eGullet Champagne Tasting

[The Two Steves]

Please see the announcement at the top of the Wine board index for information about our first eGullet tasting.

If you have any questions, please post them on this thread and we'll try to answer them promptly. Remember, though, no actual comments on the wines until December 14.

Thanks!

[NewYorkTexan]

What a great idea.  

Perhaps for the next testing, dessert wines could be the focus.  

[Fat Guy]

We're thinking that, for the next one, we'll do something other than wine. Steve Klc had the idea of doing premium chocolates. But certainly wine is going to come up as a subject for tasting many times, and dessert wines seem to me ideal here because they are generally underappreciated, misunderstood, and excellent values to boot. If you look at the ratings in Wine Spectator, Parker, etc., to the extent you find such things reliable, you'll see that dessert wines dominate the price/points ratio.

[yvonne johnson]

I was wondering if people had started tasting the suggested wines and champagnes? Two Steves, I am going to buy a couple of the suggested bottles for Christmas and New Year. (I was also wondering if people have missed the announcement?)

[Fat Guy]

Steve and I are working up some tasting guidelines, and we hope people are busily accumulating their sparkling wine samples. Not that we'd mind if it were just Yvonne and the two Steves.

We'll jump-start the discussion soon.

[yvonne johnson]

Well, I waited and waited for the guidelines, but just couldn't hold out any longer, so went ahead on my own:)

Last night we tried the Domaine Chandon Napa Valley sparkling wine.  On first tasting I thought, "I expected Moet & Chandon White Star to tatse better than this!"--that's because my husband had opened the wrong bottle! So, Domaine Chandon it was.

Very fizzy. If you hold it to your ear, there is quite a racket. Not dry enough for me, as it warms up in the glass it gets quite sweet. OK for the price I guess. So, what should I have been looking for?

Also, come on egulletarians--join in. Here's the list again. We might try the White Star tonight.

AMERICAN

Domaine Chandon Napa Valley Brut NV (พ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Roederer Estate Brut NV (ภ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs 1997 (ษ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

FRENCH

Pommery Brut NV (ห.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Moet & Chandon White Star NV (อ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Mumm's Cordon Rouge Brut NV (อ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

[Fat Guy]

Yvonne, thanks so much for getting the ball rolling on this. Once Steve and I get our acts together, we may start a new thread and copy your post into it. Stay tuned.

[Blue Heron]

Did anyone try these champagnes besides Yvonne?  How were they?  The only one we tried was a bottle of Moet & Candon White Star NV, for New Year's Eve.  We thoroughly enjoyed it, too.  Thanks!  Wish I could have tried more, but there was just the 2 of us.

[Jason Perlow]

I added this because it fell off the top of the announcement list.

Steve Klc and Steven Shaw, on behalf of all the eGullet affiliates, would like to invite you to participate in our inaugural eGullet tasting. This first tasting will focus on Champagne and sparkling wines.

We'll post the list of wines now in order to give you a chance to collect them and taste at your leisure. On December 14 -- a week from now -- we'll start a thread on which you can post your tasting notes and observations (and of course we will discuss and debate). We'll leave that thread open for one week, after which it will be locked and archived.

We hope this will be the first of many tastings, not all of which must involve wine (chocolate may be the next one). If this idea takes off, we plan to create a special "eGullet Tastings" board, and we may try to work with some suppliers to have them assemble special discounted members-only tasting packs of their products. But that's for the future.

Here are the wines for the Champagne/sparkling-wine tasting:

AMERICAN

Domaine Chandon Napa Valley Brut NV (พ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Roederer Estate Brut NV (ภ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs 1997 (ษ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

FRENCH

Pommery Brut NV (ห.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Moet & Chandon White Star NV (อ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

Mumm's Cordon Rouge Brut NV (อ.95 at Sherry-Lehmann New York)

All these wines are available at Sherry-Lehmann and Morrell & Company in New York City. In addition, because these are widely distributed products, all should be available in most regions of the United States (though you may need to visit more than one wine shop), while the French ones should have good availability worldwide. This is an auspicious time to find a good selection of sparkling wine at your local wine shop, because inventories will be expanded for the holiday season.

We encourage you to participate in the tasting at any level, be it by trying just two bottles or all six. We tried to choose Champagnes and sparkling wines at the low end of the price spectrum (low for a high-quality product, that is) but there's still about 贶 worth of wine on that list, which means the best way to taste it is in a group. Perhaps this will prompt some groups of eGullet members in various regional clusters to assemble for tastings. Or perhaps you'll want to get a group of friends together and report the group's tasting notes back to us. You may already be hosting a holiday event in the coming week, in which case you could kill two birds with one stone by offering this tasting to your guests. This quantity of wine can easily support 15 or more tasters, when consumed in tasting portions, so the per-person cost is not at all prohibitive.

In a few days, we'll post some suggestions for how best to taste and evaluate these wines, both alone and in relation to one another (we chose with several points of regional and stylistic comparison in mind). Please feel free to discuss procedural matters anytime, starting now. But out of respect to those who want the purest possible tasting experience, we request that you not post any actual tasting notes or other comments on the wines themselves until the 14th.

Thanks.

-Steve Klc & Steven Shaw

a/k/a "The Two Steves"

[yvonne johnson]

Blue Heron: At last, someone else!

Still no tasting suggestions from the 2 Steves. Fat Guy: give washing your sponges a rest will you!:)

We ended up keeping the Moet & Chandon White Star for New Year's Eve. Much preferable to the Domaine Chandon Napa Valley Brut NV, as expected. M&C was drier, more flavorful and the fizz seemed less harsh. I'm no wine buff, but there appears little to say on a champagne. Still wines have more qualities worthy of note. That said, champagnes/sparkling wines hit the spot especially at brunch as a reviver.

[mamster]

That's interesting that the White Star was drier than the Domaine Chandon, given that you'd expect the opposite from the labels.  Not that I'm second-guessing your taste buds by any means.

Like Blue Heron, we just shared a bottle between the two of us on NYE.  It was Veuve Clicquot, however.  No complaints.  I have a feeling there are probably some American sparklers (or German or Spanish) that I couldn't tell apart from the real stuff, but I kind of don't want to know.  I've long held that if I ever happened to become wealthy, the main change you'd see in me is that I'd drink a bottle of champagne every month instead of once or twice a year.  (Didn't John Maynard Keynes say something to that effect?)

Okay, I'm really rambling.  Continue drinking.