Six bottles to learn champagne

WINE TALK
21

Finally following up on this and of course breaking my own rules. I drank a fair number of other champagnes along the way, but ended up with 8 in a short period (4 weeks) where I kept this post in mind. I didn’t cover all the ground suggested above but came away with some good comparisons (varietals, age from the same house, prestige vs standard from same house, oxidative vs reductive, grower vs large).

Bollinger brut special cuvée NV( large house, standard offer, oxidative)
Bollinger grand annee 2012 (prestige, oxidative)
Dom perignon 2012. (Prestige, reductive)
Larmandier latitude (BdB)
Hebrart brut rose (rose)
Aubry premier cru brut (value grower; additional varietals)
Drappier carte d’or NV (Pinot heavy)
Drappier Reserve l’oenotheque 2002 (same producer, aged late disgorgement)

My biggest takeaways as a newbie:

  1. there is way more difference between wines than I expected, although I enjoyed every single wine
  2. there is tremendous value here. I can’t think of a time I’ve gone 8 for 8 being satisfied with the QpR elsewhere
  3. I generally prefer reductive and high acid champagnes to others. I have a hard time ranking the Bollinger wines in the same list as I enjoyed them but almost thought of them as a separate category. Heavy and serious by comparison.
  4. For my palate, the prestige wines (although a great value compared to similar prices still wines) are not worth the jump. My favorites were probably the 2002 Drappier ($100), Larmandier ($50), followed by DP ($180) and hebrart ($50).

Thank you for the input! Champagne and a few other sparkling wines are now a regular part of the rotation.

2 Likes
22

Where is your case (12 bottles) to learn Burgundy?

23

To be fair, you’re assessing the prestige champagne (dp 12) at least 20 years too early. Another stylistic range you should explore is based on dosage ie zero dosage through brut to sec and even doux.

24

Blanc de Noirs
Blanc de Blancs
Big House
Grower
Aged Vintage
Extra Brut or Non-dosage

1 Like
25

Never really thought about it. Probably need more like 120. But, how about (can only get down to 14 and this leaves out a lot)

8 reds:

Hudelot-Noellat Bourgogne Rouge
Ramonet Chassagne Montrachet Rouge
Drouhin Beaune Clos de Mouches vs. Jadot Clos de Ursules
Henri Jouan MSD vs. their Gevrey Chambertin Aux Echezeaux (or Hudelot-Noellat Vosne Romanee vs. Chambolle Musigny)
Lafarge Volnay VV
Truchot Clos de la Roche (could be downsized drastically in price to Jouan Clos St. Denis or Pierre Amiot Clos de la Roche (have only had this young but price is very compelling)).

6 whites:

Bernard Moreau Bourgogne Blanc
Christian Moreau Chablis les Clos
Jadot Puligny Montrachet Clos de la Garenne Domaine du Duc de Magenta (hard to come up with comparable value to this, at least at the prices Envoyer was selling this for a year or two ago) vs. Drouhin Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot (could substitute in same vineyard Ramonet or Bernard Moreau for the Drouhin.)
Any Meursault from Buisson-Charles (or Bouchard Meursault Perrieres - really need both as these are very different styled wines (as I said, I need 120 bottles))
Bouchard Montrachet

If I was narrowing this down to two bottles, it would be (for right now), 2017 Bernard Moreau Bourgogne Blanc and 2016 Hudelot-Noellat Bourgogne Rouge.

1 Like
26

I am not sure how I missed this thread initially. Now following, as I enjoy Champagne, but have a lot to learn.

27

Thanks for reporting back! Regarding the bolded 4th takeaway, it sounds like the prestige wines you had here are either not your preferred style (Bollinger) or don’t show very well young (Dom P). My guess is that trying something more to your liking (certain vintages of Peters Chetillons or Taittinger Comtes, for example), and/or something with more age on it might change your mind about them being worth the price jump. Krug NV might do that too, although I wouldn’t call it reductive. Krug really is a singular experience, though, and necessary in a thorough exploration.

28

great post. lots of very useful responses for me as well, as I am only a half a step ahead of you in this exploration. Champagne had done very little for me, and the 2008 Bollinger La Grande Annee changed my perspective a lot. I had the 2012 since as well. Maybe the few years of aging, or the different vintage, but for me the 2008 I enjoyed much more. Both were excellent and beyond anything I had tried before. I haven’t had that type of complexity in the more affordable champagnes that I had drank prior. Closest things was 2008 Piper-Heidsieck Brut.

