The Motherlode!

Here's another story about how Hong Kong works.

I needed to outfit my new executive suite. My efforts to buy John Thain's office furniture on eBay were unsuccessful (maybe I bid too low, but I'm not a believer in antique toilets; I'm long progress) so I went out into Hong Kong in search of furniture. In general, the closer you get to the Chinese border, the better the deal. But I don't have time for bargain hunting. I'm a busy guy. Moving an oenology lab to a foreign country eats a lot of time.

So I went to Horizon Plaza.

Horizon Plaza is a non-descript office building in an industrial section of Ap Lei Chao (a small island connected to Hong Kong by a bridge). It caters mostly to locals and houses 28 levels of furniture stores. It's overwhelming. 28 floors of furniture! I find the place makes you physically dizzy. There is also a small appliance outlet (10th floor), an Italian delicatessen (6th floor) and an Armani outlet (22nd floor).

And on the 16th floor, wedged between a ceiling fan supplier and a custom mattress manufacturer, I discovered the finest collection of artisanal Champagnes I have ever seen in a single location.

Vouette et Sorbée.

Vilmart & Cie (nearly the full range!)

André Clouet

Bereche et Fils

Larmandier-Bernier

Leclerc-Briant

Diebolt-Vallois

Cédric Bouchard

David Leclapart (the full range!)

And more. That's just the short list.

I still have bruises from pinching myself.

Boutique Wines specializes in small producers from New Zealand and Australia. Their book features some outstanding producers, like Cullen from Margaret River and Felton Road from Central Otago. But there are few artisanal independents. No cult stars or natural wine freaks.

The Champagne list is another story. It's one of those lists that is easier to describe by who's not on it. When I suggested that I was a big fan of the wines of Benoit Tarlant, the Brut Zero in particular, Peter Nicholas, General Manager for BW, said, "We'll try to source those for you." How's that for service? I bet Peter knows how to get to the post office.

I have no idea why Boutique Wines is hidden amongst the sofas and dining sets of Horizon Plaza. And I don't care. I only hope the birds don't eat the trail of bread crumbs I left from the store to the doors of my office.

On the spot, I decided to spend the budget allocated for office wall sconces on Champagne. I've been looking for Leclapart's wines for at least 3 years. I'll drink them in the dark if I have to.

Oh, and there's one more thing about how things work in Hong Kong. Boutique Wines delivers your order to your house for no extra charge.

Dirt Bubbles

DIRT DINNER. Part One.

After my last post, a few of you called (the old switchboard at the Lab rings through to a service now) to complain.

It wasn't a quiz. At least, not intentionally so. I (wrongly) assumed the thematic context of the dinner would be obvious from the wines listed.

The experimental theme of the dinner was "Wines from the Same Dirt." In the case of the two Pinot Noir flights, all were wines from the exact same vineyard and vintage -- one in New Zealand; one on California's Central Coast. In the case of the Champagnes and the Sauternes, the wines were from adjoining, or adjacent, at least, nearby vineyards.

The Champagnes are from Vertus. A place I'm disappointed to admit, I have not been. But I have Champagnista par excellence Peter Liem to thank for a research note. Some time ago, on his abandoned blog, he wrote:

Not to be missed is Veuve Fourny’s Millésimé 2002 Blanc de Blancs, sourced exclusively from parcels in Les Barillées and Les Monts Ferrés in the heart of the slope (the same terroir, incidentally, as Larmandier-Bernier's outstanding Terre de Vertus).

Sensing opportunity, I promptly located a bottle of the wines from each producer. I would have preferred to match vintages as well. But it's not a perfect world, and I was happy just to find examples of both wines. Believe me. It wasn't easy. The Veuve Fourny was from 2000. The Larmandier-Bernier a 2004 (although labeled NV).

Both wines were beautiful. The Larmandier-Bernier a steely, tensile expression of Chardonnay with floral aromas and a salty minerality. The Veuve Fourny was more expansive and opulent wine. Would be hard to pick a favorite, which, thankfully, was not the exercise.

Discovering something about the underlying terroir was the point. In this pair, it remained elusive. The commonalities seemed to have more to do with the properties of Chardonnay than shared earth. Terroir is an elusive little bugger. And not so easily revealed.

