At the beginning of the evening, I asked participants to help me consider four questions —. Well, to get the last point out of the way first, at the end of the dinner I asked — as usual — participants to pick their two favourite wines of the evening, from the eleven we drank. I have no quibble with the overall top-ranked wine tonight — Krug Vintage is staggeringly good, close to as good as it gets in my view. And it is ready to drink, with time in hand. The most perplexing wine of the evening was surely the Salon Le Mesnil for one simple reason — why is it still so shy at twenty?
All the ingredients are there however — the quality is as exceptional I think as we might hope, but it is one to put, or keep in the cellar for now. The rest of our selection is drinking well with the potential to develop even further. It was a solid performance across the board, and my lowest mark was 94 for a wine I really enjoyed very much.
In style? At this level these are really strutting their style differences so clearly, it's hard to generalize.
To talk about the growing season is to not say so much, really. There was an absence of extremes — a mild start, good flowering, warm but not overly hot summer, and fairly sunny dry weather at harvest. Charles Curtis MW, in Vintage Champagne , notes a vintage with alcohol similar to , half a degree higher than , but with acidity lower than either of those. I think we saw that — this is a vintage of easier pleasure. Indeed, the 2nd top choice amongst the group was Cristal , which is such a pleasurable wine today, and very Cristal in its fruit, fine mousse feel, and great flow on the palate.
If you like Cristal, or want to discover its charms, the is easy to recommend. Of course, twenty years is a long time, and the Champagne scene has been changing since these were made. There is an even wider suite of styles being made now, in part due to the rise of the grower-produced Champagnes, and in riper years we are seeing a trend toward low or even zero dosage wines.
