As has become customary, our friend Tom hosted a few of us at his place during the holidays, with some simple take-out food but some outstanding wines. We opted to try the Champagnes in a blind format, and I volunteered to make the flights and pour the wines for everybody. As a result, I did not taste those particular wines blind, while everyone else did. After that, though, everything was tasted un-bagged.
Champagne Flight #1:
2000 Jean Milan Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut Terres de Noel. Disgorged 2/20/06. Our first wine of the evening presents a very nice bouquet that is soft, pure and pretty—featuring aromas of white flowers, minerals, lemon peel, orange hard candy and a hint of ginger. It is quite creamy-textured in the mouth, with lots of chalk and limestone notes riding above the core citrus and pear fruit flavors. It is fairly dense and full and presents sort of a slinky, slippery mouthfeel through the middle, with my only quibble being that it seems to flatten out a bit on the more metallic-tinged finish.
1996 Salon Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs. I think fellow taster Peter C captured this wine’s essence quite well when he called it “tight but regal”. Indeed, the nose is fairly inward-facing, but it demonstrates a clear sense of pinpoint control and precision. Elements of copper kettle, limestone, chalk and ginger ale are elegant yet seemingly just the tip of more powerful elements lurking below. In the mouth, it is again classy and structured and showing undeniable breeding and control. It is creamy-textured, shows fine drive and precision, but never really expands out to the edges of the palate or unfolds beyond its core flavors of yellow fruit, citrus cream and chalk. The acidity is pretty aggressive at the end, and it just feels like it needs to be put to rest for a good long sleep before approaching again. Still, this shows all the finery and raw ingredients to absolutely wow us all sometime in the future.
1996 Pierre Peters Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs Cuvee Speciale. The nose here is all about smoke, graphite and struck match right up front, but below that is a ton of peach and orangy citrus elements that have a pleasing sweetness of character that works really well. In the mouth, it shows the greatest weight and density of the first three wines, coming across as rich and luscious yet tangy and tingly. It is beautifully-flavored with peach, pear, lemon peel and mineral elements, and is just drinking really nicely right now in a full and creamy, yet fresh and lively fashion. There is just a lot to like about this beautiful wine.
Champagne Flight #2:
1996 Krug Champagne Brut. The Krug displays a dark and serious-toned nose of flint, peach pit, yellow apple, dried cherry and an odd little whiff of coconut. In the mouth, it is full, deep and big-boned, though perhaps a bit chunky or strident at times. But it is loaded with red fruit, apple, peach pit and toast flavors that have a lot of presence and volume. It is the most masculine wine of the six and suffers a tad in the elegance dimension by comparison. Still, there is a ton of great character and rich dark flavor here to enjoy. I would just hold off on it for a while longer.
1996 Moet & Chandon Champagne Cuvee Dom Perignon. Each time I drink this wine, it seems better than the time before. On this bottle, the nose is complex and layered with aromas of chalk, lemon peel, pear, apple, mineral and toasted bread galore. It is rather cool and fine-honed in the mouth, yet it delivers a richly-textured, leesy, holisitc and persistent mouthfeel from start to finish. The length is pretty remarkable and it is just an impressive display of power, finesse and creamy rich goodness.
2002 Henri Goutorbe Champagne Special Club. Disgorged May 11, 2010, this wine has a whole lot of aromatic action going on right from the very start—featuring very nice aromas of brioche, ginger ale, yellow apple, lemon-lime and twinges of minerality. It is really lively and full-blown in the mouth, delivering loads and loads of fine apple, citrus and ginger flavors. It has a really fun and jazzy personality, with a fresh and frothy feel that just wakes up the taste senses and makes the mouth water for more. This is really good stuff and is drinking wonderfully right now.
Overall, every one of these Champagnes was delicious in its own way. However, it was interesting to put them to the test against each other, as I think it showed some insights about which ones are more ready to drink right now. In the end, my rank order preference was 1) Dom Perignon 2) Goutorbe 3) Pierre Peters 4) Krug 5) Salon 6) Jean Milan.
Red Wine Flight:
1983 Philippe Leclerc Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Cazetiers. This is definitely faded at the rim and a bit brown all around. It is also displays a very funky, kinda weedy nose that seems a bit volatile and vegetal to go along with its underlying aromas of black olive, tomato plant, dirt pile, caramel, Indian spices and aged red fruit. Although it is tough to find any enjoyment on the nose, I actually find it fairly interesting to taste. Overall, it comes across as tasting crunchy, red-fruited, earthy, rustic and a bit austere in an aged, old fashioned and Old World package. It takes a bit of patience and a lot of work to find the positives here, so call this more interesting than pleasurable. For others, it was a quick pass, but perhaps since I was influenced by having brought it, I spent a lot more time with it and maybe am stretching a bit to accentuate the positives in what is certainly a bottle pretty low on the downhill.
1975 Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon Monte Bello California. In comparison, this wine is an absolute pleasure right from the very start all the way through to the very ending. The nose of this wine is wide open for business and comes across as extremely expressive in its complex and layered aromas of mint leaves, red currants, cherries, cigar wrapper, old leather, caramel and oak dust. It is just fun and relaxing to sit and sniff all the things going on with this one. On the palate, it is showing a lot of life, with plenty of red currant fruit in a creamy-textured, mid-weighted and perfectly-balanced package. The flavors are beautiful, the mouthfeel quite pleasing and the staying power really impressive. Also, there are still some cushy tannins on the red currant and cocoa-tinged finish, and the acidity is right there, too, so I wouldn’t hesitate to hold a while longer. But why wait? It is drinking great right now.
1994 Zind-Humbrecht Late Harvest Flight:
1994 Zind-Humbrecht Gewurztraminer Hengst Vendange Tardive. Wow, this wine offers up one hell of an exotic bouquet redolent of lavendar, baking spices, dried apricots, quince paste and rather funky lychee fruit. It is full and languid and brightly sweet on the palate and has a real Gewurz spiciness to it, as well. Fine-flowing flavors of lychee, peach and caramel are tinged a bit by cool woodiness and a good dose of acidity. It is a delight to drink, but it has a real hard time competing with the two wines that followed it.
1994 Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Rangen de Thann Clos St. Urbain Vendange Tardive. In a bizarre twist of fate, I had just drunk a bottle of this wine the previous evening with a different set of friends. This one was more youthful in tone and I think showed more richness of fruit, as well. I was starting to think the wine was evolving a bit since the first time I had it in September of 2006, but this particular bottle was pretty much just as I recall the wine from that first encounter. First off, the bouquet is intoxicatingly beautiful, with all kinds of honeysuckle, caramel, dried apricot, yellow raisin and clover honey aromas coating the senses. On the palate, it is pure, beautiful, full-figured and classy, with unctuously-layered flavors of honey, toasted orange peel, caramel and apricot draped over a fine crunch of tangy acids running deep beneath. It is just a great wine and everything one could want in a wine of this style—displaying unbelievable length, richness, flavor and balance.
1994 Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Jebsal Turkheim Selection de Grains Nobles. If anything, this wine is even more dialed up aromatically, with aromas that completely coat the nostrils in rich and unctuous aromas of rose petals, orange peel, marmalade and apricot paste. On the palate, this is really all about the sweet fleshy fruit—as full-blown flavors of honey, apricot, peach syrup, caramel and raisin coat the tongue and provide a completely hedonistic drinking experience. It is rich and thick and at times utterly captivating, but I find that a little goes a long way. What a trio, though!
-Michael
