"This stuff is stunning. Can you get more?""This is like Krug"
"This is like Bollinger RD"
"This is like Salon"
"This is as perfect a Champagne as I've ever had."
One can forget things when one writes over 250 email offers a year. The emails and texts started
coming a few months ago. Usually late at night and usually when the client had finished the bottle. The list above represents a few highlights.
I've had this wine with tons of industry people and they've all been blown away with mouths agape.
I researched my notes and saw I gave it a 10 on Delectable and also that is was my Sparkling wine of the year 2 years ago. So what is the wine? It is the NV Perseval Farge Jean Baptiste Brut and it can be had for $59.99 a bottle on a 3-pack. It is a blend of 55% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot Noir and 15% Pinot Meunièr. What gets interesting is the years the blend is from. It is 40% 1999, 50% 1998 and 10% 1996. It is aged in bottle for many years after it is blended. Now that is a great blend of vintages. Champagne is a blender's art as this wine can attest to. This is a great example of blending across grapes and vintages. I can see this aging for 10-15 more years but it is ready now due to the blend of older vintages.
The nose is class and complexity at the same time. Brioche, minerals, and so yeasty. One of those noses that you can stand on your chair and have the glass on the table 5 feet below you and you can still smell it. It has that aged youth thing that great aged Champagne has, yet it is still brilliantly youthful on the palate with the finest mousse I tasted during my time in Champagne. When I re-tasted it last night this was confirmed yet again. The finest mousse. As I look back on my note, the wine almost rushed back onto my palate. The finesse and wonderful toasty/brioche quality backed by the terrific minerality that frames it all. The acid makes your face smile. It can't help it. There is power, concentration and so much sap. The balance is extraordinary. The finish that is long and beautifully elegant. It just dissipates on the palate but leaves something as well. Just such classy and sophisticated bubbles. Classy and sophisticated are descriptors that are kept almost exclusively when describing great Champagne. Of course there is real depth here as the blend of vintages gives it that and there is no lack of freshness due to the high acid of these 3 vintages. I can safely say that for my palate, this the Champagne I most enjoy drinking from my portfolio.
I am all about drinking Champagne on special occasions but also not pigeonholing it as a beverage for just special occasions. But this wine is that special. At my sister's celebration dinner for her engagement, this was the Champagne I chose. For those who are interested, she married a great guy and they seem very happy. I couldn't be more thrilled for them.
Please do not think of this as a $59.99 Champagne. It would cost $80 or more through three tier and at that price, it is an undiscovered value. This wine has been resting in the cellar for almost 20 years - for the finance types, do a back of the envelope on the time value of money impact on this wine.
I think this is at a higher quality level as all the hipster/somm faves, Prevost, Bereche and Brochet, but since I am always ahead of the curve it is not discovered as no one has IG'ed or Delectable'd it and hashtagged it with #unicornwine or #ballerwine. This wine is worth at least 75 likes on Delectable and 100+ on Instagram.
I wrote on Facebook last year this status update. "It ain't about the points anymore, it's about the story." So I'm going to tell you a story. I could not see Isabelle Perseval of the great Perseval Farge estate in Champagne on this most recent trip as our schedules did not mesh. It bummed me out but I arranged to have her send me a 6-pack of samples to my hotel in Beaune. I tasted through them all and then looked at the pricing and to my surprise, the prices were raised across the board. It turned my smile upside down and inside out. I know I blather on and on about how the prices will go up and this time they did. But always remember when the winery raises prices it's on everybody and not just me. So I'm still the cheapest. And I just had to offer this wine again.
Today I am also thrilled to offer the NV Perseval-Farge "Terres de Sables" 1er Cru Brut for as little as $42.99 a 3-pack, which is 10% lower than the lowest price on wine-searcher -this wine will be around $60-70 next year. Please look. That is an absolute insane screaming mimi of a value for a Champagne this good. I drank it at my hotel in Beaune and also revisited it last night for this offer. It needed air, as all Perseval-Farge wines demand, but once it aired out it shows why it is the wild child of the Perseval-Farge lineup. It is a blend of 50% Chardonnay, 39% Pinot Noir and 11% Pinot Meunièr and what really make it shine in my opinion is that it is 49% from 2011 which really comes through on the palate and nose. 11's just rock and have that little extra kick in them that makes them really appealing. It is very intense and very sappy and has great complexity now but it really started to sing 24 hours later. It was very good on night one but on day 2 it was a krazor wine. It is a wine that introduces you to the beautiful purity, precision and intense sap of the Perseval Farge style. But it really needs a decant or 24 hours to really express itself which I know is counterintuitive to how Champagne is typically enjoyed. Do what you may with this info but if you want the wine I went crazy over and drinks like $55-$60 it is the wine I drank on the 2nd day. It becomes so huge, so intense and so chewy it cannot be believed. Really concentrated and really powerful with unreal thrust and intensity. It is amazing what this wine is at $42.99.
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