Community Tasting Note

Keith Levenberg Likes this wine:

Monday, February 1, 2021 - Not to be tacky or anything but I've had just about every hyped Champagne and bling Champagne to have been released in the last two decades and frankly it's pretty rare for them to provoke any reaction in me beyond, "Yeah, pretty good, tastes like Champagne" and then I find myself scratching my head wondering what is making everyone swoon other than the price tag or the fancy packaging. This is an exception so dramatic that the first sip just leaves me standing there, stupefied. The effect is positively transporting. Outside it's a miserable winter night and then with a sip of this, the fruit turns the inside of your mouth into Katrina & the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" and the bubbles rain on the palate with the gentle patter of a light summer sunshower. Owing to its sheer glowing uranium-like vibrancy, the refreshment value is off the charts, but there is plenty more packed into the fruit beneath this, as it's fleshed out with thicker, more candied lemony flavors starting to pick up some of the honeyed character of age and which give it a very Salon-like profile, which isn't so strange considering the Mesnil part of the blend. It finishes with a sensation of metal shavings and a finely serrated cut followed by a sustained echo of that bright, thirst-quenching fruit, but not so quenching that you don't feel immediately compelled to grab another sip. 750ml is a cruelly inadequate serving size. Comtes de Champagne is always a treat to drink although it tends to require a few years for me to get past the aforementioned "pretty good, tastes like Champagne" stage - this one requires no such patience. I can't say whether it's unusually precocious this year or if the winemaking somehow stepped up to the next level (really, stepped up to the very top level), or both, but you just can't ask for or expect any more from a Champagne of this age. Champagne just doesn't get any better without there being actual nymphs to serve it to you.

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