Especially when, as we did, you hurry through the tasting, anxious to get to the next flight of wines... Stay tuned.

Knee Jerk

Okay, okay, I haven't really been in Hong Kong long enough to make general pronouncements, but I've noticed something. It's something similar to everything you hear about the Chinese and wine. It's something obvious.

So maybe I'm just joining the chorus, saying nothing original.

It would hardly be the first time that's happened.

But as far as I can tell, in Hong Kong, "fine wine" means Bordeaux. And that may be understating the fact. It may be closer to true to say that just "wine" means Bordeaux. The grocery store shelves are full of it. I've seen huge Bordeaux displays at department stores. And the wine shops sell little else (unless they specialize in something besides Bordeaux, but even the Italian wine shop I visited had a Bordeaux section).

As far as I can tell it's pretty much all anybody drinks, except for some industrial, grand marque Champagne. I was at dinner last night, a very cool dive bar meets Thai restaurant, right on the beach at Deep Water Bay. A big group at another table had brought their own wines. Do I really need to tell you what it was?

As it happens, I don't drink much Bordeaux. The best examples are prohibitively expensive. There's not many natural producers in the region. There's no overlooked areas of great terroir. It's just not my thing.

So I'm screwed, right?

Not so fast.

At my local grocery store, alongside the overflowing rows of low to really low-tier Bordeaux (pictured above) and right next to the Veuve Clicquot (what else would Bordeaux lovers reach for when a festive mood strikes?), I found 3 bottles of Fleury's Brut Rose. A 100% Pinot Noir, rosé de saignée, made by Champagne's first (maybe) converts to biodynamics.

Best part? It's on sale for the Hong Kong dollar equivalent of forty bucks. Apparently, biodynamic, grower Champagne isn't a big seller with the local crowd.

Like shooting fish in a barrel of Bordeaux. N'est-ce

pas?

A Label Brooklynguy Can Be Proud Of

A single-vineyard, blanc do noirs from one of my favorite producers in Champagne.

Roughly translated: Pinot noir planted in 1980, mid-slope, south-facing, on limestone soil with a sub-layer of chalk. Blah, blah, blah, unfiltered.

Should also have said, really freakin' delicious with enough acidity to make you think this can go another decade easy.

What is it? Sure, I could tell you. But from the label we also know they only made 100 cases, so there isn't much out there. And it's already hard enough to find.

A New Year's Eve 10-Year Split

So my New Year's resolution is clearly not about more frequent or timely posts. The month is almost half gone and I'm just getting to this.

With apologies for my lack of punctuality -- about which I hope to have more to say in the near future, but it's a hard topic to tackle because it twists on the one hand on an existential crisis, but rises, on the other hand, on a tide of hedonism... but I digress.

To ring in the New Year, we sent the junior staff home early so we wouldn't have to share and with several senior researchers in attendance, we conducted a very satisfying old/new comparative experiment. We opened two bottles of Pierre Gimonnet & Fils's Special Club Champagne. A 1999 alongside an oenotheque (if it's appropriate to borrow the term. Given I'm borrowing it from a Grand Marque house, I'm sure it's not -- after all these are the people who have sued mustard producers and dog owners to stop them from using the term Champagne) release from 1989. The ten-year split seemed an appropriate way to end the decade (or start it depending on your level of mathematical training).

Pierre Gimonnet & Fils is a medium-sized (25 hectares) winery based in the village of Cuis but with vineyards in Chouilly, Cramant and Oger (a tiny parcel). They grow Chardonnay exclusively. At the forefront of the grower champagne movement (pretend with me that there is such a thing), the winery has the distinction of always being the first entry in Terry Theise Catalog.

The Special Club, or more accurately, the Club Tresors de Champagne, is a sort of casual consortium of small Champagne producers established in 1971 as an early antidote to the Grand Houses of High Fashion & Hip Hop Champagne. The rules are simple and straightforward, to be a member you have to grow your own fruit. Didier Gimonnet, the vigneron in charge of Pierre Gimonnet & Fils, presides as president of the Club. In theory, the Special Club bottling represents a member's top wine. In the case of Gimonnet, it is definitely so. A blend of old-vine fruit from Chouilly, really old-vine fruit from Cramant (80+ years) and the best of the house's Cuis parcels.

