The Fine Wine Experience - Peter Liem BYO Champagne Tasting & Dinner Review © Linden Wilkie

The Fine Wine Experience (HK) Ltd Room 402, 4/F, SBI Centre, 54-58 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong S.A.R.

Office +852 2230 4288 Email [email protected] Website: www.finewineexperience.com

In Review….

The Fine Wine Experience Peter Liem BYO Champagne Dinner

9th December 2013 – Amuse Bouche, Hong Kong. Review © Linden Wilkie. It was our great pleasure to host a BYO Champagne dinner with American expert

Peter Liem in December. Peter takes understanding his subject very seriously,

having moved to reside in Champagne some years ago to get close to this subject. He

publishes http://www.champagneguide.net/, the result of all that talent, effort and

focus.

So, as small group of Champagne enthusiasts we got something of a treat over and

above the fine food and service of one of my very favourite Hong Kong fine dining

restaurants, Amuse Bouche, and an evening-long excuse to drink a whole lot of very

fine Champagne – we got a great deal of insight into the region, and each of the wines

we contributed.

The surprise wine of the night for me was 2004 Paul Déthune Cuvée à l’Ancienne. In

my ignorance I’d never heard of it, but it impressed immensely with its sheer

intensity of candied fruits richness, delivered in a very fresh, lively style, and very

long finish. I loved it, and it has whet my appetite to understand this boutique

producer more. Microscopic by the scale of Champagne grande marques, Déthune is a

small family affair, 7 hectares and just 60,000 bottles a year. (For Hong Kong

readers, I see that HK Wine Vault has stock from this producer).

We then launched into a pretty serious flight of Salon – 1995, 1988 and 1982. The ’95

was just very slightly corky, such that the room was a little divided on whether it was

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.finewineexperience.com/

http://www.champagneguide.net/



or wasn’t. It tasted a notch below expectation, but there was enough there that I

finished my glass without too much complaint. But it was not up to the full symphony

this vintage can deliver. It seems that opportunities to taste Salon from the eighties

and older is really quite rare – something, as Peter explained, compounded by the fact

the estate has miniscule reserve stock. The ’82 smelled and tasted really quite mature

with notes of candied fruit and fresh champignon mushrooms, and was delivered with

the wonderfully rounded texture the vintage is known for. The ’88 had a surprisingly

mature nose for the year, which is often still somewhat backward. This was a touch

malty, but fresher and livelier on the palate than the nose suggested, with great fruit,

praline notes, great phenolic texture, and the drive and energy to the long lively

finish we’d expert of the marque and vintage. Delicious.

Peter’s take was that Salon offered something both unique (only Le Mesnil and only

selected vintages – for all Salon), and something classical (Côtes de Blancs – the most

regal Chardonnay in Champagne). The ’88 he felt was once austere, but now great,

while the ‘82s he explained were thought to be drink-young when originally released,

but then entered a wonderfully long plateau, of fine subtle development. It is a

rounder-styled vintage, but one that has defied those who said it therefore wouldn’t

last (much like Bordeaux, I would add).

Another surprise was the 1985 Philipponnat Grand Blanc. I had not tried this before

– most older Philipponnat I’ve tried has been from the highly individual Clos des

Goisses label/vineyard, that I like very much. But that is a powerful, full-bodied style.

This seemed a little more lithe in weight and texture, but had a most unusual

aromatic profile of pineapple and peppermint, which sounds a little unusual as I

write it (a not very “Champagne” profile perhaps, but a combination that works really

well in desserts, don’t you think?). So, I was a surprised and somewhat captivated by

this wine.

The Selosse pair was perhaps an even more individual style, but one that has become

well known to drinkers of this house. The ‘Les Carelles’, showed the distinct fine oak

element in the Selosse style, and had immense intensity of mineral-led fruit, a liquid

“Meursault-Perrieres”, I noted, while the 1996 Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru showed

that vintage’s distinctly taut, long-spined acid structure, combined with some

maturity in flavour profile. I’m not a fan particularly, but I admired Les Carelles.





