It is far to easy to do. I am trying to break the habit.
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I’ve loved your TNs and contributions on this thread and totally believe that this is good juice…I just cannot get over the baroque bottle!! 
I thought I was mostly impervious to marketing… guess not! I’ll get over my misplaced pride and try one. I’m challenging myself.
Champagne is the one wine with which my wife will always have another glass. So to me a Champagne bottle is never more than 500ml and is drained on the day or night when the cork is popped.
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Don’t get this bottle. Get the Cuvee Orium, if you want to try one. I like this bottle, but it tastes a bit like the label looks. The Cuvee Orium is the more serious wine.
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This is probably a champagne which terroir purists will denounce with its 12g/l dosage. Returnning from France with a Bresse chicken, the Le Mesnil has become my favourite pairing with this chicken prepared with a sauce of (dried) morels, sherry and cream, the richness of the sauce is balanced with the richness of the champagne.
Leclaire-Thiefane hit the ground running, the first release were of an extremely high level, probably helps that the vinify etc at De Sousa. From the 2017 vintage, degorged in Januar 2023 and with a dosage of 2gr/l. This is step up from thelast releases, probably to do with the 2017 vintage. Starts off with pent up aggression with penetrant perlage, needs about two hours to calm down and open up, the usual agrumes aromas with a pronounced oxidised element, really nice grippy acidity.
The german champagne critic, Gerhard Eichelmann (who I consider to be the best champagne critic) promoted three producers into his top category Weltklasse-Erzeuger, world class producers: Leclapart, Emanuel Brochet and Huré Frères. We always rated Huré Frères extremely highly so this was not for us a big surprise.
The new Inattendue is a masterpiece in the use of barriques in the making of a champagne. I will say straight away, this is a champagne ar Egly-Ouriet level. There is a incredible balance, a beautiful creamy mouthfeel, something consumers want but few producers are capable of creating, the acidity is mild and there is an incredibly long and persistent maritime/saline/oyster like finish. I don’t believe there is such a thing as the perfect champagne but if there was, this would be in come close to fulfilling this category.
The new Memoire which ends with the 2019 vintage, is the oldest Vin Perpetuelle started in 1982. 50% Pinot Noir, 40% Meunier and 10% Chardonnay. This is the opus magnum from Huré Frères. A champagne that is impossible to describe, the complexity is beyond believe, one has to follow this champagne over a few hours, each sip, each glass is totally different, it is as if every vintage has a story to tell and wants to be heard. If 100 points from me were of any meaning, thiswould be my contender this year.
The criticism levelled at Huré Frères for a long time was their copying of Bereche, this was true but over the last few years they have found their own voice and the improvements have been incredible. Stylistically perhaps closer to Vilmart but a tick better.
Sadly prices have gone up and the allocations have gotten smaller. For me the benchmark champagnes are the Krug non-vintage and the Charles Heidsieck collection, up until now I have felt only Egly-Ouriet, Leclapart, Agraprt, Selosse and Emanuel Brochet have produced champagnes at that level. Huré Frères for me have joined that club.
ISometimes you find champagnes being directly sold for under 20 €. This producer dilevers grapes to De Saint Gall and makes some champagne himself for local customers. A blend of Chardonnay from GC sites in Avize and Pinot Noir from different sites, 39% from the 2015 vintage and 61% reseve wines.
Not the last word in complexity but easy and satisfying to drink with snacks, it is quite creamy and has those old fashioned aromas of yeast/ brioche/nroasted nuts but also nice agrumes aromas and ripe peaches. If comparing this to more expensive champagnes this one is going to lose but for the price , easy to drink.
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Celebrated finishing up the last of our spring chores last night (a tedious pressure washing of our roof deck) with a bottle Krug Grande Cuvée. On the same wavelength as Warren, but a much younger bottle - 170 edition.
The Krug ID system is pretty cool. It’ll even print a one-sheet PDF with all the notes from the site. The 170 edition has these notes: 51% PinotNoir, 38%Chardonnay, and 11% Meunier. a blend of 195 wines from 12 different years, the youngest of which is from 2014, while the oldest dates back to 1998.
My tasting notes align pretty closely with the provided notes from Krug:
Marzipan, dried citrus on the nose. Hazelnut, yellow apple, almond, and light toffee on the palate.
I don’t know that I’ll be be able to hold on to my 2nd bottle for another 10 years…but looking forward to seeing how the 170 evolves in another couple years.
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@Mark_Y, I’ll spin off that Krug note into another thread about our weekend in Whistler to minimize thread drift!
Cheers,
Warren
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Copied from another thread:
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NV Egly-Ouriet Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs Les Crayères.A great bottle. Unmistakably BdN. Black cherries, dark berries, pear, chalk. Some oak. Dense but elegant. MB liked this better than last night’s Krug 164 (I silently begged to differ). This was the 2014 base, 2021 disgorgement. I preferred the 2019 disgorged 2012 based version, but it’s possible this just needs more time.
Ignore any negative undertones in this note; it’s a fabulous champagne that I’d gladly drink anytime. For my palate, the Crayeres and VP are the best wines from this house.
