Saturday Night – Insane in the Champagne – Part 3

Click here for Part 1

We finished Krug and then opened the 1997 Salon to go with the Baked Brie.  This put the Dom and Salon up against each other for this course but it wasn’t really a fair comparison as the Dom had warmed up quite a bit by this point and Salon was just out of the fridge.

The nose on the Salon was an odd mix of roses, barnyard and, wet stone and gooseberry.  Tasting the Salon flavours of lime, mango, butter, tropical fruit and oak were to be found.  I was surprised at all the different flavours to be found and at how young it tasted relative to its actual age (I wouldn’t have guess it was a 1997 due to its vibrancy.)  The balance and finish to this Champagne were lovely.  My only small compliant with it is due to its extremely fine bubbles it reminded me more of a high-end white wine from Burgundy than a Champagne.  It really made a great pairing with the Brie (and worked well with the next two courses as well). 

Here is the group rating for the wine –Mick – 92, Mark – 91, Kathy – 91, Amy – 91, Overall – 91.25.

Here is the LCBO information for this wine –

99BLANC DE BLANC LE MESNIL(CHAMPAGNE SALON)

VINTAGES 704296
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 379.00
Made in: Champagne, France
By: Champagne Salon
Release Date: N/A
Wine, Champagne
12.0% Alcohol/Vol.
Varietal: Sparkling (Champagne)
Sweetness Descriptor: XD - Extra Dry

* Note – the Salon we reviewed here was a 1997 not the 1999 listed by the LCBO.  The 1997 Salon was purchase down in NY state at Premier Group for $349 US.

We finished the Dom and opened the 2004 Cristal to go with the next course - Singapore chili prawns (http://www.closetcooking.com/2009/06/singapore-chili-prawns.html) .  This was a new dish that I found when searching for Champagne pairings and sent to Mick as a suggested dish for the night.  He was nice enough to make it and I’m glad he did as it was very good and was a great pairing with both the Salon and the Cristal. 

The 2004 Cristal was the only one of the four wines we’d had before and it is also one of the highest rated wines on the Zippy Sauce blog and for good reason.  On the very first sip of the Cristal last night I was like ‘wow’ just ‘wow’ as it was even better than I remember it being the first time.  It had the liveliness of the Dom, the full mouth-feel of the Krug and the complexity of the Salon all in one glass and it was my hands down winner of the night.  Don’t get me wrong as I enjoyed the other 3 quite a bit but if I was forced to pick one it would be the 2004 Cristal.

The last course of the night was the crabbed topped scallops which we had with the remaining Cristal as the Salon was now a distant memory and it was a good pairing.  We decided to skip the cheese tray at this point and call it a night as we were all stuffed to the gills.

This wasn’t a normal Saturday night and I felt a bit guilty at having 4 bottles of pricy Champagne in one night as each of them could have been a feature bottle and we could have done this over 4 Saturday nights.  We discussed this at one point midway through the evening and made ourselves feel better about it by justifying that it is the only true way to compare them.  If we spaced these out over a period of a month on 4 different nights our ratings probably would have been different (weather changes, mood, foods, etc.).  This is probably not something we’ll do again anytime soon but it was a lot of fun.

Thanks to Mick and Amy for hosting and Mick for all the wonderful food.  Thanks to Sheian for dropping by and to my wonderful wife Kathy for making this an awesome birthday night!

Cheers,

Mark!