Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews

The Price Of Champagne. From The Sublime To.....

Here are a few ideas for your next dinner party. Well, perhaps not, but I think you’ll like the story anyway.

There seems to be a compulsion amongst champagne makers, and to be fair, amongst the makers of luxury goods of any type, to produce the most expensive product on the market and it seems the sky’s the limit.

Fortunately most champagne makers are conscious of maintaining their hard-won reputation and realise that there’s no merit in the simple fact of being the most expensive unless there is some correspondingly stellar quality behind the astronomic price tag.

Unfortunately, there’s always an exception......

Before we get to that, let’s have a quick look back of a few recent milestones:

Dom Pérignon sets the pace

Back in 2005 at the Cannes Film Festival, Dom Pérignon launched a very limited series of special Jeroboams ( these are 3 litre bottles, and therefore contain the equivalent of 4 normal bottles) Each one cost a mere 12,000 euros, which at the time probably took the prize for the most expensive champagne in the world.

More recently,only last year in fact, Perrier Jouët, made play of the fact that they were launching a special edition of their prestige cuvée, Belle Epoque vintage 2000, at a price of just over 4,000 euros per bottle.

"Wait a minute" I hear you say. 4,000 euros is less than the 12,000 of the Dom Pérignon jeroboams.

True, but don’t forget that the DP jeroboams held 4 bottles, so at 16,000 euros for 4 bottles, the Perrier Jouët took the prize.

But there’s more to come.......

Tailor-made champagne

Only a select band of celebrities could afford this price tag and each purchaser was invited to go to the Perrier Jouët cellars in Epernay where they had the chance to tailor-make the champagne according to their own taste. They got to decide on the finishing touch, the liqueur de dosage, which was adjusted according to their own liking so each purchaser’s champagne was unique to them.

Next the lucky buyer placed the champagne in a special presentaton box which was then placed in the cellars to rest a further 8 months until the champagne was finally ready to deliver and enjoy.

I don’t know about you, but that seems a relatively small added value to justify a cost of over 4,000 euros a bottle, but perhaps I’m just fussy.

Mind you the culmination of the story is yet to come...

This very special cuvée was not on sale by the bottle, but only by the case, so 12 bottles was the minimum order, coming in at a cool 50,000 euros.

 

Let’s not forget either the bottle of 1928 Krug which was sold, just a few months ago at an auction in Hong Kong, for 15,900 euros.

Breaking the 100,000 barrier

Moving on up, we come to this year’s Monaco Grand Prix and it’s Dom Pérignon centre stage once again.

The world’s most glamorous Grand Prix, where some of the most chic and well-heeled celebrities congregate for the weekend, is a PR chance not to be missed.

Dom Pérignon set up a Dom Pérignon Rosé club in one of the most luxurious hotels where guests could not only enjoy sipping the sublime Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 1998 but had the chance to buy something very special: a pink guitar case designed by Karl Lagerfeld containing, not a guitar, but

3 Dom Pérignon champagne flutes,

3 bottles of Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 1996

2 bottles of Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 1986

1 bottle of Dom Pérignon Rosé Vintage 1966

And the price???

A snip at 100,000 euros – including delivery of course.

Beyond 100,000 $ £ or €

What I would usually regard as the current record must go to the bottles of 1907 Heidsieck champagne salvaged a few years ago from a shipwreck off the coast of Finland. Some 200 bottles of champagne were found, in perfect condition, at the bottom of the sea and have now gone on sale at The Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow where the price is $275,000 a bottle.

I don’t know if it’s available by the glass.

And now, from the sublime to.... what shall I say? Something less uplifting.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I came across Le Billionaire Champagne the other day and it wasn’t just the price of $2.75 million per bottle that made my eyes water; it was just the way it looked.

See for yourself

http://www.leonverres.com/

The description tells me that each one is attired in rich designer wear, studded with diamonds and topped with a Shapka, a Russian fur hat. Maybe I’m being a boring old xxxx, but to me it looked more like a hot water bottle cover.

Apparently, there will be 5 only of these 9 litre salmanazars (equivalent to 12 botles) made available for sale, but if only one sells I guess Mr. Verres will be laughing all the way to the bank anyway.

Mind you, I do admire Mr. Verres’s "bottle" in the cockney sense of the word. The sheer confidence to dream up such a price tag is evidence of admirable self-confidence, and I have to say that in not even pretending to say anything about the champagne inside the bottle, we at least know from the outset that this is all about the price tag and not much else besides.

I think I’ll go for the Dom Pérignon Rosé. What about you?

