Fresh from a recent trip to Champagne, Jojo called a few of us who opted to stay in Manila for the long weekend to a Champagne dinner at one of our favorite spots, Impressions. Jojo’s trip exposed him to an in-depth knowledge of Champagne, especially the smaller, so called “Grower” houses which are challenging the supremacy of the larger, established, and more famous houses. As he brings in a respectable number of Grower Champagnes himself through his Premium Wine Exchange, he just wanted to taste some of the wines he brings to review the portfolio.
I was the first to arrive, followed shortly by Alex and Jojo. Alex had a bit of wine earlier in the day and brought along half a bottle of Chablis 1er Cru Brocard Montée de Tonnerre 2008. This was stony and a bit tart on the finish with some orange pith notes.
The first champagne of the evening was one we’ve had many times before. Delamotte’s 2002 was quite full-bodied and showed quite a bit of ripe peach and red apple. Excellent as always.
The dinner itself was organized by Noel who had an all seafood menu prepared. The amuse bouche was a creamy and sweet pumpkin velouté.
This was followed by what was my favorite dish – a pickled cucumber slice stuffed with uni foam and some toast simply topped with uni, scallop and an oyster. A very simple dish that really let the ingredients speak for themselves.
The next dish was one we had before – a crispy egg topped with caviar.
This was followed by another amuse bouche, which also happened to be another egg, this time quail.
To go with dinner we had two more champagnes lined up. Opened next was Philipponat’s top of the line Clos des Goisses 2003 from a 5.5 ha vineyard, and one of Champagne’s most iconic sites. Young and primary. A tight wine with mostly orange notes coming through, this is rather attractive due to its smoothness but it needs age to bring out complexity. Not too interesting at this point. It did, however, pair superbly with the following scallop dish.
After the egg dishes was a dish of scallops. Although the scallops appeared to be seared, the seeming caramelization was actually a thin slice of chorizo. A very pretty dish.
The last champagne was Egly-Ouriet VP non-vintage, VP meaning Viellissiment Prolonge or extended aging. This particular bottling has at least 6 years aging on the lees and has fruit from the best villages in the Montaigne de Reims – Ambonnay, Bouzy and Verzenay. This is 70% pinot noir and 30% chardonnay. Full-bodied and quite spicy, with a distinct white pepper edge to it. Upon warming, there was a distinct creamy mouthfeel and caramel note despite the fact that this is an extra brut. I found this the most complex of the champagnes we tried.
Our main course did have some meat in the form of sweetbreads. This was combined with lobster and risotto for a rather hearty dish.
Although dubbed a champagne dinner, no one really expected to be drinking just whites the whole night so we ended with two reds. The first was a mystery wine brought by Gerry. Quite youthful looking as it still had a violet cast to it. Notes of blood and iron, leather and ripe black berries – black cherry and plum were most prominent. Later there was a bit of coffee as well. Already very smooth, this was excellent. Jojo guessed it to be a Jamet Cote Rotie 1999 and he nailed it!
We also had one of Alex’s favorites, Peter Michael Les Pavots 2003. This needed a lot of time to calm down. Initially it was very hot on the nose; the alcohol quite overwhelming. After a little over 2 hours in the decanter plus 30 minutes in the glass, it blew off most of the heat but what was left was concentrated soy sauce. Difficult to figure out at this point. Perhaps best to leave this alone for 5 years at least. To have something to go with the reds, we skipped the cheese course and instead opted for a slice of prime rib chopped up with some roasted potatoes and little cubes of foie gras. Infinitely more interesting than cheese!
After the mignardises (I favored the coconut and mint), we had our dessert which was a Poire Belle Helene sliced like a carpaccio with a chocolate sphere on top. Hot chocolate was poured on the sphere which melted to reveal ice cream inside
As champagne is my favorite wine, this was a dinner I was very happy to attend. Many thanks to Jojo for the bubbly, Alex and Gerry for the reds, and Noel and Chef Cyrille Soenen for putting it together.
