I was thinking how unfortunate Champagne has so very infrequently been part of my purchasing or imbibing regime as my wife and I so thoroughly enjoyed some on the patio last weekend. I saw the Champagne club on K&L and was seriously considering pulling the trigger since I am so clueless in this area and am too busy to do the research and lack the space and drinking capacity to invest in a wide variety to explore myself. Does anyone have an opinion about any Champagne clubs or recommendations to make? I am also willing to make my own purchases but again will probably not be able to do extensive research. Gracias.
I don’t love the champagne selection at K&L, though I know others who do. (Speaking mostly about the direct imports, not the blue chip wines, of course.) I buy most of my champagne from Envoyer, and honestly I just follow recommendations from people here in the Envoyer thread. They have almost universally been very good to excellent. Mousse, Marguet, Savart, Camille Saves are a few that I’ve gotten in to recently. Of course the expensive stuff is great: Cristal, Taittinger Comtes de Champagne, Philipponnat.
Try FatCork, Brian works to find some really great under the radar growers.
You mentioned K&L. If you are in Southern California, look into this guy’s champagne, get very sharp deals, and do him a solid. I totally would, but I’m not supposed to be buying wine at the moment =(.
(No affiliation with the seller, but I am a big fan of those producers)
Lopa and Envoyer have both been good sources for me to buy and learn about Champagne.
Thanks all for the leads. I will be following up!
Honestly, if you just signed up for Envoyer and randomly bought three to four Champanges from their offers every month you would be good. Or if you wanted a more structured approach, buy one Blanc des Blanc, one Blanc des Noir, one Grower and one House Champange over whatever time period you feel comfortable and you would get a wonderful exposure. I’ve always shied away from “clubs” from retailers because I’ve always been worried some of the bottles would be things they (or their wholesaler) need to unload. K&L is probably more reliable than most, however.
Keep in mind Envoyer has a tiered email list. You can’t just sign up and wait for the good offers to come, they won’t. I never saw any of the stuff that is posted about and they wouldn’t tell me how much I had to buy to get the reserved offers. I’m not suggesting you don’t sign up as there is obviously a fan club, just understand why you wont initially see the limited offerings. For that reason I don’t think it’s a good place to start.
Didn’t know that about Envoyer, interesting. Either way, my guess is that if you want a club, you want greater exposure to good Champagne, not necessarily highly allocated wines. I would still say, sign up and buy a couple each month and you’ll probably be happy and will learn a lot about the region.
Thanks again for sharing your insights. Regards.