I’m curious if you have any theories/speculation on why that may be. I’ve yet to have any RD, though I do have a few in my cellar.
I had read years ago, before I ever started drinking Champagne, Champagne ages quickly when disgorged because of the time it spent in an inoxidative environment. It doesn’t really age prior to disgorgment, but as soon as oxygen hits the wine, it accelerates the aging process, essentially making up for lost time. I don’t know how accurate that is, but it made a lot of intuitive sense to me, and my experience seeing NV bottles completely transform in two years time reinforced that lesson.
This is all academic for me. I have neither the actuarial time to put away wines for decades nor the space or income to be buying high priced bottles and placing them in long term abeyance. I have only had a few vintage wines that were too tight to be enjoyable, though I usually open bottles a few hours before drinking them. The punishing bottles were all purchases I made on the basis of Roger Voss tasting notes, encouraging the reader to “drink this mature wine now.” I am just going to keep popping corks early, until I stop getting enjoyment from them. I have been lucky so far, hopefully there won’t be a painful reversion to the mean.
This is both what I’ve read and what I’ve been told when discussing on the matter with a Master of Wine.
A wine and its counterpart aged longer on the lees (like Bollinger LGA and RD) are not identical even if they were made from the exactly same wine and a technical analysis would tell they were basically two same wines with no differences in analytical values. I understood the biggest impact here was the difference between the autolytic characteristics (ie. yeasty notes, bread dough, nuttiness, biscuits, creaminess, brioche) and at which rate they appear in the wine.
A Champagne aged for just the minimum amount on the lees (12 months) might not show any autolytic qualities - apart from a very simple yeasty / leesy flavor - because autolytic qualities are thought to develop only after 15-18 of aging on the lees. A wine aged for this long might take years and years before any autolytic flavors started to appear and at this point the wine might show also some developed tertiary flavors. This is why a basic NV might feel like it has evolved drastically after +5 years of aging. However, I’m with Rob in that a Champ aged for 3-5 years is still a very young wine for me.
A Champagne aged for 3-5 years on the lees (like LGA) usually has started to develop some autolytic qualities already, but most of them emerge only after time. Due to the considerable time spent on the lees, there is a lot of potential for the autolytic flavors to develop, but it takes time. As lees protect the wine from oxidation, the wine is still very youthful upon disgorgement and it takes time for the wine to develop more developed tertiary notes - even more so, if the wine has been vinified in a more oxidative way (say, using oak barrels or casks) instead of a very reductive environment in stainless steel tanks, protecting the wine from oxygen.
A Champagne aged extensively (+10 yo) on the lees (like RD) tends to react with oxygen (from the disgorgement) at a much faster pace than a wine aged for 3-5 years. These wines can be quite autolytic already upon release, although they also tend to be remarkably youthful in quality, due to how the lees protect the wine from oxygen. This is why a bottle of 2008 LGA can be so different from a bottle of 2008 RD, even if they are basically the same wine - only aged for a different time on the lees. Immediately after release an LGA might feel more evolved AND showing more autolytic qualities, whereas RD is still super youthful for its age (this is also the reason why Bollinger releases the wine almost immediately after disgorging the wine). However, for a wine aged for this long on the lees it usually takes a lot less time - often only just months - for the autolytic characteristics to appear. This means that a year after RD’s release the wine has developed considerably, especially in regards to the autolytic qualities. After a year a bottle of 2008 LGA might be relatively unchanged, whereas a bottle of RD has aged considerably and might be remarkably toasty with much more emphasis on the autolysis (especially compared to the similarly aged LGA).
IIRC, this MW said that if you want to have a bottle for aging, LGA is much better. If you want an impressive Champagne that might not hold as nicely that long, RD is a better choice. It is a “better” (or at least “more impressive”) Champagne than LGA, but for a shorter period of time.
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Have you ever tasted Agrapart ? His champagnes are quite accessible from the go with the exception of the Mineral.
Growing up, my dad would always salt away some Pol Roger Brut and Bollinger Special Cuvée and would drink the oldest ones first, usually 3 years in the cellar. There were usually a few bottles of Dom and Winston for special occasions and he would replace with the current vintage whenever we drank one.
So I think you can enjoy the joys of aged Champagne without spending the kind of $$$ that the folks here are talking about. Just a few years really does nice things to wines like this or whatever you’re into. I’m not into the truffle and other notes in old Champagne, so a few years is a nice spot, IMO. I just had Pol Roger Brut from magnum a few weeks back, it was the current release and I was surprised how much I liked it. I think I’m going to grab some to lay down because I think it’ll be even better with a few more years and the price is nice.
My wholesale price on Agrapart Terroirs went up 28% from the last release. Luckily, I was only allocated 2 bottles. The 7 Crus is at the old Terroirs price…
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What you write applies to almost every champagne this year.
Jacquesson 746 at 70 € one year ago 50 €
Bereche Brut Reserve, when we started selling 25 € and now we are 50€
Not in about 10 years. I used to drink 7 crus when it was in the low 30’s, and liked it a lot. I haven’t seen any on the shelf in quite some time.
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