Community Tasting Note

Paul S wrote:

Saturday, June 4, 2011 - Alex's Bachelor's Party (Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck, Paragon): A truly excellent Champagne, yet I was sure glad I served this first, because the wines just seemed to get better and better through the night. This was disgorged in July 2006, and given the fact that Selosse ages the wine that goes into this cuvee for some 42 months in barrel, it had quite a bit of age on it. Yet for all that, it still needed all of two hours in an opened bottle and another 30 minutes in our glasses to really start showing. When it did, it had an incredible nose. Full of aromas reminiscent of golden apple flesh, along with lime peel scents, some umami tones, with flecks of white meat, dusty earth, stony mineral and a whiff of forest floor - woah, deep, enchanting stuff. The palate was a bit tight at first, even after the extended aeration. It had a super fine mousse, crisp, clean, precise and very minerally on entry, with super bright lemons dominating the fruit spectrum. With time though, it unfolded quite dramatically into fleshy golden apple flavours spreading across the midpalate beyond the citrus and mineral notes. Great weight and depth here, but somehow always guided by that laser-like precision that struck me at first sip. The wine then finished really very dry, with a linger of lime zest and apples on a layer of stone, but all with somewhat less length than I would expect at first. With even more time though, some dollops of cream, a touch of bread and some yeast shows up, filling up the gaps beautifully. I thought the wine was great even then, but with food, especially our fried oily beancurd skin appetiser, it zoomed up yet another notch, literally exploding across the mouth with fresh green apple fruit and flinty minerality - just tons and tons of energy that appeared to come from nowhere. This was a supreme example of Blanc des Blancs - an intellectual, even profound Champagne, yet one that was a real pleasure to drink. Opinion was later split on this, with some on the table preferring the weighter, more powerful, and every bit as superlative Jacques Selosse Substance that we had a couple of weeks ago in Burgundy, but a couple of others, me included, thought this wine was better given the sense of tension, focus, even elegance it had behind its strength. Like a Grand Cru Burg on skating on ice I thought. This is best served in a white wine glass rather than a flute of course. However, if you have a bottle with a later disgorgement date, I would suggest letting it sleep for a few more years - it is well worth the wait. I finised my last sips of the wine more than two hours after we first poured it into the glasses, and over warm though it was, it was drinking every bit as well, if not even better. Beautiful.

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