NV Billecart-Salmon Champagne Brut Réserve
Community Tasting Note
galewskj wrote:
Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - I found 2 bottles of this with the older white label, dusty, and slightly underpriced in a wine shop. So I couldn't resist buying them, wondering if they would be amazing or completely shot. Well, the first one was somewhere in between, and definitely not as good as fresher bottles I've had. The color resembles apple juice. The flavor has a caramelized, tinny quality, and almost no bubbles. It tastes like old champagne in a completely unremarkable and slightly elderly way. If the second bottle drinks the same, I'm returning it.
And I did return the 2nd bottle.
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2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Report Issue (6,388 views)
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Comment posted by RolfT:
9/1/2015 10:18:00 PM - Thank you for sharing. Always interested in learning more about champagne ageeing and especially how well they fare on a store shelf compared to a winecellar. I recently had to return two bottles of Grande Dame 1998 which had been collecting dust on my local winemerchants store shelf for at least a year and likely much longer. They were far from the windows and stored in their boxes, so no light could have damaged them. He gave med a good price on the two, but when I tasted them both were flawed and almost undrikable. One was oxidised the other seemed to be cork tainted which I guess is totally unrelated to storage condition.
Better luck with the second bottle. Cheers!
Rolf
Copenhagen, Denmark.
Comment posted by galewskj:
9/2/2015 5:28:00 PM - I had a well-stored 1996 Grande Annee recently, and it was one of the best champgnes I've ever had. I think that your bottles, like mine, suffered from poor storage more than anything else. Still, I'm curious about the whole aspect of storing NV champagne. Billecart-Salmon does not put a disgorgement date on their NV bottlings, saying that they release their champagne when it is ready to be drunk. Well, what about bottles like the ones I just purchased, that are perhaps 10 years in the distribution channel under 70F temperatures at best?