One of the many champagne highlights along with many great reds consumed at Bruce the Returner’s Birthday Bash - will get many more notes up over the weekend.
’42 Krug - first time having this vintage of Krug which along with the '34 Krug that’s two virgin vintages for me in less than a month. More youthfully colored than most examples of 60+ year old champagne with still some effervescence left. Big and oxidative in typical Krug fashion with good acidity to balance it out. Still a fair amount of yellow fruit to go along with the nutty flavors and touch of caramel. Killer minus
Is it normal for a 60+ year old bottle of Champagne to have retained some effervescence? That part of your note really stuck out. Was it visible in the glass or more just a sensation on the palate?
Ray, I enjoy the detailed notes on the aged Champagnes you consume… Some of the Champagnes just sound sublime and I sometimes just wish for a sip, especially when the staggering or killer are in your notes…
Great note. I can’t wait to read about the rest of the wines.
Not Ray and can’t comment on this wine, but a lot of old wines do just fine in the glass. Some do fall apart which can be due to condition of the wine or pedigree, but well cared for bottles of 40,50,60,70+ year old Champagnes are often alive and kicking.
Since this wasn’t at a sit down dinner, everyone had only a couple of glasses each, so there really wasn’t the opportunity to sit with wines in the glass for a very long time. That said, I’m very confident that the Krug would have not only not fallen apart in the glass, but would have probably improved. The CO2 would have dissipated, but the champagne flavors would not have. As Brad says, that is not that unusual at all for champagne (or still wine for that matter) of this age. A champagne that I’ve been fortunate enough to have a number of times, 1906 Pol roger out of 375ml, the better examples have grown in the glass over the course of a four hour dinner.
Of course there are other examples as well that go the other way. Also at Bruce’s Bash I opened a jeroboam of '45 Ruinart which was great immediately out of the gate. However, within 10 minutes, it seemed as if the wine had added 40 years of oxidation to it and it just died. I checked back on it an hour later (there was still some left in the bottle) and it was undrinkable.
And there are bottles that go fully the other way, like the jero of '47 Veuve Clicquot that was sabered, then tasted but never even poured for the group.
As far as if it’s the norm for a champagne of this age to have efferevescence, this bottle had more than the norm for its age - blind I would have guessed by the effervescence alone, 1960’s or early 70’s. Assuming normal disgorgement dates, there is usually some bubbles in the glass, but very little if any mousse at all. The CO2 is present visually, but sometimes it only appears as you drink it. For me, the 50 year mark is a big dividing line. It seemes older than that, the effervescence of a champagne generally diminishes significantly.
The '90 Alain Robert Mesnil I don’t believe was opened. We had way more champagne and red wine than everyone could possibly consume - even as hard as we tried. Many of the 1990 and younger champagnes remained unopened. Those that were opened were generally sabered by young women enrolled in the Hillbilly School of Sabering personally taught by Dean McGowan himself.
I was asking because I remembered the 1969 Dom Perignon you shared with us at 11 Mad a few months ago, which as of right now is my Wine of the Year so far. If you recall, I kept that in the glass for a very long time (long after everyone else had finished theirs) and it really blossomed into something beautiful. I was curious if something from 1942, even from a good producer, would last a long time in the glass like the DP. Good to know.
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