The 1999 was brilliant. Fresh and energetic with bright, mandarine acidity. It was enormously linear and deeply mineral, so much so that I was sure you could smell chalk on the nose, along with brioche and almond paste. As the hours counted down to midnight (or 9:30 which was when I went to bed), this got better and better. Until it didn't. Right as the clock stuck twelve (poetic license), I poured yet another glass of this. I got a nose full of sulfury burnt match. No idea where it came from, and by the next morning it was gone. One of the weirdest things... as my eldest child would say... ever!

Without any weirdness at all, the 1989 was just flat out astonishing. It made the very good 99 look like something I might have picked up at the local Piggly Wiggly. It took almost 3 hours to fully open, but then the nose offered up layered and slightly oxidized aromas of nuts, pain perdue, honey and stewed apples. In the mouth, it was elegantly structured and precise. The acidity on the attack was still youthfully vibrant. Mid-palate there was a big, creamy and honeyed malo component, like creme brulee extract might taste. The finish was a lingering mix of chalk and hazelnut that tolled like an ancient but familiar echo of the younger bottle.

Obviously, dialing back the flowery prose also failed to make the list of resolutions.

Happy New Year!

What Would Hemingway Drink?

To resuscitate our occasional forays into the history of drink, we set out recently on a bold experiment, one that broadens our original experimental mission.

One might, of course, argue that this is a departure from our prior tests of pre-phylloxera vines under the Thomas Jefferson rubric, or the Julius Caesar umbrella we employed for wines made in terra cotta amphorae. You could say this is more about nostalgia, less about historical inquiry.

I wouldn't disagree. But someone told me that Hemmingway's favorite drink was something called Death in the Afternoon, and I was immediately intrigued by the name. Google told me the drink was a noxious combination of absinthe and Champagne.

I'd like to point out in advance, given my recent illness, drinking this was a really stupid idea.

But absinthe has recently made a legalized comeback (2007) and the allure of chasing in Papa's boozy footprints was too exciting to resist.

Absinthe? From the Times: "a neutral spirit infused with myriad herbs and botanicals, centering around anise, fennel and a specific type of wormwood, Artemisia absinthium, from which absinthe takes its name. This wormwood contains small amounts of thujone, a compound once thought to affect the mind. It’s understood now that hallucinations and other health issues attributed to overindulging in absinthe were more a result of alcohol poisoning due to the high alcohol content, typically 50 to 70 percent."

Details of the "experiment" up next.

Message in a Bottle

Or three bottles. To be more precise.

Regular Lab provider, K&L Wines, has an interesting palate training exercise on their shelves.

The biodynamic producer Champagne Fleury has released three versions of the same wine from the 1995 vintage and K&L has them in stock. These are identical wines, except that each has a different level of dosage: Extra Brut, Brut and Doux.

Dosage (n, doh-SAHJ; from wikipedia), immediately after disgorging but before corking, the liquid level is topped up with liqueur d’expédition. At this time, it is common to add a little sugar, a practice which is known as dosage.

Fleury's wines are outstanding. Dense, earthy, often with alluring red fruit flavors. So we jumped at the opportunity to taste these wines, with their different dosage levels, side by side.

These wines were exceptional. Rich and complex, but also open and approachable.

The Extra Brut was my favorite. A bright, energetic mandarin acidity dominated the palate. There is a strange and wonderfully unique minerality on the finish. Not chalk. Not limestone. Not sure what, but it's really good.

The Brut had similar orange-y acid, with jasmine and silver tarnish on the finish. The sweet is more pronounced but the overall balance of this wine is better than the Extra.

The Doux was also good, but showed a bit like a watered down version of the Brut. It had similar flavors but with less intensity. However, the fact that this has at least 42.5 grams/liter more residual sugar than the Extra Brut is remarkable. The wine is sweet, but the sugar is remarkably well integrated.

The most surprising observation of the evening (and thanks again Alicia!) was the nose on each wine was practically identical. If I were a fake journalist instead of a psuedo scientist, I would have tried to discover if Fleury used cane sugar or concentrated grape must (MCR), because the liqueur d’expédition seemed to have no effect on the olfactory character of the three wines.

