Veuve Clicquot La Grand Dame

La Grand Dame is the prestige cuvee for Veuve Clicquot Champagne, and commemorates Madame Clicquot with the name her peers bestowed upon her as a mark of respect and recognition. First created in 1972 to mark the bicentenary of the Champagne house, it is only produced in exceptional vintages. That also holds for the Rose version so that in some years in which the white prestige cuvee is produced, no Grande Dame rose is made, eg 1996.

One Christmas, I was given a copy of a book in which the former Wall Street Journal wine coloumnist couple Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher expanded on a few of their writings. One of the chapters dealt with prestige cuvee champagnes. True to form they bought a number and blinded tasted them against each other. One of the 3 final choices in the white section was in fact this wine (same vintage), whcih did not eventually come first (that was the cuvee Winston Churchill, see Tuesday's entry), but they remarked about its femininity and how it was perfect for a summer wedding. Well, we didn't have that at a summer wedding, but as a prelude to a night of dry white Bordeaux wines. It was also a good choice for that!

Dom Ruinart

We had this bottle of Dom Ruinart 1990 at a PWC wine dinner featuring white Burgundies and Lobster at the Riva Restaurant. This is Ruinart's Blanc de Blanc prestige cuvee. Ruinart is the oldest champagne house, being founded in 1729. Like the Burgundy winery Bouchard Pere et Fils (incidentally founded a couple of years later), the Ruinarts started off as cloth merchants. Based in Reims, Nicholas Ruinart decided to start an account ledger on 1st September 1729 devoted to "wine with bubbles', initially as gifts for his cloth and fabric clients. Like the Bouchards, wine turned out more profitable than cloth and both business soon turned all their energies to wine.

The prestige cuvee Dom Ruinart (first created in 1959) was named after the founder's uncle who left his native Champagne to lgo to the Abbey of St-Germain-des-Pres near Paris. It was in Paris that the Dom first leant of a "wine with bubbles" that some vintners were making from his native countryside and that it was gaining popularity amongst the rich and powerful in Paris. This he did not hesitate to tell his family back home. This prestige cuvee is based on Grand Cru Chardonnay from Cotes de Blanc (66%) with the balance from Montagne de Reims, aged 8-10 years before release. It was a fine opening for a nice evening of fine dining and fine wines.

Laurent Perrier Ultra Brut

The Ultra Brut or Brut Nature style of champagne is one which there is no sugar in the dosage. My first encounter with a sparkling wine of this style is actually with an Italian sparkler. This is the first Ultra Brut Champagne I tried and so far of the few others I have tried, i still like it best. The occasion was a PWC dinner in 2004, which we had at a friend's place. We wanted to buy some oysters and tried matching Champagne and Chablis with it. The friend offered to cook something and we had everything set. We had worried whether it might a bit austere, but still wanted to have a try at an ultra brut champagne because oysters seemed to need austere minerality. Its elegance surprised us.

Laurent Perrier was well known for its Grand Vin sans Sucre in the 19th Century. Reintroduced in 1980, it is based on grapes from very ripe harvests with high sugar in a low acidity. With a 55:45 mix of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and selected from 15 Premier Cru sites averaging 97% on the Echelles des Crus. It also undergoes 4 years sur latte aging. What of the wine? A light gold with a good number streams of fine to medium bubbles, it had a fruity and slightly yeasty nose. Fruity on the palate with a good creamy mousse, it had plenty of lemony acidity as a backbone to support it through to the finish.

Pol Roger Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill

This is Pol Roger Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill 1996, which we tasted in the Chateau Lafite 1982 wine dinner. Pol Roger was the favourite champagne of Sir Wintson Churchill and he was associated with it all his life. The Pol Roger champagne house created this premium cuvee in his honour in 1975 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of the great statesman. In their Tastings column for the Wall Street Journal, Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher wrote of a blind tasting of premium cuvee champagnes. Different vintages of the Sir Winston Churchill Cuvee came top in two different blind tastings a few years apart, confirming the quality of this wine. How did we find it that night? Pale gold with vigorous streams of fine bubbles, it has a dry slightly crisp fruity nose with hints of tuna. Dry and slightly fruity on the palate with a delicate mousse, its acid backbone gave nice support right though to the finish. The participants at the dinner were not particularly familiar with the wine, but they were all impressed.