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I’m not sure if a special club champagne is important enough to be in the first 6 bottles, but certainly a consideration.

30

With regards to the suggests of (most) Krug or 20 year old prestige cuvées, I hope I get the opportunity in the future but these are not in my budget for my exploratory stages.

I think my next stage of exploration will be focused on dosage. I lost track of that in my initial comparisons but think it would make me a much more informed consumer and buyer.

Re: burgundy, I consider myself extremely fortunate that I have not yet been bitten by this bug and will continue to chuckle smugly when I see the monthly “can you believe these prices?!” thread as I enjoy my remainder-of-France, Italian, and American still wines.

2 Likes
31

This is a great suggestion. Here’s how I’d do it:

  • A typical big-house NV: Billecart-Salmon Brut NV
  • Blanc de Blancs: Pierre Gimonnet et Fils Blanc de Blancs Premier Cru Extra Brut
  • Blanc de Noirs: 2014 Moussé Fils Champagne Terre d’illite Blanc de Noirs
  • A prestige Champagne / a vintage Champagne with +10 years of age: 2012 Philipponnat Cuvee 1522 or 2012 Dom Perignon (both a little above your $100 budget, but not by much)
  • Rosé Champagne: Marc Hebrart Brut Rose
  • Saignée Rosé: A. Margaine or Geoffroy Rose de Saignée
32

You would be even more smug if you had bought Burgundies years ago like many of us did at a fraction of current prices with the calm satisfaction that if we bought something we turn out not to like we can sell it for a nice profit. neener At my age, current prices for Burgundy are more of a benefit than a detriment.

But, I don’t feel smug about it. I feel bad that younger wine lovers won’t be able to try the wines I bought for years without paying a fortune for them. And, that many people like you will never get to try a lot of the best wines in the world.

By the way, a friend of mine just got an email offering for the 2018 Screaming Eagle Sauvignon Blanc for the low, low reasonable price of $4,750/bottle.

1 Like
33

that is the sad thing about inflation. It always benefits those who have, and hurts those who do not.

34

Yep. Not buying a house, so inflation means my house is worth more, not that I have to pay more to buy a house.

This is why I don’t understand someone saying that they are smug about the fact that never bought a type of wine that has gone up in price and are priced out of it now. Very strange comment.

35

Maybe he meant more that he has been fortunate not to be caught up chasing these things, and not so much that he doesnt own them.

There is a blind spot in markets and when supply is low of a given item, and the # of substitute products is too high for any individual to really have tried all of them, so when the market expands, like many have now via “the information age,” prices soar on those products. Yet the consumers of those products often have little experience with the product and are buying on what they are told is good, and they have likely even less experience with the vast majority of competing products, so they have little ability to compare or decide whether the price point was justified. Cognitive dissonance does the rest. That is not to say that the price isn’t justified for any given product, just that the market is no longer an efficient tool for pricing.

So to not be caught up in the “hype” chasing some high end bottles, that you don’t even know if you would enjoy, might be worth being smug about. Not having been fortunate enough to have bought them before the inflation, would certainly be absurd to be smug about though.

In the whiskey world, people are paying $1,500 for Van Winkle Lot B these days. I just bought a Signatory Cask Glen Rothes 20 year cask strength First fill sherry butt which is significantly higher quality for $250. And a 1991 Wild Turkey 8/101 with about an ounce of spillage for $400, also higher quality than recent Lot B. The publications and media hasn’t yet informed the masses that those are good,so they haven’t inflated at the same rate. People walk into a store to get a “special” bottle with no experience with it, nor much experience with other high quality whiskeys, and the supply is so limited it cannot match the reach of the publications and media which discuss the product.

A bottle of Willett Barrel 31, bottle 86 of 120 just sold for $17,000. That price makes much more sense to me, because no one who is more or less inexperienced with whiskey even knows what it is and they are not having an impact or a least as much impact on the price. So although the supply is very low, and the quality very high, the reach of marketing being low, keeps the market more efficient and less biased by marketing.

