This is a longer version of an article also published in the Financial Times.
Just like still wine, sparkling wine varies from dire to sublime – only more so perhaps. There is something especially nasty about very cheap fizz, just as a great champagne weaves a very particular sort of magic. The following suggestions for fizzy drinks to serve over the next few weeks are based on the many such liquids I have tasted this year.
Since this is the holiday season, let us start at the top with the de luxe cuvées of champagne, the sort of bottles that carry three-digit prices.
I have not tasted the Perrier Jouët, Belle Epoque cuvée announced recently by owners Pernod Ricard as “the most expensive champagne in the world” at around 1,000 euros a bottle, but I did taste Perrier Jouët’s current top of the range, Belle Epoque Blanc de Blancs 1999 recently which sells for about £180 and, while it was a perfectly nice all-Chardonnay champagne, I’m afraid I couldn’t see enough either intensity of subtlety to warrant even that price. Perhaps its successor moves into a totally different league of luxuriousness.
A much more interesting recent tasting (see tasting notes for full deteails) was a look at 19 luxury cuvées of champagne served blind, including Krug Grande Cuvée, Dom Pérignon, Bollinger Grande Année 1999 and Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame. I believe that champagne is the one wine in which image and reputation can influence the palate most powerfully, which is why assessing the wines on the basis of taste alone can be so revealing. Both of us tasting agreed that the two most impressive wines in this line-up were the extremely energising and intriguing Taittinger Prélude, Grand Cru, a multi-vintage blend of equal parts of Chardonnay from top vineyards in the Côte des Blancs and Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims, and the underpriced and under-appreciated Charles Heidsieck, Blanc des Millénnaires 1995 Blanc de Blancs, a beautifully mature all-Chardonnay wine. Amazingly, the Taittinger Prélude can be bought for as little as £24.99 a bottle from Majestic if you buy three bottles, or £34.99 per single bottle at larger Tescos.
France and the US are the places to find the Heidsieck 1995 according to www.winesearcher.com which lists many American stockists with prices from $74.99 – a great price for a truly stunning 11 year-old champagne – and French retailers with even lower prices, from 50 euros. The only British retailer of it by the single bottle found by this wide-ranging seach engine is www.vintagewinegifts.co.uk which is selling bottles in a “deluxe silk lined hinged presentation box with four wine accessories (corkscrew, wine pourer, drip stopper & wine stopper) worth £14.99” at £89.99 – worth considering as a present perhaps for the millionaire in your life?
Two more champagnes that looked particularly good in this starry line-up, showing better than many more famous names, were Laurent Perrier Grand Siècle (currently on special offer at Harrods at £45 – although Majestic will sell three bottles for £120 – their 1997 is also drinking beautifully now) and Taittinger 2000 (£36.50 Eton Vintners), both of these being available much more widely and much more cheaply in both France and the US.
Other truly sumptuous champagnes tasted recently have been Krug Rosé (£136.70 Four Walls Wine) which was much more beguiling than any current bottling of Krug Grande Cuvée to have come my way in the last year – although there was huge variation between a bottle served in London that was bursting with delicate strawberry fruit that positively caressed the palate and a much more austere bottle drunk in New York. The fact that this potential nectar retails, quite widely, at well over £100 a bottle does make me wonder whether it is right to give consumers quite so little information about different bottlings of such an expensive multi-vintage (the posh version of non vintage, or NV) wine.
For those who seek maximum specificity about their champagnes, nothing can beat a single vineyard wine, as John Stimpfig outlined in How to Spend It last week. Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses is one of the most distinctive and most majestically slow to mature. Tesco has secured some Philipponnat, Clos des Goisses 1996 which is available at £67.99 in their fine wine stores. Although it is still a little austere, it should be wonderful in a year or three. The 1991 of this rather intellectually demanding wine is drinking particularly beautifully at the moment but is much easier to track down in mainland Europe and the US than the UK.
Lovers of big, bold, beefy, fully mature champagnes are catered for by Berry Bros who are offering Alfred Gratien 1989 at the very fair price of £45.95. This is a champagne for the table – a celebratory lunch perhaps. At the other, supremely bracing yet succulent end of the scale, is the ultra-aperitif Billecart Salmon Blanc de Blancs, Grand Cru (£40 Adnams, Berry Bros but on special offer at Hic Wines of Castelford for just £30) whose quality and delicacy suggest the term multi vintage is more appropriate than plain old NV.
But fine grower’s rather than blender’s champagne is increasingly what connoisseurs are seeking out. New York importer Skurnik and UK importer Vine Trail have long specialised in these particularly distinctive wines. Vine Trail have been offering a beautifully creamy and pure new find Vouette et Sorbée, Non-Dosé Fidèle NV for just £23.50 on their website. This is a great buy, and the bottle looks very respectable too – not something that can be said about the flashier offerings from the blending houses nor the less adroit offerings from some of the growers.
Rather unexpectedly, Marks & Spencer are introducing a very varied range of four growers’ champagnes next month. I was most impressed by Herbert Beaufort, Carte d’Or NV, a very complete, broad wine from the Grand Cru village of Bouzy, which should be on offer at larger branches at £19.99 rather than the usual £24.99. Yapp Bros can better this year round however with their dense and creamy Dumangin NV from the delightfully named village of Chigny-lès-Roses at £19.50.
In the next few weeks the multiple retailers will of course be slashing their champagne prices in an effort to lure us in. Presumably not all special offers have yet been announced but the best I have come across so far are Carlin NV Premier Cru from the Chigny house of Cattier (£11.99 Aldi), the fresh Duval-Leroy, Fleur de Champagne Premier Cru reduced to £13.99 from Dec 4 to Jan 7 at Waitrose, Thresher/Wine Rack’s usual three-for-to offer which reduces the price of Chanoine’s competent if unexciting Radcliffes De Brissar NV to £13.33 a bottle, and the super-lively Chanoine Blanc de Blancs 2002 Grand Cru which will be ‘half price’, £16.49, chez Tesco from Nov 29 until Jan 2.
As for fizz produced outside the Champagne region, LVMH’s Australian outpost Green Point/Domaine Chandon seems to me the most consistently fine source at the moment; average ful retail price £12-13 a bottle.