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Sounds like the 164 I had last week.
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Warren - I have never had the later disgorgement and I don’t own any either. You are going to have to open one of the originals and let us know which one is better. I plan on checking in on the '08 tomorrow. I saw both Brad and Burgundy Al had great bottles of the '08 recently.
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If I recall rightly, someone drunk a bottle of Guillaume Sergent’s champagne close to the degorgement and was not impressed. I find his champagnes quite disjointed at first and they need almost a year post degorgement to come together. In todays world of social media savvy producers with their clever markering , Sergent is totally niave. He makes in my opinion really good terroir champagnes but has no idea about social media and marketing making him a bit of an under the radar producer. From a business perspecitve we usually try to sell quickly but in the case of Sergent we have held bottles back as we feel this producer deserves more credit and drinking too young does not help in demonstrating how good this producer really is.
So 10 months after the degorgement we tried our first bottle from last years releases. The wood which can make the champagne seem disjointed is integrated, there is a spice note deriving from this. The Les Prés Dieu is balanced, delicate and has good depth and persistence. The dominant aromas are pears, bergamotte, grapefruit and some spice from the wood, the acidity is gentle and the minerality is starting to come through, dried oyster shells and fish fumet. For me this is a 100% food champagne and can substitute a 1er cru white Burgundy without problem. I see this getting better over the next two to five years.
I would take a risk here and state, if William Kelley caught on to the quality of this producer and reviewed him, things would change drastically. I think this producer ticks in so many ways the things I would conjecture Mr Kelley likes in champagne but also the philosophy in the viticulture etc. I do not write this to sell the champagne, but because I believe this producer really deserves more attention.
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1982 Piper-Heidsieck ‘Hors-Serie’ Millesime Extra Brut
Disgorged in January 2022, dosage 4g/L. Bottle #2049 of 2500.
I popped a bottle of this with guests last night. While the 1971 PH Hors-Serie was polarizing, this 1982 was universally liked.
This bottle was surprising on several levels. The flavor was preternaturally fresh and fruity. No one could believe this was a 40 year old champagne. When I removed the cork there was an audible pop and an unexpected amount of remaining carbonation.
We were getting a lot of zesty citrus, pineapple, green apples, etc. but with a rich / complex finish. Nice balanced acidity. It felt like a 2002 not 82, and the person who hated the 1971 enjoyed this 1982.
Very surprising.
After our tasting I looked on YouTube and saw The Finest Bubble tasting the 82. We had roughly the same experience as they had with the 82 Hors-Serie.
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2018 Elise Dechannes Absolue Terre, very creamy, a sort of transparency from the amphorae, zero dosage but super easy drinking.
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They switched importers a lot and there was a bigger issue with backstock Piper Sonoma that they wanted someone to take ownership of. I think the 02 was with Terlato, which they then moved on from due to the Sonoma issue, yet again.
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Jose Michel 2014 Special Club:
This was the vinous equivalent of a drive to Vegas. You could see the brilliant lights off in the distance, and you’re deceived by the illusion that brilliance is just a few miles down the road, and then you drive. For hours you drive, but you just don’t seem to get any closer. I opened this bottle last night. It was so tight, it tasted objectionable. I choked down one glass, put a stopper on it, and said I would drink the remainder today. It definitely opened up in the fridge over night, but it was still quiet. Coquettish. Became more and more loquacious as the evening went on, but was still holding back. A disappointment after the gregarious but sophisticated brilliance of my last bottle, but there was still a lot to enjoy here - creme brulee, cinnamon, smoke, and lovely floral aromatics.
I have more coming. I suspect it was the first bottle that was anomalous, but it will be interesting to taste through a few more.
“There are no great wines, only great bottles.” It seems like Champagne provides more evidence in support of this theory than other famous wine regions.
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Sounds like the experience I’ve evidently been fortunate to have had from every bottle of the 164 eme. Loved it early on and of late and stashing a few for down the line. Hope you enjoyed Whistler Warren.
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This! Great writing, sir!
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Made the haul up to Scardale to visit some dear friends we have not seen since before the pandemic. Lots of great food and wine. The '08 Rare rose from magnum is just stellar and apparently a unicorn. My friend who works for Folio which owns both Heidsiecks told me that only a few cases were made and they were sold to Cult wines in the UK. They must have put them on Liv-Ex because I bought them from another UK merchant. We drank the Landonne with lamb and suckling pig.
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2002 Ruinart Champagne Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs
Lush, fresh and delicious. Ripe apple, citrus, toffee, hazelnuts. As good as it was, I think my previous bottle outperformed this one. That could be related to bad glassware, different disgorgements, bottle variance, or palate variance. Nonetheless, the 2002 Ruinart BdB is a masterpiece.
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Emilien Feneuil 2017 Les Puits
A very light rose, zero tannins here. Quite pretty and fine, peach and flower but fully dry. All Pinot noir, zero dosage. This wouldn’t be for everyone but I love the style.
(We sell his wines)
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