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36

I can understand being sad that wines, liquors, whatever, have gone up in price to the level where you cannot afford it anymore, but smug just seems to be a weird term for it. I have a whole bunch of older wines and am much more sad than smug about the prices of higher end wines from all around the world (including 1st Growth Bordeaux (for comparison, 1990 first growths were sold as futures for $60 or so a bottle), top Barolo, etc., etc., etc.). Top California wines have gone to nosebleed levels as much as most anything else, with a handful of exceptions.

Maybe his issue is that he does not have enough experience to know that high-end bottles very often live up to the hype and that they used to be quite attainable by most people on this board. Then he too would be sad and not smug. Someone once told me that I never should have bought or tasted a wine costing more than $5 a bottle (this was in the 1990s, so pick your dollar amount). His logic was that if I only had $5 bottles, I would enjoy them and not know that there was anything better. Once I tasted better wines, it was harder to go back. Is that the rationale behind the smug comment? That, I bought the wines at $5 that are now super-expensive and I know what I am missing while he never bought a wine for more than $5 so that he can drink that wine in ignorant bliss?

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37

There is also real logic to this. At one point I had lots of my very favorite whiskeys open all at once. I went to have a pour of Bookers and I couldn’t drink it. After several months or resetting my palate, I went back for a pour and loved it.

Fast for 48 hours and any normal meal you eat, will taste nearly as good as the best dinner you have ever had. I envy my uncle who has drank many high end whiskeys with me, yet always returns to Jack. He appears to enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy JPS18, VWFRR13, PHC6… I am always wondering what I am doing wrong? And now I always try to find balance. Resetting my palate so I can not only appreciate normal bottles, but appreciate even more the “exciting” bottles.

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38

Reading this now - amazing how fast prices have risen. Dom is up > $100, Chetillons impossible to find, etc etc

39

I discovered this fascinating thread through a similiar question concering port wine. A lot of interesting suggestions. This is a topic I am faced with a lot, customers wanting to get into champagne but not knowing where to start.

I tend to approach this from a different angle. I find in most cases, it is interesting to know what the drinkers preferences are on wine as this usually translates into the same segments in champagne.

If one likes white wines from the Côte de Beaune then usually the drinker is looking for something similiar in the champagne. Does one however prefer steely/mineral wines then I would follow another path.

Also what does one want from Champagne, as an aperitif or with food? This makes a big difference.

Also consistency and quantity. If one goes down the grower route, one must be prepared for vintage variation even in blends, and also accept that one might not be able to buy in the quantity one desires.

Vintages, I would not get caught up in vintage hype but rather ask myself do I prefer warmer or cooler vintages or am I open to both. How tolerant am I to acidity?

Aged contra young champagnes. I have a lot of customers who want freshness and then there are others where a champagne cannot be old enough. It is possible to find both on the market and this is champagnes real advantage, the ability to find aged champagnes at reasonable prices.

So where does one start. Drinking down is a bad idea, Those who start on Dom Perignon or Krug, I find are usually disappointed when they try to find substitutes in the grower champagne scene.

I would always start with entry level champagne regardless of producer. Roederers Brut Reserve, Bereches Brut reserve, Aubry, Veuve Fourny are good starting points but here there are so many producers. If you like say the Bereche style, the crus will not disappoint.

Chardonnay, how much acidity can one tolerate. Chardonnay is not specific to the Côte de Blancs, I have a lot of customers who do not like the acidity. Compare say a producer like Guiborat with Robert Moncuit and Frere Mignon, you will quickly discover the diffferences in style.

100 %Pinot noir, this is where it is complicated. Ay, Ambonnay and Bouzy are the powerhouses of the region. Go north, Verzy, Verzenay, petit Montagne de Reims, less body, more freshness.
Compare for instance Pouillon with Lahaye with Paillard, gives you a good spectrum for the warmer Pinot.

Meunier, it took me a long time to understand Meunier, the most flexible champagne when it comes to food pairing. Mousse and Dehours are good starting points. In the north the Meunier is more steely and tight, Coulon.

Aube/Côtes du Bar, where does one even start here. Drappier is a safe bet. Natalie Falmet.

Then big champagne. No getting past Egly-Ouriet. I would definitely recommend the Brut Tradition but the prices are on the rise here…
De Sousa 3A, for me the best value big champagne alongside Falmet’s Le Val Cornet.

Not six champagnes, but for me the best way to get ones foot in the door. There are so many approachs and the region is so dynamic.