Champagne Moutarde Cepage Arbane Vieille Vigne

Isn't Champagne only made from Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir? Well, er, no. Three other grapes are allowed - Pinot Blanc, Arbane and Petit Meslier. The wine laws do not allow new plantings of anything other than the well-known triad, but surviving vines of the aforesaid varieties are allowed to be vinified and made into Champagne. Moutarde Pere & Fils who made the champagne above also makes one with all six varieties, which must be the champagne with the largest number of different grapes in the world.

The above wine is however a varietal Arbane, and Moutarde is the only winery making it in the whole world. I first came across the existence of such a grape (and champagne) in Peter May's website (www.winelabel.org) which I had blogged about previously. Then a few months ago, I got a promotional email for pre-ordering this, of which an average of around 1500 cases are made annually from around a total planting ( Moutarde as well as others) of 1 hectare or so in the Aube where it was native. Of course I bought it, as you would by now expect.

We had it in the wine dinner I blogged about on 3rd of this month. Pale straw and with fair number of streams of fine bubbles, it had a fragrant fruity nose with dominant apple notes. It was not very dry on the palate, with the apple notes and general fruitiness contrasting a pronounced acidity. There was a fresh acidic prickle, but the mousse was not well sustained. Acidity was pronounced from just after the entry until long after swallowing. It cut through the triple creme St Felicien like a treat!

Chapel Down Pinot Reserve

This bottle was bought in mistake; I thought it was a still red, but it turned out to be a Blanc de Noir sparkler from Kent. That caused me to be one red wine short at the English wine dinner. I could not use it that night, so this was tasted instead at Xmas lunch. We had been having Champagne Gardet's NV offering as an aperitive, and this was paired with the salmon starter. So this English sparkling wine ended up being drunk in comparison with a champagne that Dorchester had used as their house champagne.

Well, it showed up very well indeed. The Gardet NV was nice and crisp whilst the Chapel Down sparkler was a tad more fruity and a touch softer and sweeter. Slightly lighter than the Gardet, with a golden straw hue, and with similarly fine bubbles, it was a touch more fruity both on the nose and palate. Both had a nice acid prickle, with a nice acid backbone that goes right through to the finish.

Cava

Cava is the classical method sparkling wine from Spain, mainly centred on Sant Sadurni d'Anoia in Penedes. Made from Macabeu, Parelada and Xarel-Lo grapes, cava can be produced from eight wine regions of Spain. Pink cava include still red wine from Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache or Monastrell, prior to the second fermentation in bottle. Like champagne, sweetness is controlled by dosage after disgorgement and the example above, being brut nature, will have no sugar added after disgorgement. Pale straw with good streams of medium fine bubbles, it has a crisp dry nose with a dry crisp palate and an acidic prickle and a good acid backbone that persists right to the finish. A good wine with fish and seafood, I think.

Confusingly, cava is also a legal category for wines in Greece. It is a more prestigious "aged" reserve table wine, with minimum aging of 2 and 3 years for white and red wines respectively.

An interesting experience with extended breathing

It was in the Club bar some time after midnight after a wine dinner I had organized for the hospital. Some people from another wine dinner (St Julien 2000) that clashed with mine were enjoying the last of the wines. There were the remains of a Chateau Talbot 2000 amongst the unfinished decanters. They took two empty glasses and offered a glass each to my wife and myself.

A nice ruby colour, the nose was acid with slight capsicum notes as well as notes suggestive of tinned tuna. The acid nose made me nervous, such that when I took a sip, I found a big surprise waiting for me. It was really quite sweet on entry with notable fruit, with acid kicking in much later, accompanied by some tannins, lasting all the way to a reasonably long finish. What was surprising was that the sweet fruit remained throughout to the finish.