Perhaps more controversially, I would also observe that the Extra Brut was the most expressive of site and vintage. The sugar in the Doux, while integrated, seems to obliterate any signs of the vineyard.

I Feel Like Peter Liem

Peter Liem writes one of my favorite wine blogs. For me, it is exactly what a blog should be. Peter is a writer for Wine & Spirits magazine living in France's Champagne region. His blog details his unique adventures there. He has also recently launched a paid subscription site, ChampagneGuide.net. Hopefully, he'll find a way to justly serve both old free blog and new for-profit venture simultaneously. Because whether he is drinking Grand Marque vins clairs, comparing corks and closures, or just hanging out with icons like Jacques Selosse, Peter's deft, expert and amiable writing gives us a window into a world we might not otherwise see. Which is blogging at its best.

Given the time I spend living vicariously through Peter's posts, you can imagine my thrill when I recently received an invitation to help disgorge and cork Champagne just 15 minutes South of the Lab's front door!

More details on the field trip soon, but here's a shot from the event.

What Me Worry?

Turns out the stress test was the easiest exam I've taken since a mid-term for Intro to Haiku in College.

We passed without even breathing hard.

And now, the resulting bubble gives us a chance to raise capital in the public debt/equity markets which we can subsequently use to pay back our ill-gotten TARP funds.

So... (pay attention, this is going to go past quickly), as a result of the shackles of tyranny, the Lab will soon be free of the shackles of tyranny. This is awesome. God bless these United States.

And there is nothing arbitrary about this milestone! This is a legit celebration of our (economic) freedom (as qualified by the micro-physics of late-capitalist, macro-economic structures), and we're pouring Vilmart & Cie, Grand Cellier D'Or, NV, at the Lab today.

honeyed pain grillé
what I think Champagne should be
pure graphite finish

What do you want? I got a C+ in Haiku.

On Edge

Everyone at the Lab is a little edgy today.

There's been no word from Chinskirin. I'm worried the last two journal entries might not make it back from Tasmania. With hindsight, perhaps we shouldn't have left him in the jungle. He said he'd be fine. But maybe that glint in his eye that I took for a grass allergy was a hint of madness taking hold...

More immediately, we're worried about the results of the Stress Test. And wondering how the Lab will fair. Speculative rumors are everywhere. And we don't want to be forced to sell more of our hard won assets just to pretty up a balance sheet for some greenhorn regulator.

To take the edge off, I'm declaring an Arbitrary Milestone!

So for no reason at all, we are celebrating with a Ulysse Collin, Blanc de Blanc Extra Brut, 2005. This is the second vintage from a newish entrant in the grower Champagne category. This is "hipster" champagne (I think). Though I don't know exactly what that means. When I've heard the term used, it seems to be disparaging. But I love hipster Champagne (I think), but I live in Los Angeles which means, by definition, I'm vaguely superficial as a human being.

However, there's nothing superficial about this Champagne. This is beautiful. With complex sweet pear aromas and dense autolytics. There's an energetic, citric acid and a mineral finish that leaves grit in your teeth. But what stands out above all else is the structure; the architecture of this wine is practically Gothic.

If we end up punished by the Stress Test, we plan to take up residence in this Champagne.

(chart: © Kheng Guan Toh | Dreamstime.com)

The Good Stuff

All the things you hear about Anselm Selosse's wine are true. Great purity and balance. Beautiful minerality. Hints of oak, especially on the nose. A remarkable ethereal quality, especially on the finish. This is great wine, only with bubbles.

Selosse apprenticed in Burgundy and has called the vineyard "his religion." I'll genuflect to that!

This wine strikes me as one that will improve over the course of a long relationship involving a lot of bottles. The more time you spend with it, the better you know it, the more interesting it becomes.

But it's not a cheap date.

Hyperlink Milestone!

Yesterday's BFC post set a new Lab record for hyperlinks in a Lab Report. I believe the official tally was "almost infinity".

To commemorate the arbitrariness of this remarkable accomplishment, we broke out a bottle of L. Aubry Fils, Le Nombre D'Or Campanae Veteres Vites, 1997.

It was... well, weird. But definitely Champagne. And therefore, a highly appropriate choice with which to celebrate the equation: almost ∞ = 7.

