How Should We Be Tasting Champagne? | Wine Folly

Palme d'Or 2006 by Nicolas Fouillat aka Nicky Fou. It's all 50-50 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Some of it coming from the Montaigne to Rheim region which is like the bee's knees for growing grapes in Champagne. I just really want to know how does the wine in the holy hand grenade bottle actually taste? Now when I drink Champagne I actually like to use a white wine glass and the reason why I do that and especially with prestige bottlings like this one is you've got a big enough mouth to actually smell the aromas coming out of the wine and when you get into this like high-end sparkling wine Champagne zone you really want to smell it because by god it usually smells awesome. This wine uh in particular you know when we're looking for fancy ass Champagne you're gonna be spending around 90 to 100 and something dollars a bottle. This is no exception it's in I think it's about 130 dollars a bottle which is a lot of money for something you're gonna pee out and in fact it kind of looks like pee if you look at the color here look at that anyway let's dive into this tasting on this crazy bottle of fancy sparkling wine on the nose you know it smells like vanilla cupcakes definitely vanilla cupcakes and like this little bit of a beeswax note and then I get this kind of chemical aroma I don't know how to describe it to you but it's almost like petrol it's more petroly than I know Champagne to normally be I'm always looking for that cheese note it's like to me Champagne always smells a little bit like parmesan cheese and this one for some reason is coming through a little more cupcakey and vanilla but there is just this subtle twang of parmesan cheese ah so let's give this wine a taste when I'm assessing sparkling wines one of the things I try to pay attention to is that bubble finesse and how it feels across my palate now I tasted this wine yesterday so it's totally lacking on bubbles today but I did make note that when I tasted it yesterday that it was also a very like reduced bubble finesse sparkling wine now for something like prestige champagne and for something that's been aged so long on tirage aka they left it in their cellars for a really long time and then they released it the 2006 vintage is pretty current so it's probably going to lose some of its bubble finesse over time and in fact if you are a collector of sparkling wines you'll note that a lot of your older bottlings 10-20 years goes by they become darker in color and they lose that bubble finesse and that's something you have to emotionally go through as a wine collector me personally I like a really like zappy bubble finesse on my sparkling wines so I am a little sad when I don't taste that really nice fine bubble finesse which this one unfortunately doesn't have it didn't have it yesterday and it certainly doesn't have it today the second thing I look for when I'm tasting a fine sparkling wine is that balance I hate that word balance everyone's like oh it's balanced what does that actually mean well with this I'm looking at how much of the fruit that I taste towards the front of the palate matches with the bitterness and the acidity that I get on the mid to back palate of the wine so like is there enough fruit to counterbalance that bitter note because a lot of these wines have a little bit of bitterness in the production method that they make sparkling wines especially champagne they leave there's some skin there's some phenolics that actually happen in the wines from the skins and seeds and it gets into the wine and you taste a little bit of bitterness and you can resolve that flavor with uh adding sugar well at having a little bit of dosage in the wine so it can have like up to 10 grams of residual sugar this is a brute so it might have up to 10 to 12 grams per liter of residual sugar which is actually pretty low but you could also do that with really nice ripe grapes so what we look for when we're looking for super fine wines at least this is what I kind of look for is a pretty low dosage of balanced dosage eight or less six or less grams per liter of residual sugar and then lots of fruit flavor that's coming through the ripeness of the grapes and not through the cheating of the sweetness right so um with this wine I think they did a pretty good job on the dosage it's not tasting super sweet to me but the balance of the fruit is a little bit off this wine has a little bit more bitterness has a little more like crunchiness on the mid to back palate and uh less fruit to balance that out that's just what I'm noticing on this particular vintage no hate but hyper analysis you know when you're thinking about what is actually going on inside of this glass the last thing I look for when I'm tasting wines like seriously how's the finish different than the front of the taste the front of the taste and the nose is definitely all this beautiful like kind of tertiary flavors of like cupcakes and vanilla and petrol and then on the palate I actually get this sort of crunchy bitterness and this tingle in the back of my throat coming through on this acidity is that a matching like does the curtain match the carpets you know like it tastes like what I think it should taste like and for me this wine unfortunately I love you Pomodoro Nikifu but this wine for me falls a and then I get served something a little bit different so I don't know that I would say this is the best champagne I've ever had and yet I would say this has all the traits of super high end champagne that I love to find and it's interesting there's a lot that's changing right now in champagne that's worth noting and one of the things is is you'll find a lot of the higher end producers who are making super exclusive bottlings that are really hard to get are actually leaning in this more like bitter lean tart fruit realm so maybe Nikifu is actually like hey maybe we should go in that direction now because that's super cool and we want to be cool too so I don't want to judge on this wine so harsh because maybe they're going through a transitionary period or whatever that is so there you go a weird Madeleine version of an analysis of Palm Door 2006 it is an excellent wine for $130 I think it's a beautiful color I think it'll make anyone happy especially just smelling this wine anyway if you guys like what you see definitely leave a comment if you want me to taste something else specific I may not do that because it's hard to find wines but I'll definitely read what you're curious to learn more about all right until next time I love you guys I'm gonna go finish this bottle peace out