90 Salon or 90 Taittinger Comtes—I want to show someone a great older Champagne. Which is likely showing better? Opening both is not an option.
Comtes more reliable, I’d say.
Alan… I’d say the 90 Salon. I love Salon so I guess I am biased. Either bottle would be a great experience! Lucky friend!
Plus one.
The last '90 Salon I tasted was sherry-like from oxygen.
I’ve never had the Salon but the Comte was fantastic about 5 years ago and didn’t seem likely to decline anytime soon.
If the Salon is on…you’ll be sharing an irreplaceable experience with them; however the Taittinger Comtes may be more reliable though…so I’d opt the latter.
If I were trying to show the full mature champagne experience to an experienced wine drinker the Salon is a great choice. If it is for a non wine geek the Tattinger would be the safer choice.
Mis dos centavos.
Have not had the Salon, but the 90 Comtes was really good when I had it last January.
This.
I’ve heard anecdotally from many sources that 1990 Salon has a high rate of dead (oxidized) bottles. My one and only sample was the same. A good bottle I’m sure is fantastic.
1990 Comtes has been gorgeous since release (although rich compared to other vintages). I haven’t heard about any oxidation issue, but there were some cooked bottles around NYC early on (1999ish), so sourcing matters.
If one and only one, I’d stick with Comtes although Salon is tempting.
I agree w the reliability of Comtes. Would hate to talk up the Salon and have it dead.
90 Salon makes 07 Leflaive seem reliable.
Yeah, unless you can bring both with Comte as a back-up, I’d say Comte first.
Somewhere in the distribution channel, many of the Salons of that era, which made their way to the USA, were very badly heat damaged.
[So badly heat damaged - so foul - that you can’t swallow the stuff.]
I don’t know whether import/distribution for the West Coast was the same as import/distribution for the East Coast, and I don’t know whether Salon & Taittinger might have shared any common hot spots in import/distribution.
But if I were opening a 1990 Salon to impress someone, then I’d definitely bring along the 1990 Comtes as an emergency backup.
While US importers may have exacerbated the issue with Salon, the problem was already there. I’ve had a fair amount of 82-90 Salon in Europe with the same issues.
I’ve not encountered those issues, whether in Europe or in the US, with CdC other than a random poorly stored bottle.
ha!
+1, Salon 90, regardless of where it comes from is a lottery, have the Comtes near at hand
Comtes
Salon