Age is shaping this one. It has a nose of truffle oil and silver tarnish with underlayers of lychee and lemon zest. On the palate, poached pear and damp earth on the attack. The mid-palate is reductive, almost antique. Then a crisp lemon acid sets up a long, mineral finish. Great balance and structure. Elegant. But weird. Like modern dance.

Also like modern dance in that you feel cultured for having been to the performance, but probably aren't buying the full season.

The Latin on the label means "old country vines" because this Champagne is made with three of the rare and random grape varieties allowed by the AOC. Twenty percent Arbanne, 50% Petit Meslier, 30% Fromenteau (Fromenteau? Surely, I wouldn't be the first to crack-wise about a grape from Middle Earth, if ever there was one.).

The current release is from the 2004 vintage. It also has the classic Champagne varieties, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier, mixed into the blend. It's a Terry Theise Selection for Michael Skurnik Wines.

It's definitely worth a twirl.

2008 In Review: BFC

The New Year is a time for reflection, remembrance and top 10 lists. Best of's. Worst of's. Year in reviews.

None of which I care about.

But I did want to take the opportunity to reset the Championship Ladder in the Bubbledome and this seemed a good way to do it.

As many of you know, the biggest news out of BFC this year was bad. The back-alley, midget wrestling scandal remains a black mark on the sport. And while the World Cage Match was a huge commercial success, it served mostly to confuse the Championship Ladder. I even asked around at the Lab. No one was really sure who currently holds the Champion's Belt.

After the Greek shocked the world by coming out of the cage victorious, it was throttled in its first match against a Frenchie from Alsace. Meanwhile, a brilliant Burgundy sparkler won the last official match in the Dome. So who's the Champ?

A New Year's bout has been scheduled to unify the Championship. Goisot le Bourgogne versus Becker the Alsatian.

And there's even bigger news ahead for BFC in the Bubbledome. The sport's sanctioning body has approved a new Heavyweight Division. This weight class will pit Grand Marque Champagnes (the big, famous estates) against Artisanal Champagnes from Grower-Producers. Head to head.

I personally lobbied long and hard against this. Stripped of their massive marketing budgets, wine from the Big Houses is practically defenseless. But bloodsport is good for ratings and my efforts were defeated.

2009 will be big in the Dome. I can't wait to review it next year. Make some cool lists.

BFC 8: A New, Improved Definition of Small

This was never really a fair fight. A tiny, family-owned vineyard's base wine versus a slightly larger, but still small, family-owned vineyard's reserve cuvée.

Ployez-Jacquemart produces 6000 cases a year. Gaston Chiquet is comparably huge with 16,700. Compare this to Moët & Chandon's 2,000,000 or Veuve Clicquot's more than a million cases produced annually. This was a TRUE battle of Little Guys.

And both wines impressed. One a classic expression of Champagne. The other, an intriguing old-school, throw-back. The clear winner... was the crowd.

Ployez-Jacquemart Brut, NV. As they like to say in Champagnese, "This one is 50% Pinot Noir, 50% Chardonnay and the rest Pinot Meunier." They grow red grapes organically on a couple of small parcels near the village of Ludes, and source Chardonnay from grand cru villages elsewhere. Their wines never see malolactic fermentation and are always at the low end dosage-wise. This had a lightly yeasty nose of white wafer and honeyed lemon. It is elegant Champagne, linear, well-balanced and chalky. Fresh lemony apple fruit with layers of strawberry and red currant. And a zippy, stainless-steel and mineral finish.

Gaston Chiquet's Cuvée de Réserve. This is old-school Champagne. Intentionally crafted in an antique, oxidized style. This was disgorged April 2004 and is one-third each Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. It's half 1995, half 1996 (1996 was a biggie, and 1995 didn't suck). The Réserve spends 7 years on its lees. The nose was baked apple, ripe fig, saffron and toffee. This was a big, sensual wine, achey with lees and finished with a brilliant, saline minerality.

Jack Purcells versus satin toe shoes. How do you score a contest like that? Good thing it was only an exhibition.

A Tale of Two Corks

A Postscript to the last Report.

We were impressed by Tarlant's ungrafted Vigne d'Antan we opened the other day, so much so that we decided to open another one last night at the Lab.

