Christmas Champagne Club Meet Up
As we get ever closer to the holidays, life gets more hectic. But the best part of the season is the friends’ Christmas, or, as we call it, our Holiday Champagne Club meeting. My last blog piece on this group was rather lengthy, so I’ll keep this one shorter. It was on Sunday, the 15th of December, and after many, many, days of rain and fog, it was a real treat to have a largely cloudless day that was also quite windless. That made for a nice walk from the Muni to the Embarcadero, where the shops and buildings were decorated beautifully. I was looking forward to seeing these same places lit up after dark for my Muni ride home when I would also likely be lit up.
Once again, our gracious hostess was Rozita, and, as usual, she put on the quite the spread of cheeses, pâté, fruit, fish, and wonderful breads. We had twelve selections of Champagne this time out. A combo of vintage champagnes and a couple of aged, non-vintage bottlings as well. There are always at least one or two surprises bought at K & L that I have not seen for years. Rozita usually smuggles something unique back from Montreal, so hers are always the biggest surprises. In this case, it was a 2000 Dom Perignon that was tasting very creamy with stone fruits, white flowers, apricot, and pear. It also had a nice bit of citrus to it. I brought one of my older Franck Bonville Belles Voyes Blanc de Blancs and made everyone guess the vintage (although they aren’t marked as such they are always vintage…until this year, with the 2012 vintage, which they did label on the bottle). My idea was to make people guess the vintage. In this case, it was a 2004 and one member said, “it tastes like it’s 15 years old,” and Rozita also nailed it. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was within two years on their guesses. That was truly impressive!
The only bad part is that I am running out of my older bottlings between this group, dinners, and meetings with Gary and our Hollywood Champagne goddess, Diana, who is a fiend for Belles Voyes. All of the champagnes were delicious with a few standing out for me: 1982 Paul Bara Bouzy Brut, which offered sherry notes, nuts, chalk, and slight oxidation, 2002 Thienot Alain Thienot Brut, rich, with layers of cream and dark cherry fruit with lemon meringue on the finish. Yum!! The 2013 Chartogne Taillet “Chemin de Reims” Blanc de Blancs was also gorgeous with orange, lemon zest, and rhubarb flavors. Quite unique and just wonderful! The 1999 Charles Heidsieck Brut Rose was no slouch with a rose petal and cherry nose, quince jam, dark strawberry, and baked cherries. A great pick to end the group.
Other “slouches” included, NV Duveaux Brut (we carried this years ago), 2010 Drappier “Grande Sendree” Brut Rose, 2002 Pol Roger Winston Churchill(!), 2014 Nowack La Tuilerie (which I’ve never seen or had in my life) and 2002 H. Billiot Brut. This is why these tastings last six or more hours! Oh, well, Rozita also did open up some Launois and A.D. Coutelas, as well as Aspasie Rose, when we were, um, “dry.” Another highlight was all of us getting together and buying Rozita a bottle of Laurent Perrier "Grand Siecle" Iteration #22 (only in a magnum!) for her birthday. She was absolutely shocked and cradled it like a baby. Almost all of us had tried this previously and except for her. It IS one of the top bottlings that we currently have in the store. I’d put it in the top three and for reference, my number one is over a $1000 a bottle, and this one comes damn close. Oh, one of our members learned a valuable lesson on that day…if you decide to go to a 49ers game, you will not be three hours late for our meeting, you will be six hours late! However, all of us managed to behave and left her two ounces of each of the bubblies! That was a real hardship for this group! Happy Holidays! -Scott Beckerley