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Champagne Week: Introduction
Following on from Bordeaux week, this week it's the turn of Champagne to take the limelight. I have three new profiles, for three grand marques.
The first is a new profile with a collection of my tasting notes stretching
back five years, including an interesting experiment in the
ageing of non-vintage Champagne.
I purchased six bottles of a non-vintage cuvée, and proceeded to open them at
irregular intervals. This is something I have also done with
Bollinger, but my new profile concerns
Taittinger. I dabble with Comtes de Champagne,
but the main focus of my notes is watching how another NV cuvée ages - yet again
debunking the myth that NV Champagne is ready on release, and does not improve
with storage.
Secondly, on Wednesday I have a new profile with new tasting notes for
Pommery. I have
always found Pommery to be of patchy quality; sometimes the wines can be fine,
especially the Wintertime and Summertime cuvées, as well as the
Cuvée Louise. But other wines have been awful, and I'm not at all sure why
this might be. Nevertheless, I recently tasted through the range and present my
notes for your inspection. As an aside, this profile fits in nicely with last
week's Bordeaux Week profile - Pommery was sold by owner Xavier Gardinier to finance
his purchase of Château Phélan-Ségur.
Finally, on Thursday, I have a profile for one of my favourite of all the grand marques - Pol Roger. New tasting notes for the 1995 and brilliant 1996 vintages, plus old notes for other vintages as well as Cuvée Winston Churchill. Although in recent years it seems you can't go wrong with a bottle of Pol Roger - what do you need my notes for? Champagne Week finishes on Friday with a few words from me, or should I say a few thoughts....wait and see. (15/3/05)
Champagne Week 2005:
A series of new Champagne profiles, with some of my current thoughts on the region.
