Champagne at the bit - tasting acidosis

Events, dear boy, events.

Another week floats buy
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven -
All’s right with the world!
~Robert Browning

Nibbled way out of the chrysalis of what has seemed to be an interminable winter, more dreary than extreme and emerged blinking into the bright sunlight. But that turned out to be a lull - despite the spring forward of the clocks and the annunciation of BST the country has been bitten by the scorpion sting of winter and previous cast clouts before March was out have been hastily redonned.

Tastings are proceeding apace. Some are conventions rather than tastings, networking on a physical level, where tweet becomes meet.  The Champagne Bureau tasting is a masochistic experience, although I enjoy the rather wonderful venue of the Banqueting House on Whitehall, it is slightly stuffy in an olde Cheddar cheese way as if the graveyard of the traditional wine trade had rendered up its (living) dead. This is where all the brands come to smother each in a lifeless embrace. I like to think this is where we can say to the champagne world: Show us what you got. Give us your best (worst) shot.

On one table there were 60 odd non vintage wines, the usual roll call of the great and good, a collection of brands that have established a worldwide bubble reputation. Be still my dyspeptic stomach. It is invidious to compare dross with crap, to hammer one over-rated wine at the expense of another, but it is instructive that champagne houses have had decades to get their recipes right and seem determined to ask us to pay a premium for poor quality, highly manipulated wines that are overproduced and released without sufficient age. Time and again the anorexic base wines are overbalanced by cloying sweetness of clumsy dosage. One’s mouth has a perpetual confused sweet-sour sensation which is most disagreeable. There is nothing natural, elegant or balanced about these “pucker” wines.

There were a few exceptions to the collective acid bath. I liked the rich, toasty Alfred Gratien, the elegant yet complex Jacquesson, the ever reliable Charles Heidsieck and the pure, fruit-driven Philipponnat Non Dosé.

As I have said before most of the money poured into spurious deals and marketing schemes should be spent on either bringing down the price or creating a luxury product that is worthy of the image that the Chamepenois would like to project.
Real pain from this sham wine.