Champagne Marguet

This is a producer based in Ambonnay. We got slightly lost on the way there having taken a wrong turn (twice!) on our way through Bouzy. I'm glad that we finally made it there though since the wines were very good.

The Wines
1. Cuvee Tradition Blanc de Noirs
15 EUR. Premier Cru grapes
Pale coloured with med-low intensity lemon and biscuit aromas. Strawberry on the palate. Dry, crisp and well balanced. Long and very good. Excellent for the price. An aperitif champers.

2. Cuvee Reserve Grand Cru
Medium-high intensity aromas of biscuits, bread, apple and saffron. Complex and intense palate (one of my tasting notes is apple crumble). Soft, well balanced and silky mouthfeel. Very intense fruit character all the way to the finish. This is good stuff.

3. Cuvee Vintage Rose 2003
Grand Cru grapes again. 60% PN and 40% Chardonnay. The 60% PN includes the fact that 17% of the blend is red wine.
Strawberry pink colour. Spicy nose. Explodes into foam in the mouth. Medium bodied with good length. Good.

4. Ratafia
Fragrent, floral and red fruit nose. Not too sweet and a good balance between acidity and sweetness.


5. Maxine Marguet 2000 (from Magnum)
We bought a magnum of this and drank it one evening later in the holiday. This was excellent. Complex flavour profile of lemon, ginger, lime and peaches. Smooth and complex. Very high quality.

Champagne Cattier

Another good producer in Chiny-les-Roses.

1. Cattier Brut
Pale colour, powerful nose, light bodied and with a refreshing grapey character. Excellent as an aperitif.

2. Blanc de Blanc Brut
Refined and smooth with a silky mouthfeel. Lemon and apricot flavour. Good length, well balanced all the way to the finish. Elegant. True to the style of a blanc de blanc.

3. Cattier Brut 2002
1/3 each of PN, PM and Chardonnay
Very punchy nose with intense aroma of apricot and grape. On the palate more lemony with crisp acid. Great length. Excellent.

Champagne Gardet

One area where it's possible to get confused is that the NV wines are labelled George Gardet (the son of the founder) whereas the vintage wines are labelled Charles Gardet (the founder). They are both from the same estate.

As a place to visit this one was great. Large, multi-storey cellars. Quite mechanised (lots of machines/gyropalettes) and we even got to see the bottling line in action. Annoyingly we just missed a round of disgorgement, which I've still never seen.

The Wines
1. Brut Tradition NV
Light, refreshing, toasty, biscuit and lemon. Soft mouthfeel. Good.

2. Selected Reserve NV
A bargain at 18.50EUR. This is their "English style" wine which is a blend of older vintages (2000 and 2001) and all made from reserve wine which has been sitting in oak. Very soft in the mouth. Silky, well balanced and with great length. This has a lot of depth and intensity of flavour. Ridiculously good for the price. They clearly have the English preference down to a T since our group was all over this.

3. Brut Special
Quite sharp on the palate. Neither one style nor another. I preferred the Selected Reserve.

4. Cuvee Charles Gardet 2000
23.50 EUR
Light, classy nose. Quite young tasting but some mushroom character coming through on the nose. Medium body, medium-high acid. Well balanced and with a good crisp finish. Excellent.

5. Rose Charles Gardet
25EUR
Salmon coloured and almost like a still pinot noir on the nose. Intense palate with plenty of red fruit but also some citrus (maybe more orange than lemon). Good length, very high quality.

This is a rose made by the saignee method rather than by blending red and white base wine together before secondary fermentation. Champagne is the only quality wine in Europe which is allowed to produce a rose by blending red and white wine. There is a good reason why most regions prohibit this - it is a short-cut and does not produce as good quality wine. I find it really quite surprising that Champagne of all regions (which makes wine which takes many years to produce and is often done in a very labour-intensive way) allows such a process. This Charles Gardet Rose is excellent and I wish more rose champagne was like this.

Champagne Mailly

Slightly underwhelming visit this one. Perhaps it was just shown up by the comparison with Vilmart which we had just visited. Considering that this is a famous cooperative from one of the more renowned grand cru villages in Champagne this was more than a little disappointing.

