Where's The 2008 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne BdB?

A couple of offers on pre-release going back a few months. What is keeping this from being released?

Mark G had posted a while ago that the release was being delayed until October.

Anyone know why? Can’t see the economy improving in the short term.

Combination of not ready, as it was still sitting on lees early this year and Covid not allowing people to gather and bottle on that kind of scale for business.

Yeah, Taittinger was pretty much shut down entirely for a couple of months this Spring.

Only 3 shops but Ws pro shows $195+ worldwide. Wow.

It will be interesting to see if those who usually buy are willing to spend that amount. For my money, I’ll go with the 2013 Peters Chetilions for 2/3 the price.

I was there in mid-February. At that point, they told me they expected release to happen late-March or early-April. Obviously, that did not happen… The tasting room representative said he expected the release price to be the same as 2007. Hopefully that does happen (but I am not counting on it…).

There is a considerable amount of unsold 06 and 07 in the system (certainly in Europe). I think the closure of restaurants meant that demand wasn’t what Taittinger had hoped for.

Might bode well for 2008 pricing

Just my opinion, with all that’s going on in the world, I think it would be crazy to assume that the lowest price you’ll see in the US on release is $195. Comtes is historically a value tete de cuvee, is not supply constrained like Salon (although I don’t know what their relative yields in 2008 were), and does not appear to be experiencing a sudden and dramatic surge in interest. There is nothing to justify a 50-60% increase in price from a moderate QPR 2007. It’s a highly anticipated release among a small minority of wine nerds. Maybe that drives it up to $140 or $150. As in all cases, pick your spots and you should be able to grab it for less than the initial release price. I think Barolo 2016 is a decent corollary and prices are up 5-10% from 2015 if you discard the most opportunistic retailers.

Good point and analogy. I’ll probably have to go for both.

There was a general excitement when many ‘08s were released. The late release here may mean they have lost some momentum. I expect a UK price of $125-130.

I expect it to be higher here.

Have they ever priced north of Dom? That would be bold…

Why? It’s smaller production and often better.

Not questioning if it’s better. Speculating that:

  1. Most high-end bottles of champagne aren’t consumed by wine geeks
  2. A lot of these bottles are special “splurges” at restaurants, wine bars, etc.
  3. Taittinger CdC doesn’t have near the name recognition that Dom has
  4. Pricing over Dom might result in a hard sell to folks outside of the wine enthusiast community

There is plenty of champagne that’s priced above Dom and has no trouble selling despite extremely limited popular name recognition. Salon does just fine. champagne.gif

Sure, who knows. I bet Salon’s production is well south of CdC. Unless the pricing is ridiculous, count me as a buyer!

Right, hard to know what the true numbers are, but CdC, while a multiple of Salon’s production, is well below 1 million bottles, whereas even conservative estimates of DP would have it over 5 million.

We are all eagerly anticipating the 2008 CdC. Just one little question - has anyone tasted it. Does it live up to this hype? Is it better than other vintages this decade?