is that the selection was dominated by the big houses rather than the smaller, so-called grower champagnes that are now so fashionable (and, alas, no longer much less expensive). The only smaller-scale producer represented was the estimable Pierre Peters. Instead we had to slum it with the likes of Salon, Krug, Bollinger RD, Pol Roger’s Cuvée Winston Churchill and Philipponnat’s single-vineyard Clos des Goisses.
There was one discovery for all three of us, however, among the wines poured from magnum. We’d hardly heard of Les Clos Pompadour, Pommery’s new prestige cuvée, a Chardonnay-dominant selection from their single vineyard in Reims sold only in magnums. It was assembled for the first time from the 2002 vintage and it looks as though no vintage younger than 2004 is yet on the market.
The 2004 Les Clos Pompadour notched up the third-highest score overall when our three scores were averaged: 19 as opposed to the impressive 19.5 and 19.3 awarded to Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 2002 and 2004 respectively.
Given the sheer number of wines we tasted, it was pretty extraordinary that two vintages of a single wine occupied both gold and silver positions on the podium. I wondered initially, once I’d seen these surprising results, whether an all-Chardonnay Blanc de Blancs held a particular allure in these two vintages but I see that the other two Blanc de Blancs we tasted from bottle – Dom Ruinart and Lanson Noble – did not perform especially well, even though among the champagnes in magnum, Deutz Blanc de Blancs did do well, both 2002 and, especially, 2004.
From bottle, Dom Pérignon was another consistent over-performer with an average score of 19 for the 2004 and 18.5 for the 2002 – interestingly a little bit above our average scores for the late-released, and more expensive, ‘P2’ versions.
The best-performing ‘regular’ vintage-dated champagnes from bottle, as opposed to all these extremely expensive prestige cuvées, were Louis Roederer 2002 and 2004. I actually scored Louis Roederer 2002 half a point higher than the same vintage of Louis Roederer’s prestige cuvée Cristal. (Very disappointingly, our bottle of 2004 Cristal suffered from cork taint.)
Connoisseurs can be quite snobbish about Moët because the non-vintage Brut Impérial version is made in such quantity but actually Moët & Chandon 2002 and 2004 showed pretty well.
From magnum, Laurent-Perrier 2004 was really impressive, and Pol Roger 2004 nearly as good.
So I wonder whether from all of this you can deduce which of the two vintages showed better overall? It takes some unpicking, I can assure you. And since what we tasted was, perforce, an unruly mix of vintages, it was difficult to make many generalisations as we went along.
All I wrote at the time was that the levels of evolution, sweetness and acidity are ‘all over the place’. There really didn’t seem to be any rules. Some of the wines seemed fully mature and I suggested they should probably be drunk this year or next, whereas others seemed set for the rest of this decade if not longer in the case of some of the magnums.
When average scores were calculated, my average score for wines from 75-cl bottles was 17.6 for the 2002s and 17.2 for the 2004s. Baker also preferred the 2002s to the 2004s from bottle (18.2 to 17.8) while Richard averaged a more generous 18.0 for both 2002 and 2004 from bottle. But all three of us preferred the 2004s to the 2002s from magnum. Go figure.
With such small differences and – more importantly – so many wines, I think we can agree that any of the wines cited above are pretty damn good, even if many of them are priced accordingly. But detailed price analysis shows that 2004s are in general 19% less expensive than the 2002s, and are definitely not 19% less delicious.
Some 2002 and 2004 champagnes
Prices vary much more widely than our scores. All of these are either 12 or 12.5% alcohol and scored 19 or 18.5. They are presented in my score order. Prices are per 75-cl bottle unless otherwise stated
Taittinger, Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Grand Cru 2002
£235 in bond Seckford, £266.50 Lay & Wheeler, £275 Bordeaux Index; £400 duty paid Hedonism
Laurent-Perrier, Brut 2004
£350 per magnum duty paid Millésima UK
Pommery, Les Clos Pompadour Brut 2004
£539 per magnum in bond The Finest Bubble
Taittinger, Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Grand Cru 2004
£137.50 in bond Lay & Wheeler, £150 Bordeaux Index; £210 duty paid Nemo Wine Cellars, £219 Berry Bros & Rudd and others
Dom Pérignon, Brut 2002
£204 duty paid Barber Wines
Pol Roger, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill Brut 2004
£150 in bond Bordeaux Index; £269 duty paid The Sipster
Moët & Chandon, Grand Vintage Collection Brut 2002
£450 for a case of six in bond from Mann Fine Wine, Bordeaux Index
Krug, Brut 2002
£295 in bond Nickolls & Perks
Louis Roederer, Brut 2002
About £1,800 per case of six in bond from The Fine Wine PA, Crop & Vine, Ideal Wine Co, Cru World Wine
Dom Pérignon, Brut 2004
£155 in bond Bordeaux Index, Grand Vin Wine Merchants
For scores, tasting notes and suggested drinking dates of all 50 wines, see Champagne – 2002 or 2004? For international stockists, see Wine-Searcher.com.