However, having said that, there was nothing wrong with the wines, all of which were competant if not exactly exciting and the final two were both good.

Tasting
1. Brut Reserve NV
75% PN, 25% Chardonnay
Lemon, biscuits and cream. Good acid, well balanced. Good length.

2. L'Air Vintage 2005
75% PN, 25% Chardonnay
Vanilla and citron tart on the nose. Soft and creamy with red fruits on the palate. Fine mousse, high acid. Finish is a little bitter. Otherwise good.

3. Blanc de Noirs
100% PN
Deeper colour, red fruit character, high acid. A little simple.

4. Le Feu Vintage 2000
75%PN, 25% Chardonnay
This was probably my favourite of the tasting. Vanilla, biscuits, cream and yeast autolysis. Also something like pear. Smooth and silky mouthfeel. Great length and classy finish. Well balanced, high acid. Still very fresh but starting to develop some secondary character. Very good.

5. Les Eschansons 1999
75%PN, 25% Chardonnay
This wine was also very good, but for me Le Feu pipped it to the post slightly. Quite a lot of red fruit and also some pear character again. Silky mouthfeel, good length and pleasant finish. Well balanced and would age well, but for the price would rather have the Coeur de Cuvee from Vilmart.

Champagne Vilmart

This was the first of our winery visits on our recent Champagne road-trip - and what a way to start. This was one of the few places we visited where the person showing us round was the winemaker himself.

The grapes are pressed in a vertical cylinder press which they use 4 times on each load, pressing with light pressure each time. The juice then ferments in oak barrels for 10-months. The oak is not new oak, but has been used for one vintage in Chassagne-Montrachet or Meursault.

Riddling is performed by hand and the wines are released with plenty of age. The current release of the vintage is 1999.

The Wines
1. Cuvee Grande Reserve NV
30% Chardonnay, 70 PN
This is a blend of wine made from grapes of the 2005 and 2006 vintages. The base wine saw oak, but large, neutral oak casks. The wine had a fine mousse and a creamy taste (but none of the wines undergo MALO). Light body, with high acid. very lemony on the palate and great length. Very nice NV and a good start to the holiday.

2. Cuvee Grand Cellier
70% Chardonnay, 30% PN
This is made only from free run juice and is a blend of wines from 2004, 2005 and 2006. Slightly deeper colour than the previous wine. Fuller bodied with very high acid. Fine mousse. On the palate there are stone fruits such as peach as well as the lemon and an almost cheesy note on the nose.

3. Grand Cellier d'Or 2003
80% Chardonnay, 20% PN
Toasty, vanilla and biscuit on the nose. More body and weight on the palate. Honey, apricot and lemon notes. Smooth and silky mouthfeel. Good length and excellent balance. I like this.

4. Coeur du Cuvee 2001
80% Chardonnay, 20%PN
Very complex flavours - almost like a stew. Something noticeably herbal with deep aromas on top of a lemon and apricot base. Full bodied. Yeast autolysis, toast and vanilla all noticeable elements to the wine. Crisp acid, well balanced, great length. This is a very special wine and would stand up well to food. We didn't know it at the time but this was the 2nd best wine of the entire holiday!

5. Coeur du Cuvee 2000
Much more of a mushroomy nose than the 2001. Lots of complexity, but this one is aging much quicker which presumably implies that the 2001 will be better. The 2000 is excellent now, but upon going back to the 2001 it is clearly much fresher.

6. Ratafia
This is made from 100% Pinot Noir grape juice which is then fortified without fermentation. Very sweet, nice-tasting grape liqueur. Ripe, red fruit aroma. Very acidic. Would benefit from sweet food or creamy cheese.

Cape Winemakers Guild

Cape Winemakers Guild Tasting
Vivat Bacchus, 14 September 2009

The Cape Winemakers Guild (CWG) is an association of the very best of South Africa's winemakers. The CWG have an annual auction of limited-edition wines created by the winemaker specifically for the auction. This must provide an interesting conflict of interest for the winemaker - do they put their best wines into their own flagship wine or into this CWG Auction label wine?

This year's CWG auction will be the 25th so far. Tonight VB put on a tasting of eight of these wines which gave an excellent opportunity to taste these high-profile South African wines. There were some very high quality wines within the group...

