Our 15th annual December Champagne Tasting promises to be the best so far. We will have 60 champagnes and selected sparkling wines from outside the Champagne district. In selecting them from close to 300 tasted, we valued definition and expression over power, and precision over richness. This year, space forced us to exclude other fine ones, which will be on sale on our website. You can taste wines from 6 houses that the Revue du Vin de France rates as the best in France.
You will find some familiar names here. Some of our favorite grands marques – Bollinger,Roederer, Deutz, Taittinger and Pol Roger – are back, the last two featuring their ultra cuvees Comtes de Champagne and Winston Churchill. They will be joined for the first time by Salon and its sister winery Delamotte. You will find excellent, small batch champagnes from houses you may be discovering for the first time – Gosset, Philipponat, Jacquesson, Alfred Gratien and Leclerc Briant.
Estate grown wines exemplify hand craft and will make up roughly half the tasting. We have many wines from champagne's premium areas: Montagne de Reims, Cote des Blancs, Vallee de Marneas well as examples from the newer Cote de Sezanne and Cote de Bar. Although Champagne's northern wet climate make the process difficult, we have 11 fine organic wines.
Some notable non-champagnes: Of the new crop of English sparkling wines we liked Hattingley Valley and Nyetimber, the latter being the choice of the royal court. Raventos I Blanc exemplifies the best of the clean modern style of Spanish sparkling wine.
Many of these wines come from vineyards of such high quality that they need little or no added dosage or sweetening to make them drinkable. These drier champagnes are labeled Nature, Zero Dosage, or Extra Brut.
The Sale: There is a
single bottle sale price and a
price for six or more of one wine, both good through December 31, and a
special tasting price, only for orders placed by this Friday, December 1. To order, click the button at the bottom of this email.