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If you are a lover of champagne and want to learn the real Insider Story about champagne: how it’s made, how to choose champagne, the 3 things you need to know before you buy a bottle, and so much more, join me at

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If you’d like to make a comment about this, or any other article on Debateabubble, please e-mail me at

jiles@madaboutbubbly.com

Small Grower Champagnes

Over the last few years there’s been a lot more interest in what is often called ‘Grower Champagnes’ – not a very elegant description but it’s difficult to think of something better.

• What are grower champagnes though,

• How do you spot them and

• Is the growing interest justified?

To take each of these questions in turn:

Grower champagnes are champagnes made by people who use only grapes from their own vineyards. In other words, they can’t buy in any grapes grown by anyone else.

You spot them

1. by virtue of the fact that they tend to be less well-known. The chances are that you have rarely heard of the names, although that is beginning to change.

2. by the price which is often much lower than the better-known brands and

c) by looking carefully at the label on the front of the bottle.

The reason you should look at the label is that each champagne producer has a registration number which must be printed on the label. The number is preceeded by 2 letters which tell you which category the maker falls in to.

RM

Grower champagnes are designated by the letters RM meaning Récoltant Manipulant

( literally harvester and handler)

Amazingly given the relative lack of attention given to them, there are over 2,000 RM

NM

The famous name champagnes makers fall into this category. NM means

Négociant Manipulant ( literally Buyer and Handler).

These champagne houses may, or may not, have vineyards of their own and they purchase from third parties all, or part, of the grapes they need.

There are only some 260 registered NM but they carry huge weight in the champagne industry:10% of them account for over 50% of the sales of champagne.

There are a few other categories but, for now, I’ll mention only one other

CM

Coopérative de Manipulation

This indicates a brand belonging to a cooperative of growers which takes delivery of grapes from its members, presses the grapes and then either makes champagne and sells it under the cooperative’s own brand name, or gives back to the grower the pressed wine so that grower can finish the champagne making process and market it under his or her own name.

Is the interest in Grower Champagne justified?

Well, it is absolutely certain that good RM champagnes offer what the French call

"Un bon rapport qualité / prix " meaning that for the price you pay you get a very high quality.

I hesitated to say ‘better value’ because value is a personal judgement and only you can say what you consider to be good value.

It’s equally true to say that the RM champagnes are really worth trying. I would be prepared to bet that in a blind tasting 99% of people could not tell the difference between many RM champagnes and the big, international brands.

Having said this is would be well not to assume that all RM champagne are brilliant and that all NM brands are mass-produced and over-priced. There are lots of poor quality RM’s and there are several NM champagnes that are from houses that are only modest in size and are high in quality. (a good topic for a future blog)

In conclusion, do be open to try champagnes that you may never have heard of – you’ll have some great surprises – but don’t fall into reverse snobbery and turn your nose up just because you see NM on the label.

I've recently finished my e-book called The Insider's Guide to Champagne. In it you'll find the real secrets of champagne that most " experts" and certainly most champagne houses, won't tell you. It's essential reading for anyone who really wants to understand chanpagne.

To check it out and to sign up for my free Bubbly Bulletins, go to

www.madaboutbubbly.com

Until next time

Jiles Halling

Are you a Wine-ese speaker?

I think I've discovered a new language - it's called "Wine-ese". The problem is that everyone who knows how to speak it, assumes that everyone else can too. In reality, almost no one can, so there's a communication problem. Let me explain...

I was in my local Waitrose supermarket yesterday- Waitrose is an upmarket supermaket chain in the U.K. with a good reputation for wine.

I was looking ( in vain as it happened )  for some useful information to help in my champagne selection.

I picked up a copy of their wine list and was browsing through and came across this entry for Louis Roederer Brut Premier NV champagne. This is what it said...

"Still family-owned, with a high proportion of its own grapes and reserve wines used in its champagne."

That was it - nothing else.

Now I don't know about you, but my reaction was, "Is that all? "

What difference does it make if the company is family-owned; so what if they use a high proportion of their own grapes - doesn' t everyone? And what all this about reserve wines - what does that mean and what difference do they make to the champagne?

I suspect that for the average champagne buyer the information meant little or nothing.

The description was written by a very experienced wine expert who really knows about champagne. The trouble is that she sort of assumes that you know as much as she does and speak the same language. But most people don't speak Wine-ese and when that's the case it doesn't help at all if you just talk louder.

If you'd like some Wine-ese lessons, why not let me be your interpreter? When it comes to  champagne, I can translate for you.

I invite you to sign up for my free Bubbly Bulletins where  you'll find your introduction to Wine-ese plus the answers to all these questions and more: vintage champagne, rosé champagne, non-vintage champagne, everything about champagne.

To find out more just go to www.madaboutbubbly.com and simply leave your first name and a contact e-mail address.

See you soon for your first lesson