Sure, this is a wine to get involved with. It's complex. It's big. More like White Burgundy from Puligny-Montrachet. It has that ungrafted hallmark of pitch-perfect integration, intense core and site-specific precision. There are many reasons to open another bottle.

But we opened this one mostly because we thought there would be opportunity for some cool, time-lapse photography. The bottle we opened previously was disgorged in December, 2004. The second bottle was disgorged a year ago tomorrow.

At the Lab, we often source Champagne at auction. With non-vintage champagnes, it's often difficult, if not impossible, to know their age. One of the few clues is "cork behavior". Older corks do not expand. Young corks expand quickly. And wines that are in between young and old (disgorged more than a year ago, but less than say... three, four years ago) sometimes expand, but slowly.

We noticed the cork from the older bottle never expanded, retaining it's compressed mushroom shape. We thought the younger bottle might expand over 10-15 minutes and give us an opportunity to chronicle the transformation.

No such luck. The cork screamed out of the bottle as soon as the cage was removed, expanding to its current fatness (that is the technical term, by the way) almost immediately. We missed our photo-journalistic opportunity. But we drank the Champagne anyway.

The younger cousin is delicious, though far less mineral in character than the prior bottle. It has a lees-y nose with faint pear fruit, biscuit and some notes of oak. The attack is citric acid that emerges as distinctly lemon as the golden apple flavor evolves mid-palate. There's an almost tannic bite before a long, lingering chalky finish.

It has an adolescent, nervy energy that would likely benefit from some cellar maturity. Maybe in a year or so we can capture the cork swell on camera...

Ironically, we opened a bottle of Bollinger Special Cuvee last night as well. That cork did expand slowly over a 10 to 15 minutes period, but at that point we were half in the bag from other experiments and no one remembered to take the pictures.

Jefferson's Bubbles [ROOTS 7]

Continuing our pre-phylloxera thought-experiment, our journey back to the wines of founding wanker, Thomas Jefferson, we turn now to Champagne.

Jefferson was certainly a fan of Champagne. During a 4 month span as President, he once went through 207 bottles. To be fair, the same ledgers documenting the alcohol consumption also indicate he served these to more than 600 dinner guests. So it wasn't like he was holed up in the Oval Office pounding Veuve like the Duke.

As far as I know (which means checking Keith Levenberg's invaluable list and searching diligently through Peter Liem's really terrific blog), there are only two Champagnes produced from grapes grown on ungrafted vines. Bollinger's, very expensive, Vielles Vignes Françaises and Tarlant's, hardly cheap, La Vigne d'Antan.

The Tarlant wine comes from a tiny parcel (less than an acre) of 50 year-old Chardonnay vines in the village of Oeuilly. The sandy soil there safeguards Tarlant's own-rooted vines from our nasty yellow pest.

Benoit Tarlant, the current heir to a line of Tarlant winemakers that goes back to the 17th century, seems a fellow-traveler in our thought-experiment. From the company's website: "the Vigne d'Antan reveals the true nature of the chardonnay grape, with aromas unknown elsewhere since the 19th century (when phylloxera devastated the vineyards of France)."

Our bottle is a little older than the current release (based on the 2000 vintage). According to the label, it was disgorged Dec 17, 2004; according to fellow ungrafted aficionado Keith Levenberg, it is a blend of 80% 1999 and 20% 1998 vintages (thanks Keith!).

It has a rich nose of creamy, vanilla brioche with a hint of sweet honey, and a secondary note of crushed, damp rocks. Perhaps the most mineral-forward champagne I've ever tasted. River stones on the attack, then a luxurious golden apple fruit mid-palate. The two elements twist and twirl through a long elegant finish. This is a big, complex, beautifully structured and integrated wine; it just happens to have bubbles. Brilliant bubbles.

No wonder Jefferson went through this stuff at pace.

You can catch up on the rest of the Lab's ROOTS series here (hint: read bottom to top).

Our 68th Post!

This is actually our 69th post. But to arbitrarily celebrate the joyous occasion of our 68th post, we broke out a bottle of Champagne yesterday. A single-vineyard blanc de blanc. Leclerc Briant's La Croisette, NV.

