2008 champagne question

I am deciding among the following three champagnes from 2008: Dom Perignon, Philipponnat Clos des Goisses or Pol Roger Winston Churchill. What are the important differences between them? I’m relatively inexperienced with champagne, but I’m trying to expand into the region. Any help would be much appreciated.

What’s the context of the purchase - is it for immediate consumption?

There’s a few defining features of each wine.

Dom’s production is gargantuan. Far outweighs the other two combined. It is typically around a 50/50 blend with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir but it’s never formally disclosed. It is majority grand cru fruit from various sources around Champagne. Around 5g/l dosage which is pretty dry for DP.

CdG is from a small, walled vineyard on a very steep slope, predominantly planted with Pinot Noir. 2008 is 61% PN and 39% Chardonnay. It’s an extra-brut dosage at around 4g/litre to bring out the vinosity of the PN. It’s the smallest production of the three.

Pol don’t disclose their cepage but it’s like to be slightly more PN again, 70-80% with the rest chardonnay. Like Dom it’s sourced fruit, but slightly higher dosage at 7g/l or so. Pol make around 120k cases of this wine in total.

These three champagnes are both young and fighting with each other on the same level. It’d be good to know what you’re looking to achieve by assessing these at this point in time. If it’s academic, there’s probably better value alternatives. If it’s just a bottle to drink, go with Dom. The other two are rarely drunk in youth and the winemaking is aware of that.

That was helpful, thank you. It was not for immediate consumption, although I have seen enough tasting notes on this board to realize that many people are currently enjoying the DP, so I suppose if I bought a few bottles I could try one. I had intended to store for later consumption.

If the second two are produced in much smaller quantities, am I better off buying those now before they are sold out?

Pol will take some time before it sells out, but I understand the 2nd tranche release already has a greater price. CdG is most likely to have a quick meteoric rise in price in my view, but it will plateau until its consistency is clear (there have been bottle variation issues in the past).

Pol Roger is on a bit of a weird journey these days and the straight vintage bottlings are a dangerous buy. Most of my friends have offloaded their vintage holdings from 2000 onwards, and I happen to agree - everything post 1998 is all over the shop. I do not know enough to say that it also applies to the winnie, but that alone wouldn’t make me invest when something like Dom is so safe in comparison.

To be honest, if you want all of them then you might as well get on and buy them. The cat is fully out of the bag with the 2008 vintage and if you want these in 10 years+ when they are entering maturity then you’ll be paying big bucks, irrespective of where these wines individually go.

The one you haven’t included that’s certainly on the same plane, is 2008 Veuve La Grande Dame. I would include that if I were you. 2008 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne is yet to come, but will almost without doubt be fantastic.

In my market, Houston, TX, DP is less than half the cost of the other 2 - about $135 vs $300 for the Winston Churchill. If I found the Churchill significantly cheaper, I’d probably pick up a few bottles, but I don’t expect that to happen. I’ve had the DP a couple of times and while it’s very enjoyable now, I expect it to have a great future. Even though I haven’t tried the other 2, with the $ being roughly equal, I’m pretty sure I’d rather have twice as many bottles of the DP in the cellar.

I’ve only had SWC once, and it was the 2008. While I thought the Champagne was great and I’d be very happy to drink a lot of it, it didn’t blow me away and didn’t come anywhere close to tempting me to spend that much money on the bottle. I’d hope that the premium price becomes more justified after many years in the cellar, but based on how it drinks today, I couldn’t see a reason to buy that as opposed to Dom or any of the several other high quality Champagnes priced under $200. Obviously your tastes may differ and the pro critics disagree.

It depends on pricing and when you plan to drink the wines, as others have observed, but perhaps the easiest and most pleasurable way to decide would be to purchase one of each and to open them and taste them side-by-side. No better way to learn.

I am mostly aligned with others here. While I’ve enjoyed every Winston I’ve had (most recent is the 2004) I have voted with my wallet and only bought the DP and CDG. Not planning on opening either for some years. With others, I’m very much looking forward to the Taittinger CdC. I’d also recommend the Krug 164 MV (2008 base). Hard to find now but the 2008 Vilmart Coeur de Cuvée is going to be very competitive in quality with these other better known wines. If you really are interested in the $250+ price point then I’d recommend the Cristal over the Winston as well.

All of these wines are going to get very expensive in the future. That’s a certainty. The CDG has already gone up ~30% since first release!

Quick correction to this post. Pol Roger does not make 120,000 cases of Winston Churchill. They make approximately 1.5 million bottles across all cuvees annually. Production numbers for WC are not released, but I have seen estimates of 4000 to 8000 cases per declared vintage.

This article cites a “whisper” figure of 4000 cases, which seems a little low to me.

FWIW, the 2008 Winston is a terrific wine and well worth tasting. I drink quite a bit of Pol, admittedly mainly in the UK and France, and I don’t really relate to the notion of it being a “dangerous buy”.

I was wondering if you could elaborate on this a little more? champagne is definitely not my area of strongest knowledge and I hadn’t heard this.

Drank the 2008 DP at the domaine in June. Rock star bubbly! It will be great. Given the price differential it is a no-brainer for me.

I’m lucky to have all 3 and G. Dame but I went deep on DP. That would be my advice. Waiting for CdC 08.

The last two bottles of 1996 SWC that I had have seemed advanced and underwhelming. The last bottle was tasted at an offline with folks from this forum. It was ok…and even enjoyable, but not on the “other-worldly” level like it was back in 2011.

