Wine-pages.com London Champagne Off-Line

Alba Restaurant, Whitecross Street
Tasted Friday, March 11, 2005 by andrewstevenson.com with 1,467 views

Introduction

In the downstairs private room at Alba restaurant. A very pleasant room ideally suited to offlines.

Flight 1 - Aperitif and first tasting flight (7 Notes)

Flight 2 (1 Note)

Artichoke and potato in puff pasty, Robiola cheese sauce flavoured with truffle
A nice dish, though fairly rich. The Robiola sauce was jolly good and the whole thing was powerfully enriched with truffle.

Flight 3 (1 Note)

Risotto with wild mushrooms
Very well cooked risotto with the mushroom component well balanced. Unfortunately the dish was marred by being rather over-salted.

  • 1991 Philipponnat Champagne Brut Clos des Goisses 98 Points

    France, Champagne

    A rich gold. Quite a closed nose, though with time it starts to show some medicinal notes. This is a very nice champagne indeed, and quite distinctive. Explosive on the palate – very prickly and exploding with flavour too. Becomes much more briochy and spicy on the palate with time. Excellent. My wine of the night.

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Flight 4 (1 Note)

Monkfish casserole with Savoy cabbage and crispy bacon
Not a terribly successful dish – rather muddy flavours and not the most wonderful bit of fish. The savoy cabbage and bacon were the highlight.

Flight 5 (6 Notes)

Saddle of rabbit with sauce saubis with mushrooms gratin
Another powerfully-flavoured dish and again quite heavy, with the rabbit gratinated with cheese. Curiously my supposed saddle of rabbit had a leg bone in it. Curiously ‘80s presentation with white sauce feathering of the brown sauce. Ah, yes, that was a bit of a problem – the sauce was brown and nothing more than a heavy demi-glace.

Flight 6 (3 Notes)

Cheese
Round about this time a plate of some excellent Italian cheeses circulated. Quite probably the highlight of the meal.

  • 1988 Bollinger Champagne La Grande Année 90 Points

    France, Champagne

    A deepish colour. Creamy, washing powder nose. Rich and very full, and you can almost taste the lees on this. Very much representative of the power of Bollinger’s style, which is never quite to my taste. Very Good Indeed.

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  • 1964 Charles Heidsieck Champagne Brut Royal Millésimé 86 Points

    France, Champagne

    Dark gold, turning coppery. Nutty and almondy on the nose. Immediately on pouring there are some bubbles and a delicate mousse, but it disappears within seconds. What’s left is very dry and just a little too oxidised on the palate: a very curious wine. If I were served this blind, I’d probably guess at a very old crémant de Jura (if fizzy) or something else from the Jura/Arbois. Not really a wine to mark, though if served entirely blind, I’d probably say Good/Very Good.

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  • NV Ayala Champagne Brut Flawed

    France, Champagne

    No alcohol content was shown on the label, which gives an early indication of the likely age of this. A rather unappealing mid tan brown. Dead on the nose; and overall the impression is of darkness, death and graveyards. Truly nasty.

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Flight 7 (1 Note)

Dessert: Bünet
Bünet is a Piedmontese relation of crème caramel but incorporating chocolate and amaretti macaroons, and this is the first time I’ve seen it, let alone tasted it in about 20 years – since I came across it in one of Marcella Hazan’s books and thought it sounded interesting. This was a very deep yellow and not the lightest of crème caramel type concoctions. Yet after all that champagne it was very welcome.

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