Harrogate Fine Wine Journal

Small Grower Champagnes...

No regular drinker of Champagne will have failed to see the steady price rise of Grand Marque Champagne over recent years. Champagne as a region is up to its maximum production and demand for their wines continues to grow year on year. This demand has not been helped with emerging global markets in Russia and China, so the price is likely to continue to rise.

Earlier in 2008 when we got the new prices for the coming year, we felt the gap had widened sufficiently to have a proper look at the grower Champagnes, as to our minds they really are now the logical choice.

So we set about tasting as many bottles as we could find, and after a comprehensive and exhaustive process (I know it’s a hard job sometimes) we whittled the samples down to two growers that we felt were fighting well above their weight. In all we tasted over 20 different wines to make this selection.

Champagne Gallimard NV Cuvée de Reserve £18.99
This is a family-run Champagne house, which has 10 hectares of vines in the Aube. The Cuvée de Reserve is made up of mainly Pinot Noir and has a slightly richer mouth feel than you would expect for a wine from the Aube.

We have a special offer price of £100 for 6 bottles, which works out at £16.66 each.

Champagne Robert Moncuit
Another family-run house, this time they have 8 hectares of vines in one of the greatest Grand Cru villages of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. Le Mesnil is the famous home of two of the region’s greatest wines, Krug and Salon. Unsurprisingly the wines of Moncuit are 100% Chardonnay and they make a brut, an extra dry and a vintage.

Robert Moncuit Extra Dry NV £24.99 The thing about the extra dry style is that it has to have a good core of fruit or else it becomes a bit acrid. Thankfully this is excellent.

Robert Moncuit Vintage 2002 £34.99 Keenly priced for a vintage - certainly one from these vineyards - stylish and classy and worth every penny.

The Brut will be arriving next month and is priced at £24.99 also.

Dirk Niepoort Tasting

Wow what a night, Dirk really held the room with his relaxed but informative style. All the wines showed well (we had a job keeping the reds cool, resorting to ice buckets in the end).

The stars for me were the Girosol, lovely and fresh and the tank sample of the white Redoma was perfectly balanced and it going to be a cracker in 12 months or so. The Redoma 2002 is really showing well and although a tricky vintage shows just what could be done.



For the Ports we put on a museum vintage of their LBV (1996)and what a revelation. It was rich and developed, this shows just how well the wines of Niepoort age. The 1991 Colheita was just so divine really showing some age but growing in stature.

All in all it was an excellent tasting and a pleasure to taste the wines with the man himself.

Watch this space for further events like this.

Dirk Niepoort Tasting
Thursday 5th June 2008
The Rooftops
(5th floor of the Yorkshire Hotel)
7.00pm pre-tasting drinks
7.30pm Start (prompt)
Tickets £15

We are pleased to announce a very special tasting to be tutored by Portugal’s most celebrated winemaker Dirk Niepoort. Dirk has been at the forefront of the new renaissance in the Douro’s table wines and his new state of the art winery shows just how committed to these wines he is. Not content with making great table wines. Dirk is also responsible for continuing to make great Ports from the still family run Port house. Niepoorts vintage Ports are always up there with the likes of Fonsecca and Taylors and he is rightly recognised as Portugal’s greatest producer of fine aged Colheitas.

Dirk is one of the most passionate men in the trade and has a relaxed informal persona about him and it will be a pleasure to hear what he has to say about his wines and winemaking philosophy and of course to taste his wines.

Tickets are on sale now for this event and given the short notice nature of this tasting and the number of tickets available we would suggest getting in touch as soon as possible to secure your place.

Please note this will be a tutored tasting, there will not be any food.