Tasting Notes
1. Bernhard Veller, Nitida 2009, "Decorous Sauvignon Blanc"
Grassy, with leafy, asparagus and green pepper notes. Some of the usual gooseberry stuff but nicely restrained compared to similar wines from NZ. Very acidic. Good length, well balanced, very good.

2. Duncan Savage, 2008 Cape Point Vineyards, Auction Reserve Semillon
Pale yellow. Nose is typical chardonnay. Smoke, mellon, orange, vanilla. Medium-high acid. Good, but not enough fruit on the palate.

3. Kevin Grant, 2008 Ataraxia, Chardonnay
This wine is excellent. Lots of oak in a very classy way. Lemon, vanilla and melon on the nose. Smells a little like good quality vanilla ice cream which is probably from malolactic fermentation. Strong midpalate and quite mineralic. Great length with a lemony finish. This is a nice midpoint between a classic new world and old world style chardonnay. Definitely the best wine so far.

4. Johan Malan, 2007 Simonsig, Auction Reserve Pinotage
Strong aroma of banana. Also black berries and something rustic. Full bodied, acidic and reasonably tannic. Intense, slightly jammy black fruit continues on the palate. Good length. Very high quality.

5. Kevin Arnold, 2005 Waterford Estate, Auction Reserve
Mainly Cabernet. No Shiraz(!) Structured, grippy almost powdery tannin. Green pepper. Good length. Well balanced. Herby. I really liked this one.

6. Louis Strydom,2007 Engelbrecht Els Vineyards
Gamey, red and black fruit. Very acidic and pretty high tannin and some mineral notes. Intense with a good length. Very good. (Adam loved this one.)

7. Louis Nel, 2008 Neighbour's Wrath, Cabernet Sauvignon
Sadly no explanation is given for the name, which sounds as though there must be a good story behind it. This wine smells like minty ribena. Slightly jammy. Acidic with ripe fruit on palate. Quite long. Very good. More enjoyable now than the Kevin Arnold, but the Kevin Arnold is better.

8. Niels Verburg, 2007 Luddite, FIGJAM
Deep colour. Sweetish smell, probably from the shiraz. Black pepper, black fruit. Smooth mouthfeel, not very acidic tasting but there is actually plenty there. Dark chocolate notes on the finish. Very nice.

Bollinger

Bollinger Tasting
Vivat Bacchus, 7 September

Bollinger is still family owned and family run - quite an achievement for such a large, powerful brand. 60% of the grapes they use are sourced from vineyards which they own. This is unusual - many large producers source the majority of their grapes from small growers.

Bollinger is a Pinot Noir driven champagne. They still have two vineyards which have never been infested with Phylloxera. They are walled vineyards and this appears to keep the nasty insects out, although it's presumably a matter of time until this all ends in tears.

All wines which are made from grand cru grapes undergo the primary fermentation in old oak. Bollinger claim to employ the only full-time cooper in the Champagne region. All reserve wines are stored in magnum, with a cork closure.

Tasting Notes
1. Bollinger Brut NV
Lemon, butter and apple. Fine mousse, high acid. Dry, with good length and a smooth finish, although tastes a little sour after about 10 seconds. Otherwise well balanced.

2. Bollinger Rose NV
A pale salmon pink colour. Red fruit, particularly raspberries (slightly jammy). Dry, high acid, very juicy and refreshing. Like a ripe berry.

3. Bollinger La Grande Annee 2000
Cheese (eg a creamy brie) and crackers. Medium body, smooth, lemony. Excellent length and a fine mousse. Good stuff!

4. Bollinger La Grande Annee Rose 2002
Surprisingly good considering that Madame Bollinger was very much against Rose champagnes. Lots of raspberries, quite a lot of body and smooth. Good, but overpriced.

5. Bollinger La Cote aux Enfants Rouge 2002
Quite a deep colour for a Pinot Noir, but smells just like a PN should. Red cherry, subtle oak influence (3-5 years). Some tannin. Great length. Not £65 worth of red wine but worth trying for the novelty, or if someone else is paying!

In conclusion, the Roses and the Red are both very good, but do not justify the extra money (but that's not really the point when it comes to Champagne is it?!)