You had a great line up, but with all due respect, this post would be much more valuable if it included some notes.
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Seeking experts here: I’m hosting a champagne night for non-wine geeks and want to have some reasonably priced crowd pleasers that demonstrate multiple styles but mostly show how great champagne can be. Here’s what I’m currently considering – thoughts?
- Roederer 242 (mag)
- Bereche Brut NV (mag)
- Egly Les Premices/Les Vignes de Vrigny
- Another big house?
Trying to hover between $70-100 locally in NYC (except for the mags).
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Charles Heidsieck Brut Reserve is even less than your threshold. Also Bollinger Special Cuvée. Anything from Deutz.
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I like Warren’s idea — a more oxidative style and CH is the value play.
I’d add a rosé. Laherte Frères, Marc Herbart, or Jose Michel are all at $50 or so and are great QPRs.
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Some catching up after an eventful last week plus
Let’s start: got engaged and of course had the photographer grab the 375ml of Krug 170eme that I ordered so we could drink it immediately after I popped the question. The wine wasn’t important in this moment, but I selfishly picked Krug so I have an excuse to buy it every year 
Then we were off to dinner at Essential by Christophe
We had a glass of Etienne Calsac l’échappée Belle while we waited for the bottle I brought for corkage to chill. Racy and linear, perfect aperitif but with some depth.
2002 Billecart Nicolas Francois
Paired amazingly with the food, which was seafood heavy along with rich, flavorful and delicate sauce work. So much going on in this wine. Nutty and rich, but great acidity still. I need to order more.
At the hotel, they gifted us a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, but I had a bottle of Vilmart GC waiting. We ordered some truffle fries and had the Vilmart. A pairing I will happily have anytime.
The next morning we had the Veuve with breakfast which thanks to gifted Hyatt status was free and was lobster scrambled eggs. The Veuve is so sweet, tasted like apple juice.
Next night was Bollinger Special Cuvee, it felt fresh and not nearly as rich and oxidative as it normally does. I was disappointed.
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Absolutely spoiled with champagne this past weekend. I know there are some fellow Heidsieck fans here, and had to share notes on these two incredible wines. I can’t possibly thank the fellow guests who shared these wines enough.
First up, a rare 1983 Blanc de Millenaires from the collection crayeres, which means that this wine, while from the 1983 vintage, was disgorged in 2021, spending a whopping 37 years on lees in the cellar. Absolutely incredible wine and a real study of what happens with that ultra extended lees aging. There’s remarkable freshness for the age, but also a glorious aged cheese aspect that is wildly complex and fascinating. A real pleasure to experience this, and the wooden case these come in are also out of this world.
It was followed up then with another 1983 original release Blanc de Millenaires. A really interesting contrast. The two wines barely resemble one another at this stage, yet both delicious. This one, with far less time on its lees, showed fresher, younger, but still maintained wonderful complexity with plenty of autolytic notes (leaning more bread-like than cheese-like) and some wonderful caramel and butterscotch-like tertiary notes emerging.
Thinking the BdMs would surely be the wines of the night (for me), I was wrong. This 1982 Champagne Charlie (in magnum), the first release of this cuvee, had all I could ever ask for in a champagne. It has aged beautifully, yet still maintains a freshness and effervescence of a much younger champagne. The wine is balanced to perfection. It’s one of those wines where the flavors are so clear and so precise, you’d swear time slows down for a moment just so you can take it all in. This wine left a huge grin on my face and is one I simply cannot forget.
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Mazel tov!!! 
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I would say the Bereche and Roederer are great options (though I prefer the 244). You could also consider Agrapart Terroirs, Vilmart Rubis/Grand Celier, Chartogne Taillet Cuvee St. Anne.
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The VP is not my style of Champagne, so for me it’s the millesime, the Crayeres and the rose. I also had a bottle of 15 Coteaux from mag in October that was shockingly good.
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Congrats! 
I don’t usually pick by the label but this seemed too appropriate… And was pretty tasty. 70% Meunier. Fancy in room glasses LOL.
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15+ after release or base vintage +15 years? Just curious.
Interesting. What don’t you like about it?
Release. The 160eme ('04 base) is (to my palate) in a perfect window rn.
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Fascinating!
I have the same Crayeres collection 83 BdM (the one that spent 37 years on the lees) but haven’t tried it yet. It’s interesting to me that the original disgorgement tasted fresher vs. the recent disgorgement. I always thought that aging pre-disgorgement (esp. under crown cap) generally slowed oxidation vs. post-disgorgement aging on the cork. (Although at ~40 years individual bottle variation may overwhelm any difference I guess.)
I also posted an 82 Charlie mag experience recently but it looks like your bottle was labeled in the late 90s / early 2000s (the L’Oenotheque an Deux Mille / 2000 release)! Mine was the 2022 release with the Crayeres Collection label but I was wondering why the muselet cap said An Deux Mille.
(I wish Charles Heidsieck’s website info on different releases and disgorgements was better.)
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I was surprised as well. When I say fresher, it’s all relative here with bottles going on 40 years, so it’s not like a recent disgorgement, but what I found is that the less aging really brought out these crazy complex cheese (Roquefort comes to mind) notes that take the wine in a super unique direction. Really, really cool wine.
Still dreaming about the 1982 Charlie.
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It’s indeed cool to see these unusual flavors develop, at least for me.
I’ve experienced “cheese” from extended lees aging once before. I posted about 18 months ago about the first bottle I opened of 1971 Piper Heidsieck Hors Serie, which spent 49 years on the lees (disgorged in 2021). It was reminiscent of aged hard cheeses (I was thinking Parmesan) and savory / fermenty things (e.g. soy sauce). That made it a huge novelty for me but some people in the group were completely off-put by that kind of flavor profile. The second bottle I tried of the 71 PH HS was a “dried fruit” bomb… completely different, not cheesy at all.
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When was the 160eme released? My recollection is it was 8 or 9 years ago, but that may be because the wine just took its sweet time getting to TX …
They just released 172eme this year (and they are sequential).
I think it was 2012