Extracted from a thread just posted: 4 wines tasted blind at dinner: 2006 Taittinger Comtes, 2007 Morey-Coffinet les Caillerets, 2005 Lagrange and 2013 Gaja Sperss
2006 TAITTINGER COMTES de CHAMPAGNE BLANC de BLANC- poured for us blind and rightfully so, as the bottle shape alone would have been quite telltale; initially the nose had aromas of spicy lemon dominated citrus mindful of a young Dom Perignon to me, but that faded quickly and I moved on to other considerations first because of the pure yellow color and then the nose and tastes that had different aromas of white pepper, ginger and anise accented citrus and nectarine; it had bracing acidity, was full bodied, rich and round while expressing loads of power and energy and I’m thinking this is maybe a new world sparkling wine, perhaps a non-vintage blend and definitely not a blanc de blanc; so then I started thinking this was a Roederer Estate L’Ermitage or a Schramsberg ‘J Schram’ {which are both vintage wines}; so, I was conflicted until at least 40 minutes later, a replenishing pour provided an entirely different sparkling wine, definitely more suited to my palate; it was perfectly balanced, still big, rich and bold and now challenging me to consider other options, but I did not cave in and called it a new world, CA, non BdB with some trepidation.
Once revealed, we were amazed at what it was and it was clear this bottle was very atypical for all of the numerous 2006 Comtes each of us has had over the years and especially with recent bottles; in fact, if anything, it was more like the 2008 Comtes in many ways with its massive power and concentration, but still the taste profile was so different.
One of our other geeky members brought his pH meter and measured each wine- this one had a pH of 2.89.
Cheers,
Blake