The following flight of

Dom Perignon hammered

home a very simple point

– DP ages magnificently,

and effortlessly, for

decades. No allowance at

all needs to be made for

age here. There was

simply no trade off at all

for all the complexity

gained, in terms of any

sort of loss of focus, or

any over-mature flavours

creeping in alongside (in

contrast, I felt, to the

Salon ’88 and ’82, which did). Here, the 1982, 1975, and 1969 all still felt in their

prime, despite all three being original disgorgements. (I have nothing against late

disgorgements per se, but I would always choose a pristine original disgorged bottle

over a later disgorged bottle any day, even if they were offered at the same price in

the market, while in actual fact, original disgorged bottles are usually less expensive).

All three showed freshness of fruit, the ’75 perhaps offering the most earthy, oyster-

like mineral complexity, the ’82 the most generous roundness in style, and the ’69 the

most driving intensity of fruit and length – still in its absolute prime. This flight

proved a real highlight.

Peter noted Dom Perignon’s reductive style, and quality which lends itself to long

ageing, and the large catalogue of fine vintages that back this up. He wonders out

loud whether the tremendous increase in production in recent vintages will mean the

current releases age as well as these older ones have, but sees nothing in the bottle to

concern us. (I would agree – the recently released ’04 is serious stuff).

Perhaps the most revealing flight was the last one. 1995 Krug is in a glorious and

rewarding drinking phase now, and encapsulates that Krug style, which is rather

grand, complex, and extremely satisfying to drink (almost endlessly… without

fatigue!). It is the Baroque in comparison to Dom Perignon’s ballerina. Vive la

difference. The 1971 was not showing at its full best, but was still interesting. I have

once had a really super bottle of this, but in a flight of top 1971 Champagnes it was

the most mature-showing, as I recall.

Totally fascinating was a special edition collection of four examples of Krug Special

Cuvée. This is Krug’s non-vintage – though don’t mention that to a Krug – they prefer

to emphasise ‘multi-vintage’, which is perhaps fairer, given their always generous use





of reserve wines in the blend to accompany the recent vintage base wines (as much as

30% - 50% in fact, which is very high). Peter was quite animated about this flight.

Although all four were blends that became Special Cuvée – and therefore blends with

reserve wines to counter-balance the style of the base wine in order to deliver

something distinctly ‘house’ in style, it wasn’t hard at all to see clear differences

between each one – Mémoires, based on 2003, was aptly named in Peter’s view, as it

was based on 2003, a super hot vintage showing generosity – a year to remember for

its really distinct character (nice spin, Krug!), then Finesse (2002 base), Savoir Faire

(2001 base), and Richesse (2000 base). Each was, side by side, quite discernibly

different. Indeed, Peter’s conclusion was that the names were apt, and that it pays to

pay attention to different Krug releases (not easy to do, as the labels don’t state the

base vintage, but the back labels do now state the release date, so those who like to

cellar Krug SC have a means to keep track). My conclusion, from the same evidence,

was perhaps the opposite: Finesse, was the best, unsurprisingly, coming from a base

of the very great 2002 vintage, but, I felt completely satisfied that all four lived up to

the quality and style expected of this label, and that the reserve wines (between 71

and 120 of them in the blends, and spanning ten or eleven years in each case) and

blending do a great deal to redress the base wine balance. I guess then, that my

conclusion is the very point Krug seem to want to get across – there are differences,

but they are subtle enough that we can always have confidence in the label to deliver

the quality, and the style that we expect (and deserve!).

Perhaps Peter’s overall message was that we should embrace all that we tasted, in all

its diversity. ‘Modernists’ like Selosse, can be controversial to some, and not always

approved of within the Champagne world, but they make the region that much more

interesting. The current trend is for a plethora of small production ‘grower’

Champagne. Quality can be mixed, and classicists argue the point that scale is

needed to deliver quality – via multi-district, multi-varietal, multi-vintage blending.

That has been the bedrock of quality forever in Champagne. Peter’s view is that we

needn’t take sides – rather, the current divergence in styles and approach makes the

present time the most exciting time to explore Champagne. I’ll drink to that!



Documents

The Fine Wine Experience - Peter Liem BYO Champagne Tasting & Dinner Review © Linden Wilkie