They also had some Branaire-Ducru 2000 and we got to taste it too. Again acidity was notable on the nose amongst the other aromas, but again sweet fruitiness dominated the palate, though this time not quite to the finish. Perhaps this is no isolated phenomenon. I will try and breathe some good wines for an extended time (these wines had all been decanted some 6 or so hours) and see what happens.

CBE 2003

This is not about a gong (medal) for bravery during SARS: this is about the top of the controversial Cru Bourgeois classification of 2003. CBE stands for Cru Bourgeois Exceptionelle and there are nine chateaux which were awarded this distinction. Two were not obtainable for this PWC dinner in 2009. The line-up that night included Siran, Poujeaux, Phelan Segur, Potensac, Ormes de Pez, Chasse-Spleen and Labagorce-Zede. The two that I could not obtain were de Pez and Haut Marbuzet. I got a bottle of the former now, but still cannot get Haut Marbuzet 2003.

There were a lot of recriminations about the whole Cru Bourgeois classification, leading to court battles and its final annulment. (Similar things happened with the St Emilion Grand Cru classification too.) But back to the dinner, it was a pleasant evening, with many participants impressed by the offerings of wineries which some had dubbed "sixth growth".

On a sadder note, Ch Labegorce-Zede was absorbed into Ch Labegorce in 2009 and is hence no more. Even if the CBE 2003 classification were reinstated now, there would only be 8 chateaux left!

A Cuban white wine

This is a Cuban white wine we tasted at a PWC dinner (with the theme firmly in the curious territory) at the end of 2009. The Japanese Pinot Blanc on the left of the picture has been the subject of an earlier blog. There was a promotion at the Club and they had the red and the white of this Cuban-Italian joint venture. I bought some of each as well as one or two magnums of the red. This project was a collaboration between the Fantinel wine-making family in Italy and the investment arm of the Cuban Food and Beverage Ministry. It was the first wine company in Cuba and owns the only vineyard and cellars of that country, near Havana, high above the tobacco fields. The red is a 70:30 Cabernet-Merlot blend whilst this white wine is 80:20 Chardonnay-Sauvignon Blanc blend. I had heard that this project has now stopped and there may not be Cuban wines available for some time to come.

How did it taste? The wine was an old gold, with a slightly sweet slightly peachy and slightly woody nose. It was slightly sweet with dried apricot notes and acid on the palate with the acid extending into the finish.

Another wine dinner featuring alternative grapes

This was a PWC wine dinner we had last week. The group had been having dinners in the week between Xmas and New Year since 2005. Of the past 7 dinners, 4 have taken unusual grapes as their theme, a "tradition" started in 2007, at the end of the same month that we had the Ch Lafite dinner. (The break was in 2008 when we sampled the delights of the Australina wines classified by Langtons.) One wine missed the line-up as one of the participants (who arrived later) supplied it, a Blauer Zweigelt from Austria.

The white wines included a four-grape blend featuring Inzolia and Catarratto, the two most planted white grapes of Sicily as well as a Spanish wine made from an Italian crossing by Prof Manzoni, Manzoni Bianco. Apart from Zweigelt, we had St-Laurent (from Germany rather than Austria), Tintilia and a Corsican blend from Neillucio and Sciacarello. Dessert wines included the fortified Bastardo I had blogged about as well as something not so unusual, a Canadian ice wine from Vidal. The Champagne was the undoubted star of the night as this varietal champagne is one of a kind, made from Arbane grapes. More on this special wine will require another tidbit.

Lafite 1982 Dinner

This is the line-up of the wines at the Lafite 1982 dinner organized by PWC at the end of 2007. That was the most costly dinner we have so far organized. The star of the night was of course the Chateau Lafite 1982, of which I had earlier blogged. There was a stablemate for company, Ch Duhart-Milon from the same vintage. But to start we had something much more recent, a Pol Roger Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill 1996. The white wine was a Dom Bertagna Vougeot 1er Cru Les Cras 2003. That was a wine which I had blogged about also. For dessert, we resorted to a reliable Sauternes, Ch Guiraud. For a star-studded dinner like this, I chose the 1990 vintage. Some have suggested going the whole hog and ending with Yquem instead. Now that's a thought, but it would make the dinner even more expensive!