Here is my list. The top 10 are all Champagne:
I was thinking the same thing. The 1979 Dom Ruinart Rose is the best Champagne I have had.
Unless we have a blind tasting of Champagne, Dom will always come in first the same way Olive Garden is the best Italian year in and out!
Awesome list Loren - a few I haven’t had yet, a few I don’t know at all (that I will seek out). Booked marked! (and Tweeted)
The only one on the list I’ve had that never impressed me is the Nicolas Feuillatte Cuvee Palmes d’Or (and I think their cheap stuff is a deal). I’ll have to try it again sometime!
I’ve done more than a couple blind tasting that had Dom, and I consistently like it A LOT!
Now for the Olive Garden, . . . 
(my parents favorite place!)
why do we like lists so much? and it’s not just wine berserkers. it’s an all around internets way to capture attention. i fall for it sometimes, but i’m deeply bummed. intellectual life: doa.
Any love for Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires?
Wow - this list makes me really thirsty! I’d take them all!!
Had a 85 Heidsieck the other night, it blew away the 97 Salon.
Nice list Loren.
No doubt. I have all top ten, except #6.
Need to rectify that.
I’m missing several. Been looking for some Selosse for awhile without success. Meaning can’t find any at a price I’m willing to pay.
I picked up three different Selosses from The Rare Wine Company a few months back - only tried one so far, but looking forward to the next two when the time is right (if I had read Loren’s list 10 minutes earlier, I might have opened a Selosse Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs Substance instead of a Chartogne-Taillot Le Rose, which is good but not much more).
And I’ll also add, my palate has not had the pleasure of a Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires yet.
I don’t get Gruet at no. 16 on your list, Loren, but it’s still a very interesting list. I’ll +1 that Dom is overrated, but I also think Pierre Peters wines, with the exception of Les Chetillon, are also overrated (blasphemy, I know).
as for the rest:
- Cristal - ditto on the Rose
- Salon
- Krug - All of them!
- Winston Churchill
- Grand Siecle (and the Rose I’ve tried but once)
- Bollinger La Grande Annee
- Deutz Cuvee William Deutz
- Philipponnat Clos de Goisse
10 Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame - maybe, because I though the 93 was very marginal. And the 95 didn’t do much for me either- Jacques Selosse - controversial?
I’d slide Winston and Selosse Substance (my favorite) up, kick Veuve out and replace with Comtes, boot Krug MV for vintage Krug (to level the playing field), slide Cristal down, and include Dom Ruinart over Deutz.
The one I’m struggling with is Bollinger. In great vintages is extraordinary, but like Grande Dame, it’s had some good but not great vintages. I’ll include it, though, as my “bargain” wine, and because it can age very well.
The simple answer is… that it doesn’t work like that.
Perhaps you should have said “greatest” rather than best. For greatest I would agree that it is totally relevant to look at track record over a long period as opposed to say the past 20 years. With those parameters I tend to agree with most of the grand marquelarger house wines you’ve included. Though as a few others have said Taittinger Comtes belongs on such a list.
There’s no questioning that everyone has THEIR opinion, but that Dom shouldn’t be on a list that considers track record is an extreme minority position. They’ve been making excellent wines for SOOO long. I could agree that it might be over-rated, as it is probably held as a clear #1 by the general population, but that doesn’t mean it still can’t be in the top 4,6,10.
For a similar reason I wouldn’t knock La Grande Dame or even Belle Epoque off of my list. They have dropped off a bit in quality over the past dozen years and are not the value that many grower bottlings are, but they have made a lot of excellent wines over a century.
Offhand, I would probably include Vilamart Coeur and the Peters Chetillons, which would mean booting at least two, so I’d start with Deutz.
Exactly.
There’s no definitive list anyway.
But if I had to give a list of “what comes to your mind as for the Champagne you prefer”, I would most definitely include Francis Boulard “Les Rachais”…
M. Lux, do you have any experience with the recent disgorgements 2005 vs 06?
Jeez, what a bunch of misanthropes. How about, “my list would be very different b/c it would be full of growers?”
“You are a shill for Moet and a bore.” What would your mom say about your manners?
#7 on my Top 10 Annoying Thing About The Internet