Always wanted to try the SC rose
I broke down and bought some champagne racks, and life has been less frustrating since. Of course, I immediately ran out of space . . . .
I wouldn’t drink any special club that would have me as a member.
The 2002 had not reached its peak yet in February with a fair amount of baby fat still left to get rid of. It only got more powerful and structured in the glass. Quite vinous and concentrated. I would assume the 2008 to be similarly long-lived.
Brandon,
Thanks for the nice comments.
I joined here b/c I saw some names from years ago and I like to read about their wine adventures. I put this thread up because I know their are plenty of people from many countries on this BB and there is always room for greater awareness that Champagne should be consumed all the time, whether it is SC or not.
JH
I will also “vouch” for Justin, as I met him at the “original” WS offline in Manhattan in 6/2002
Thoughts on the Paul Bara?
The yellow stuff is good, but the pink stuff is outstanding
Thanks Dave. Do you remember the double mag of '92 Beringer PR Cab that was served at the offline in 2002? The empty bottle sits comfortably in my cellar. Would love to try that wine again in large format.
JH
I do remember that - it was the wine of the evening for me by a wide margin… That despite Board-O bringing that imperial of LLC, can’t recall the vintage…89?
The 6L of LLC was 1979. How far is Hudson Ohio from Cinci? Many years ago I organized an offline in Cinci and was thinking of doing another one.
Interestingly, the Special Club recently opened boutique / tasting bar in Reims – http://www.boutique-tresors-champagne.com
I haven’t been, but apparently, you can taste the complete line of Special Club champagnes there.
Personally, I haven’t sampled them all, but I enjoy Paul Bara, Gaston Chiquet, Marc Hebrart, and Pierre Gimonnet, A. Margaine, and Jose Michel. Except for the bottles themselves, which are a pain in the ass.
Seems a bit pricey… is it much better than the NV rose or the billecart rose?
Hudson is about halfway between Cleveland and Akron, and is not quite a 4 hour drive to Cincy.
Anyone had the Remy Massin? It’s on Last Bottle atm
I’ve been a club fan since the early 80s - and am never disappointed. The '07 and '08 Gimonnets are my current favorites -
What purports to make Special Club bottlings special (whether or not one agrees they are special) or even notable?
At one point in time the Special Club was really the ‘who’s who’ of top grower Champagnes. At least that is what they were when they formed in 1971, but they started to lose their way in the mid-1980s when they insisted everyone make pure, precise, fairly stereotypical wine for the particular grape type(s) and village(s). The wines had to be good, but not too far off the normal path and they didn’t want anyone to standout too much, be too different, or get too much attention. This led to a number of folks leaving like Selosse and then Peters. The club didn’t want to change and soon membership became a rotating door. Standards dropped and outside of a few standbys, quality overall dropped to.
Recently they have become more open to new ideas and the Club’s quality has increased. Some of the newer members are young, bright, rising stars like Mousse, Mouzon-Leroux, Goulard, and Remy Massin. The core are the long time, high quality members like Margaine, Gimonnet, Hebrart, Goutorbe, Bara, Chiquet, Lassalle, and Jose Michel.
Past members who are well known include Pierre Peters, Bonnaire, Jacques Selosse, Larmandier-Bernier, and Philippe Gonet.
For anyone who makes it over to Champagne, the Special Club (Club de Tresors) Shop is very well done and a great place to visit to purchase/taste. The Club also does a tasting during the ‘Champagne Week’ activities in April where all the producers pour their Club wine and a few other cuvees they make too.
In conclusion, the Club isn’t what it once was, but is better now than it has been in at least a decade (probably more). Special Club does not denote that a bottle or producer is great, but a number of them are very good deals. Also, some of these sell for 30 Euros in France so they are fairly priced from that aspect. If the Club can gain some stability in membership and see some of the newer members continue to increase in quality then it could become something very special once again.
One other thing to add is that many of the Club producers now make a wine (or wines) that they consider above and beyond the Special Club bottling. At the start of the group, the Special Club bottling was always the prestige cuvee of the producer, but once producers wanted to produce a wine outside of the norm for the group and bottle it as a Special Club, things went sideways and many members left or grew uneasy. Members were forced to make sure Special Club was the top wine and that it met group standards for uniformity and expectations. This led even more to leave.
This stance was slowly relaxed a bit over time, but even up until just a few years ago, there were still a number of constraints on what you could and couldn’t bottle as Special Club. Today, most of the Special Club bottlings are at or near the top of the producer’s range and still tend to be an overall representation of what the producer can do without going too outside of the norm. Most of the more creative winemaking cuvees and wines focused on a particular expression (vineyard, village, grape, oak, etc…) are now released outside of the Special Club range. We will have to see how the younger generation of members responds to this.
FYI there is a special club from Massin up on Last Bottle Wines…about 50$…if anyone wants to sample it.