Larmandier-Bernier
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It would be awesome for there to be a blind tasting of the newly-ultraexpensive grower Champagnes versus the best of the growers who have not yet had the social media or otherwise fueled price explosion.
How do the newly minted elite wines compare?
But given the pricing, and the lack of incentive for the owners of these wines to potentially undermine their value proposition, I don’t expect we’ll see it. Maybe some high roller somewhere will host one once.
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Why don’t you think about who your list is and then share that with me and let’s see what you and the group can put together. It might cause us to dig into our wallets but if you want to do the exercise I’m game to do it
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It’s a very nice wine, but the price jump there has been brutal. I bought a lot with discounts at sub $30 over the past couple of years, but I’m not a buyer at $50, let alone the $79 mentioned.
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Just a suggestion… create a broad list of the “new hotness” and a list of the “value” wines. Have someone select a subset of the list in secret, coordinate the accumulation of the wine, and act as a quasi-blind judge (if able to double blind). Most wouldn’t know the final selection, other than the pool of candidates and the rules (say, roughly 1/3 from prestige list, and the rest from “other”).
This would be the hard part of a tasting—there are a lot of grower champagnes mentioned as “reasonable” values that I don’t think are very good and/or interesting. I’m sure the same people who like those champagnes would suggest the same about some of the grower champagnes I like in that price point. You would probably need 40-60 different champagnes (3 per producer, 15-20 producers) to do this properly.
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Nah, I mean just for fun and learning, not some academic / industry grand jury thing which claims to be definitive.
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I don’t think something small is that informative. For most producers, there are some bottlings I like and some I do not like (which may also change on a vintage by vintage basis).
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Don’t you ever do tastings just to learn and to satisfy your interest?
Blind tasting 8 Cornas from 2010 vintage with five of your wine drinking buddies doesn’t definitively answer anything, but it’s fun and you learn from it.
Maybe you have some of the skyrocketing ones like Gonon mixed in with the Voge types and it helps you form an opinion whether the skyrocketing ones are worth the new prices to you.
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Sure, but that type of tasting is hard to lead to a value judgment about whether certain producers match up to others. It’s helpful, but less definitive.
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Agreed. I more think it would be fun than anything else. And I don’t have an agenda either way – I’ve had a chances to try Ulyssee Colin, Bouchard, Egly et al, and generally found them to be very good.
Side question…what is your grower list you like? I’m honestly interested.
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On the reasonable side, Agrapart, Chartogne Taillet, Dhondt Greeley, Gerbais, Laherte Freres, Marguet and Suenen are the ones that immediately come to mind.
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Hey that’s a cool list and I buy those producers too. The one exception would be Gerbais, as I really haven’t bought any of their wine in quite a while and I should probably fix that. I remember visiting there in 2018 and at that time I was still developing, well still am, but was developing my interest in Champagne producers. I was kind of an unknown quantity so to speak in the mind of the winery cuz I don’t know him don’t live by him and had never met him but made an appointment and Aurelien Gerbais really treated me to a great afternoon and he seemed sincerely generous and authentic about just wanting to talk about champagne and he could tell I was interested when I was taking notes and writing things down. From what I can tell is he continues to keep his prices reasonable and sane and I ought to support that by picking up a handful of bottles as a thank you for their pricing.
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Chris, I don’t know anyone I drink wine with who thinks that way, to be honest. Personally I think challenging ones priors consistently is great. Not to reach any scientific consensus (no great wines, etc) but to see whether the wines are as good as I think. If I bring a bottle of [insert expensive champagne here] and it shows poorly, I’d consider whether I want to keep buying it (if it happens repeatedly). Otherwise you end up paying for the name on the label.
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Greg, to a degree, @Chris_Seiber and I already do this on an informal basis. We don’t say let’s sit down and taste as he had outlined above, but there have been plenty of instances when he and I, as part of our group, have tasted Bouchard and Marguet blind, or Prevost and Vilmart blind, in the same setting, side-by side. It’s a bit harder for me to do that now, as I unloaded all of my Prevost, Bouchard, et al, but we have done it and we continue to exercise our mental muscles around producers regularly.
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You’re saying you drink wines blind, sure. I have to admit, I’m slightly puzzled then why Chris would think people wouldn’t do those kinds of tastings 
He can clarify but we taste blind regularly.
I just meant that specific blind tasting – newly skyrocket price grower Champagne versus the best of the ones still at moderate prices. I know people do blind tastings all the time, and they often have wines of varying market value blind tasted against each other.
Hey, I could totally be wrong, maybe lots of people will try that idea. I hope they post notes on here.
I have brought bottles of Collin blind to a good number of dinners over the past year, so I look at it from the perspective of “why wouldn’t I”?
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