The nose is amazingly like cantaloupe, with some brioche and sea spray layered in. It is bright and energetic on the attack, with steely apple fruit and lemony acid. The wine seems to swell mid-palate where a creamy texture and briny flavor build in behind the fruit before the acid chases back with a piercing minerality on a finish that evokes almonds as it fades. It was delicious wine with unique complexity and site-specific character.

Single-vineyard wines from Champagne are a budding trend, and so still fairly rare. Most are absurdly expensive. The Clos d'Ambonnay from Krug retails for $3500! And the oldest of the single-vineyard offerings, Philipponnat's Clos des Goisses starts at $165.

But the one we drank in the Lab is $33 at K&L Wines. It's a gateway Champagne.

If you're interested in single-vineyard, terroir-driven Champagnes, Peter Liem, a senior correspondent for Wine & Spirits magazine, wrote a highly informative overview for the San Francisco Chronicle back in June.

Arbitrary Milestones

One of the young scientists at the Lab got married last weekend. At the wedding, they poured a very nice non-vintage blanc de blanc for the toast. I was impressed. But it got me thinking. Champagne has achieved one of the greatest victories in marketing history. Right up there with de Beer's telling you a marriage isn't official without a diamond. Can you imagine a wedding without Champagne? Or New Year's Eve? The Champagne producers have us by the goblets. And it's primarily the industrial/generic, Grand Marque Champagnes who have our goblets clenched in their fat, velvet gloved fists.

At Rational Denial, we think it's time to fight back. Our plan is risky. Counter-intuitive, even. Our chance of success is small. But we are an intrepid group (didn't we just drink rancid Merlot to improve our wine knowledge?) so we are charging forward fearlessly.

And what's our plan? We're going to drink Champagne to celebrate arbitrary milestones. Simple isn't it? You kinda wish you thought of it, don't you.

What's an arbitrary milestone? Well, say you weren't killed in traffic today; we'll drink to that. Your kid just attended his 12th birthday party this year; pop a cork! (by the way, we hit that arbitrary milestone at my house sometime mid-February; my next cause may be an open assault on the little kid birthday mafia). Your shoelace is untied but you didn't trip; bottom's up! The more arbitrary the better.

We're hoping this will serve to de-emphasize the constrictor's grip that Big Brand Champagne has on our idea of celebration. So we're going to drink grower and artisan Champagne for barely any reason at all and hope this serves to invert our celebratory imagination.

This happens to be our 68th Lab Report. So we're going to celebrate that barely significant fact in style. I'll let you know tomorrow what we grabbed from the Lab cellar.

Cheers to just about anything!


(fireworks: © Mikhail Kokhanchikov | Dreamstime.com )

Dark Days at the Bubbledome

I am shocked and horrified.

It seems that some of the exuberance of the Bubbledome has spilled into a back alley behind the Lab. In said alley, several members of the staff -- all of whom are now on official "administrative" leave -- have apparently been running unsanctioned, Dome-style competitions.

These grotesque battles pit 375 ml "demis" against each other in what is being called "Midget BFC."

Like you, I am appalled. This is highly insensitive and completely inappropriate, and all participants will be dealt with harshly.

It is worth noting, however, that the competitors were of a fairly high quality.

I found these notes on the ground after the local authorities completed their raid:

Fleury, Carte Rouge Brut, NV. First whiffs are wet leaves (oxidation), spiced apple, lemon and a trace of toffee. After 20 minutes reveals itself to be a moving target. Now nutty with a clear aroma of caramel apple. Cherry and green apple fruit with bright tangerine acid on the attack, a creamy texture mid-palate and a zippy, acid return on the finish.

versus Camile Saves, Premier Cru Brut, NV. Classic autolytics. Yeasty biscuits with an almond-y undertone. Elegant, with a vinous depth reaching down to a subtle mineral floor. Great red fruit fruit tang and sweet chalk on the finish.

A nice showing by both little guys.

Wonder who won?

Required Reading

I don't really have a sense of the audience for the Lab's research. I know my mom doesn't read the Lab Reports. She doesn't have a computer. Beyond that, I'm in the dark. As such, I apologize in advance to the more cultured members of our community who won't find today's report particularly newsworthy.

But for the rest of you, my delightful, unlettered masses...

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But, in my experience, that's a good thing.

You can download the catalogs here.