What are you ringing in the new year with?

A quiet night in for us, so it was a single bottle of Bollinger NV Rose.

What a beautiful colour. I could spend time looking at this delightful salmon pink champagne. An ultrafine bead also promises much. An intriguing nose of truffle, mushroom, lemon and strawberry, some fresh brioche. The immediate taste is forest floor and mushroom, very funky and savoury. The fruit that emerges is wild strawberry in a very fine, lemon rubbed frame. Underneath remains the Bollinger house style - oxidative and aldehydic in its bent. I have found Bolly NV hard to drink in the past but the rose expression of the house style seems much more agreeable to me (I usually prefer finer styles - Roederer, Pol). Lingering rather than persistent, an excellent food champagne.

Just before new year I was also served possibly my top wine of the year - a 2006 Schloss Lieser Neiderberger Helden Auslese Langhe Goldkapsel. I'll post the list from that entire night soon, but oh my, I must have some of this.

Cheers and happy new year,
Andrew

New year toast:
Stephen John Wines - Traugott Cuvee Sparkling Burgundy (sic) - (Clare Valley, South Australia)
Blend of shiraz and pinot noir. Dense garnet-black; heavy, velvety mouth feel with a strong bead. Dark berry fruit, with some meaty and mushroomy characters, a few savoury and herbal notes.

Matilda

Jenise, that's terrible. I went through the same thing one year--I caught the flu, was sick as a dog for the last two weeks of December, and completely lost my sense of smell. On New Year's Eve the very nice Chinese take-out that I bought (I was still to ill to cook) tasted like salty cardboard. I decided to open some Champagne anyway. Mistake. It tasted fizzy and sour.

I did open Krug Grand Cuvee last night. Excellent. Krug rules!

-Paul W.

We also had Krug Grand Cuvee, a bottle that had been in the cellar for about 3 years. Very rich, complex, intense wine, lots of bass notes. Served it with chicken filet with panko-parmesan crust.

[Jenise]

Jenise, that's terrible. I went through the same thing one year...

Well, it happens, and friends of mine are sicker right now than I am with things they won't get over and I'm not even as sick as you were in the event you mention, so I don't mean to complain. I'm just bored! And so sorry for my husband who finally took a week off only to end up with this bag of misery for company.

Glad you and Bernie both took one for the Krug team.

The event we attended included the usual low-cost bottles. I annually smuggle in a nice bottle to share at our table. Last night was NV Duval-Leroy. I loved it and everyone was raving about it. Definitely a repeater.

After watching Dr. No with James Bond's reference to Dom Pérignon, I had to open a bottle of the 1996 at midnight. It was good but I didn't find it to be worth the money, even at Costco's price.

[Jenise]

It was good but I didn't find it to be worth the money, even at Costco's price.

That's too bad. Dom is hyped beyond all reason, but it's a good bubble and their 96 was exceptional. Do you suppose you're just beyond being impressed by Dom, or might you have had a poor bottle?

[David M. Bueker]

The '96 Dom is closed down hard (as are many '96s).

It was just me, myself and I, so we opened a NV Vega Barcelona Cava. Refreshingly dry, apples and a hint of lemon. I managed about 2 glasses before it went to my head and I went off to bed.

Good, you've got more for today then. Doug, I just remembered on seeing your post that I owe you some curry powder. Will get it off this week, I promise.

No worries, Jenise. I almost forgot what you were sending.

After watching Dr. No with James Bond's reference to Dom Pérignon, I had to open a bottle of the 1996 at midnight. It was good but I didn't find it to be worth the money, even at Costco's price.

If you're going to spend that sort of money on Champagne, you can do much better than Dom. Cuvee Winston Churchill or La Grande Dame, for example. Or better yet, Krug Grande Cuvee.

-Paul W.

We also had Krug Grand Cuvee, a bottle that had been in the cellar for about 3 years. Very rich, complex, intense wine, lots of bass notes. Served it with chicken filet with panko-parmesan crust.

A shrewd move, to cellar it for a few years. Most non-vintage Champagne is released on the "green" side--before it's fully mature--for economic reasons. Even Krug Grand Cuvee improves markedly after a year (or two or three) in the cellar.

The big hazard is that it's nearly impossible with NV Champagne to tell when you buy it how long it's been since the wine was released. The best bet is to buy from a wholesale/retail chain that does a high volume, so you can be pretty sure that what you buy was recently released.

The Krug bottle that I opened on New Year's Eve was the display bottle from the local New Hampshire Wine Specialty Store. As it had not been stored under temperature control, I reckoned that it would have matured more quickly than the bottles in stock. I was right. It was perfect. Great aromas, great fruit to balance the Champagne acidity, magnificent complexity, long-lasting tiny bubbles, lingering balanced finish. Champagne that is a really serious wine. It's been several years since I last enjoyed Krug, and I'd forgotten just how good it is.

I bought a few more bottles that are now sitting in my cellar.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

After watching Dr. No with James Bond's reference to Dom Pérignon, I had to open a bottle of the 1996 at midnight. It was good but I didn't find it to be worth the money, even at Costco's price.

If you're going to spend that sort of money on Champagne, you can do much better than Dom. Cuvee Winston Churchill or La Grande Dame, for example. Or better yet, Krug Grande Cuvee.

-Paul W.

All of which cost a whole lot more than Dom. Dom is still available at $125, while the cheapest of the other 3 is about $190.

Dom gets talked down, but is actually very fine wine. It does need age though.

Jenise - in answer to you question on the 2nd, I'm going with "closed down" as David suggested, I do not think it was a bad bottle. I have more and I'll let it sit a while. I bought it two years ago ( ~$100) as I had always wanted to try it.

Thanks to the generosity of Beau, one of the partners at the local WineStyles, we rang the New Year in with a vertical of Cinq Cepage. I actually liked several of them quite a bit:

1996: Soft, fruity, and very "porty" My least favorite...wine of the year aside.
1997: Beautiful wine-very dark fruit, earthy, savory, balanced.
1998: Nice Bordeaux-ish nose, but the palate bothered me-high toned estery acids.
1999: Another lovely wine-the tannins are much more evident here, but shared the flavor profile of the 1997. May be WOTN, or at least tied with the 1997
2000: Pleasantly earthy. Not as nice as the 1999, but still a fine quaff.
2003: Too, too young. Earthy and nice. Very tannic right now.

I prefer Tawny Port to Champagne on New Year's. This year it was a small serving of Kopke 20-year Tawny Port at Fig Tree Restaurant in Charlotte. (At home it's usually a Cockburn 10-year Tawny.) With my dinner entree I had a glass of Lemelson Thea's Vineyard Pinot Noir.

In relation to earlier postings on topend Champagne, I have never tried Dom Perignon but preferred Philipponat Clos de Goisse to the Pol Roger Winston Churchill. I think I might even like Taittinger better than Pol Roger. Comes down to a subjective opinion. (I find several spellings for the Philipponat Champ on the web and I'm not sure which is correct.)

[David M. Bueker]

That's a nice idea JC. Port is more of a wrap up the evening drink & by midnight most of us are ready to wrap up the evening!

David, my nightly wrap-up Port when down in the `Hat was the `94 Warres LBV. Quite delicious and my last bottle.

Bob, what's (or where is) the 'Hat?

[David M. Bueker]

Probably Medicine Hat if I had to guess.

Thanks, David.