Tsarine Cuvee Orium Extra Brut:
This was a really nice bottle. Feels quite round in the mouth with a smooth, somewhat creamy texture and intense citrus fruit flavors. Electric mouthwatering back end acidity and a long finish full of chalk and bread dough. Elegant, refreshing, and fun. Wish I had bought more than one.
2011 Penet Chardonnet Les Blanches Voies Verzy Fervins - oh yum! Very fine bubbles. Brioche nose. Lots of lemon and green apple on palate. Very full bodied wine with a long finish. I will buy more!
holy shit bro
Spring Break with the kids and another family (close friends who sadly moved from DFW to the Nashville area a bit ago) so I figured let’s drink some good bottles together. Notes are mostly just recollections, not detailed focused notes, so forgive me for their brevity:
2014 Bollinger Grand Annee This seems to get better each bottle with a beautiful jazz apple and lemon curd drive a giving fruit with maybe some dried apricots and ginger spice. It’s really pretty well balanced, a giving style, with nice cut. Really lovely.
2008 Piper Heidsieck Rare Intense, giving, and in your face with dense lemony fruit, white peach, big toast, fresh baked pie crust, leesy goodness. When I first opened one of these a year ago it was showing a leaner, higher acid driven profile. This has put on weight and is a punchy and delicious wine. I do not think it is as open and rich and giving as the 2002, but it’s a fun wine nonetheless, and was an immensely satisfying bottle of wine, albeit stylistically different than the Bollinger before it.
2012 Dom Perignon Cool pear fruit, mint, smoke, creamy mousse, sexy and suave and very classy. Very Dom Perignon signature. A lovely wine. I admit that when I had this after the two prior wines I thought you know, this might just lack a little of the intensity of 2002 and 2008 that have made those wines so great. It’s so silky and smooth though. Maybe not as good as 2008 over time, but a really delicious wine.
2013 Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque Fun and delicious wine to drink with friends. Lovely bottle. Fairly full bodied and rich but with a nice level of acid. I would guess this spends a little time in wood. It’s showing a good spicy apple, lemon, orange, and ginger profile, with good bread notes to flesh it out. I liked it quite a bit. A solid wine.
Henriot Brut Rose - Maybe the first Henriot I’ve been pleasantly surprised by in the last five years or so. Fairly fresh with bright strawberries, lemon, apple, just a hint of pastry, decent cut. All in all, a pretty well balanced and satisfying wine that while carrying a faint sweetness from fruit, does not seem like it is heavy handed with dosage. I often find Henriot and Clouet to be a bit clunky, but this is nice.
2017 Schramsberg Dutton Ranch Blanc de Blancs - Schramsberg flies a little under the radar at times because some of their projects are really club only offerings, or close to it given small production, that are often pretty sophisticated though in a richer style than say a Cabot sparkler coming in under 3PH. This is a 100% chard from three Dutton Ranch locations, bottled with 8 g/l dosage after 4 years on lees. 27% oak fermentation. A champagny domestic, with a fairly classic profile of apple, lemon, bread, ginger and spice. Maybe not their finest work, but a good wine that should do well with a little age.
Oddly, that’s how I would describe most of Schramsberg’s single vineyard offerings. I find they tend to be a little rough around the edges on release, needing a few years to tame down and show more than bright granny smith apples. I had an 08 single vineyard from them that was wonderful, but I shouldn’t have to wait 10 years post-disgorgement for that.
And still one of the most beautiful bottles of wine, if not the most.
Michael rents out what used to be an abandoned old NYC subway station for his cellar.
To give it extra flair, he has his security guard shave his head and call himself Lex and swim around in a pool he had installed there.
Got a smallish raise today so I thought I’d celebrate.
2014 Roederer BdB
Brioche and apples and flowers on the nose. Ephemeral mousse but plenty of effervescence on the palate. Plenty of acidity and chalk envelop a core of fruit. Much more approachable than the 2014 Roederer Vintage Brut. The salty finish goes on and on.
I’ve opened the first of 3 bottles of the 2012 Dom a few months ago and loved it as you did. Thought maybe I’d get more, but had not yet pulled the trigger. Last week, a friend sent me a Costco offer for the 2010 along with 2 champagne stems for $150 and I went for it. {Don’t need the stems, but the price was right} Contrary to a few others here, I’ve enjoyed the 2010.
Received the shipment yesterday and found each of the boxes included the 2012, a much better deal. Don’t think I’ll return the wrong vintage.
BTW, the champagne glasses are Riedel stemless bowls referred to as tumblers and IMHO, not all that good requiring being hand held.
You gotta love when you get upgraded. The only time I recall that happening to me was last year I ordered 3 bottles of '09 Cristal and received an '08 and 2 '12’s. Some people might prefer the '09 to the '12, but I don’t so it was a 3-bottle upgrade in my mind.
I once ordered a 1998 Winston Churchill from some cellar brokers. They double sold the wine and so shipped me a pristine 1988 Winston Churchill which was, at the time (and maybe still) the best champagne I’d ever had.
I would take that trade any day.
Anyone want some shitty stemless champagne glasses?
I’m sure my daughter who will be earning her Masters in Special Ed in May would love them Blake!
I’d rather have the 09s.
I was thinking of you when I wrote “some people”.
‘07 CH BdM - I think a few of us have been hoping to find a vintage of this that drinks like the ‘95 and I am sad to say this is not it. More sour apple than anything else.
‘99 Cristal - I have found this vintage to be drinking very mature. I might have said ‘90 if blinded. Sweet yellow fruit and it was actually fresher than a ‘99 Vinotheque drunk earlier in the week.
‘02 BS NF from magnum. This was similar to a 750 I had about a year ago, oxidative, oak (although I think only 20% oak treatment). Another yellow fruited bottle but with a bit of a sour finish. I would rather drink ‘02 Comtes and Cristal.
All of the above would be fine.
-Al
Stay tuned (more details coming - left my tasting notebook in the car) - blanc de blancs double blind tasting last night 
My memory of the line-up (presented at random in five flights of 4, 4, 4, 3, 3):
