Find this wine. Treat yourself to a really special bottle to see in the next decade, or to share with some very special people over the holiday season. This wine was my favourite in a recent blind comparison of and prestige champagnes on which we reported last week on Purple Pages. Yet it was far from the most expensive. According to Cyril Brun, the cellarmaster at Charles Heidsieck since , of all the wines in his stable including a range of still Coteaux Champenois nowadays , this is the easiest to make.
In this , a vintage that showed very well when compared blind with the much-lauded s of the same wine, the blend is made up of similar quantities of each ingredient, from Cramant for stony limestone character, exotic and almost tropical Avize, full-bodied and structured Oger, smoky and stately Mesnil-sur-Oger and sharp, floral Vertus.
The result is just what you want of a top-quality champagne. Complex and minutely woven, the elements having had more than 11 years on lees in bottle to knit together, this is creamy-textured and just ridiculously easy to enjoy. The Blanc de Blancs had been a prototype. The โ the regular bottling disgorged in โ was still entrancing.
When I first tasted this back in June , it tasted considerably more youthful. Even slightly oily on the nose โ dramatic. Real bite and class. Great balance. Tiny bead. Super-elegant but not wimpy. Makes you salivate. Slightly salty note on the end.
Confident, persistent finish. During my visit Brun explained that when he arrived he had experimented with lower dosages for the range, but felt that 9, or even 10, suited the Charles Heidsieck style best. Presumably the top-quality sources of Chardonnay play a part in this. Ardent champagne taster, and retailer, Nick Baker of The Finest Bubble claims it has a slight preservative character whereby champagnes open up slightly later than those under natural cork.
