Sunday BBQ at a nearby friend’s house started with some Champagne of course. The '02 DP has never been my favorite, but I did like the P2 which showed some tropical flavors and less lime than I usually get from the original bottling. 168 Krug shows so much better in magnum, less acidity, more fruit. '02 Salon was WoTN, showing lots of orchard fruit, round texture, no gaps in the palate. My friend is also a big whiskey collector, so instead of finishing with Champagne as I like to do, we sampled some really good whiskey.
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Great BBQ wines! People give Macallan grief for being to commercial now, but those higher age statement, 18 year to 30 year sherry oak versions are so good, particularly the older vintage dated bottles, had the 35 year old 1967 years ago at Macallan.
Interesting to see the proof differences for yours vs. mine, was the 1972 really sherry forward?
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Some of those single cask Macallans were special. In my opinion, the last quality distillate from Macallan was distilled in 1978. After that, they cherry picked the best 18 year old casks and bottled them separately as Gran Reserva, then they stopped spending on quality sherry casks, went to no age statement on some bottlings, double casked or ‘fine’ oaked others because of poor quantity and quality sherry casks, and then juiced the cash flow by selling off the good old casks in order to maximize the sale price to Edrington and William Grant in 1999. The current ownership has not distilled anything worth tasting or buying, in my opinion.
The Macallan is a sad poster child for the degradation of single malt Scotch whisky and the ruination of the great, old distilleries.
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Nice Jon.
2002 Salon is really shining now as the 1996 still needs time.
I’m surprised you have not had a good 2002 P2 until now. it was our WOTN in our epic, local champagne event earlier this year- An epic, once in a lifetime champagne event featuring tete du cuvees from some of the top houses and vintages including Krug, Cristal, Dom Perignon, Salon and Taittinger
To the opposite point, the bottle of 2002 DP we had was the only flawed wine of the night.
Most all 2002s are simply brilliant now IMHO.
Cheers
I thought Selosse uses a solera system, just not stacked on top of each other and not as many vessels as you’d see in Spain…
Damn, my BBQ game falls way short of that mark.
After all those drinks “what bbq?” 
sounds like a fun time.
Kris,
I have to admit, I am not well-versed in whiskey. I can tell you I enjoyed them all, lots of spice, cinnamon, wood, dried fruits and some sherry on the Macallan’s, but nothing overpowering. My friend who is the afficiando said the 1972 was his favorite of the 3.
Blake,
For me DP is mostly '96 and '08 or bust, excluding some of the well-stored older vintages. I just never fell in love with any of the vintages in-between. My recent tasting of '02’s including Krug, Salon and Cristal are consistent with your observation that these are brilliant now. I have enjoyed '02 Comtes and Rare virtually since release as well as '02 black label Dom Ruinart.
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Warren,
I would be glad to be a guest at one of your BBQ’s!
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The whiskey was with dessert and cigars. The BBQ portion was lamb chops, sausages and steaks all cooked to perfection by our host. He ordered a sushi boat that we had with the Champagne. It was both fun and tasty.
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Interesting; I love 02 DP, in some ways more than the P2.
I hate 04, but 06 isn’t bad.
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I bought my '02 DP on release and I always got a strong lime note that I disliked so when '08 came out, I traded out of my '02 position and stocked up on '08.
We had '06 last weekend as well '13. I thought the '06 was meh, but agree with you that the '13 is really nice. Unfortunately I bought a lot of '12 and less '13, so I may have to swap those positions as well.
The 12 DP i had a few years ago was killer. Need to try the 13 still
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Bunch of great notes. Love catching up in this thread. Need to drink more champagne so I can actually participate!
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Selosse does not use a Solera system for Substance or any of his single vineyard wines. With Substance, the wines do move a bit, but it is nothing like a Solera. You will have the initial fermentation and aging container and then the wines are moved into a different container that is usually an older foudre and this container may blend multiple years (it usually does and usually goes back to 1986). The wines will then move again into the final destination container that is more neutral (steel, enamel) which contains wines going back to 1986. Anselme was more trying to recreate the ratio/blend of a Solera system than the actual Solera system with barrels and criaderas. Anselme puts more thought into the perpetual reserve for Substance than most do with their perpetual reserve, but it still isn’t anywhere close to a true Solera. He did experiment with a small, but still true Solera at one point, but the results were not to his liking.
The best visual I can think of that explains 95%+ what Selosse does today with Substance and his single vineyard wines is from the Rare Wine Co. site: Substance Explanation Picture
- First edit to add link and image; also clarified a bit more on how the wines move through the system and; 2nd edit for grammar correction.
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First time trying anything from Paul Launois. Last night we had Composition #5 with sushi and fried chicken and it was great from the first sip by itself and then went really well with the meal. It had very low dosage which I’m starting to come around to. Unlike other low/no dosage sparkling wines I’ve had, I could (and did) drink a couple glasses of this without any food. It seemed to get better and better as it warmed up and I even liked it at room temperature. I’ve heard it explained before that a goal of no/low dosage wines is to allow the grapes to ripen more/fully so that you don’t need to add as much sugar and I think that must have been going on here because I got a more “vinous” style of champagne to borrow a descriptor. This is probably the most a blanc de blancs has ever tasted like chardonnay to me, and we loved it. I think I paid $62 (US) for it and I’d pay that again. I’ll keep an eye peeled for lower prices but it’s at the very least a decent value at that price in our eyes. I’m going to look into some of their other wines like Monochrome but this one was great. It’s been the most successful recommendation I’ve gotten from this thread so far. Thanks!
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I recently enjoyed a bottle of the Paul Lanois Contraste #2 Extra Brut (100% Meunier, 1 gm/L dosage).
-Al
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From our Kauai visit thread:
2011 Larmandier-Bernier VV du Levant. I’ve been praising this wine on the champagne thread since release, and despite drinking in a terrible rental condo glass, this is the best showing to date. Dense lemon, buttered almond, brioche. A bold BdB with a silky mouthfeel. @Frank_Murray_III led me to discover this winery. He once organized a Zoom tasting with Aurthur Larmandier that I attended early in the pandemic. In fact, I opened this particular wine. Despite my late discovery of his wines, they are in the top ten holdings of champagne in my cellar.
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