I’m sorry to hear that! I had it last 8 months ago and it was very good. But, a lot of 1996 Champagnes are evolving a bit erratically at the moment. Given the reputation of the vintage out of the gates, one’s mileage varies a bit more than one might wish at this stage.

From the perspective of market availability, I would definitely get the Clos des Goisses ASAP. Like Scott, I am in the Texas market- except that I am in Dallas. I got my box of 2008 Clos de Goisses this week and it was a real ordeal to get it, because what little there is all went to Houston. In great vintages, it also seems to go up more quickly in secondary market value than the other two (presumably due to rarity- and note this is an anecdotal observation- I have not done the statistical research to back this assertion.)

I have not tried the Goisses yet- hoping to do that next week in NYC if I can find a spare bottle in town- nor the Winston Churchill, but based on past experience I will have both of them and Dom in my cellar. And while each has its great merits, I generally share Scott’s sentiment when you factor in pricing and at the end of the day I will be cellaring more Dom than the other two combined by a wide margin. Dom Perignon is amazing with age and the 2008 is spectacular.

It’s a widely reported situation on wine pages across the pond. Pol Roger’s vintage bottlings have been incredibly inconsistent after 1998-2000 or so, main issue being is that they’re advancing into maturity way too early. Magnums seem much less affected. You wouldn’t catch me spending a dollar on them now, I’ve been burnt too many times.

Are there stylistic differences between them as a general matter (across vintages)?

Very big stylistic differences.

Clos des Goisses is a wine produced in finite quantities from a specific place - a steep, south-facing vineyard in Mareuil-sur-Ay which typically produces the ripest grapes in the region. Production is typically around 20,000 bottles, but as low as 5,000 for the 2010 vintage. It is a very complete, age worthy Champagne, indeed, a strong case could be made for it being the most age worthy wine in Champagne. Since Charles Philipponnat took over the direction of the estate in 1999, the soils have been worked and great attention been paid in the vines. The wine doesn’t see malolactic and dosage is on the low side. In short, one of Champagne’s most exciting and unique wines and one that will appeal to lovers of great Burgundy in its spirit. The 1952 Clos des Goisses might be the best mature Champagne I have ever tasted.

Pol Roger’s Winston Churchill is rich, lavish and powerful, the style supposedly reflecting Churchill’s taste in Champagne. It ages very well in my experience but is also fun to drink in its youth. To my palate, it’s among the finest ‘tête de cuvée’ bottlings produced by the important houses today, and I appreciate its somewhat old fashioned aesthetic.

Production statistics have never been disclosed for Dom Pérignon, but estimates range between 5 and 8.5 million bottles, so an order of magnitude more than either of the other two. The winemaking style is quite reductive (perhaps partly a function of big fermentation tanks), resulting in quite a smoky, toasty signature which is hard to mistake once you are habituated to it. It is a very nice luxury cuvée and readily available all over the world. Looking back at its history, until the late-50s/early-60s it was effectively just a special label for the Moët vintage; the 1960s were really the glory days, and back then it was vinified in wood AFAIK; beginning in the early 80s, production really started to ramp up and the wine took on its more reductive profile.

These are three very different wines. With the Dom Perignon, you have a smooth, creamy, zesty, young wine that is enjoyable now for its youthful citrus profile, but has a ton of potential for improvement and should age for a long time. The Clos des Goisses is a bigger wine even though its blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is fairly similar to Dom Perignon. It sees oak and is a deeper, bolder wine with a lot of darker tinged citrus, tart peach, touches of bread, minerality, salinity, and cream. A very complex wine that is also young and full of potential. As for the 2008 Pol Roger Winston Churchill, it is a bold, viscous, fruity wine that drinks well, but lacks complexity and depth to me. It comes across as quite simple and is very disappointing. I wouldn’t spend my money on it.

For drinking today, I think the Dom Perignon is the most enjoyable and I also think it has the most potential too. As a bonus it is the least expensive of the three you asked about. The Clos des Goisses is the most expressive and complex and is a wine that can really get you thinking. I am a big fan of both, but would go heavier on Dom Perignon as I think it is the better wine and it is lower priced plus easier to find.

To address some other Pol Roger comments in this thread, I completely agree that this is a house in need of finding itself. A situation that is similar to what Bollinger is going through IMO. The Pol Roger NV and Vintage Rose are always good, but after that it is a crapshoot and the Winston Churchill has been very disappointing in many top vintages such as 1985, 1988, 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008.

As to Dom Perignon, production is still in the 5M bottle range. They might be able to get up to 6M in some vintages, but they don’t have the vineyards to get above that right now. It was supposedly the same as the Moet vintage until the 1943 release (transvasaged bottles) though Richard Geoffroy swears that is not true. There were also reports that in the 1970s when supply of DP ran out they dumped regular Moet into DP bottles. Regardless of any of that, you can be pretty sure that every DP vintage since at least 1943 is a unique wine from the regular Moet. As for oak in DP, I think the oak was completely gone by the 1966 vintage, but a few barrels may have still been around. 1969 was definitely all steel. The 1960s were indeed a great DP decade, but the 1970s and 1980s are coming on strong too. The real ramp up in production didn’t happen until the 1990s when Moet had the Lanson and Pommery vineyards to add in. As high as production is at DP, they have that much high quality land to support it. If anyone else had the land DP does, they would make this much prestige wine too.