Tag: Bollinger

Bolly magnums only in a few Waitrose stores

A visitor to the site complained earlier in the week that they couldn’t find any discounted magnums of Bollinger Special Cuvée in Waitrose stores and thus I should remove this information from the website. As it states in the Latest champagne offers page, and in the blog published on 11 December this deal which sees the price drop to £67.49 (for Waitrose card holders the magnum price was down to £60.72 until 16 December) is only running in a dozen stores and on WaitroseCellar.com. I checked with the Waitrose and this is the list of 13 (not 12) outlets they gave me: Bath, Belgravia, Berkhamsted, Cambridge, Canary Wharf, Crewkerne, JL Foodhall Oxford Street, John Barnes, Lymington, Marylebone, Rushden, St Katharine Docks and West Ealing.

I’d be pleased to hear from anyone finding, or not finding, the discounted magnums in any of these stores. When I last checked the WaitroseCellar.com website was out of stock but this evening (18 December) it had magnums available, but the discounted price was £75 not £67.49. The discrepancy here appears to be because Waitrose, or possibly Bollinger, has hiked the price of magnums to £100 not the £89.99 figure that went out to journalists a few weeks back in the email giving Waitrose’s wine offers for the current trading period.

It seems the supermarkets (and other large retailers) are changing the regular selling prices so often you may find that a larger percentage discount sometimes results in a higher selling price for certain champagnes.

Two bottle price the norm for customers says Majestic buyer

I bumped into Justin Apthorp, champagne buyer at Majestic, at the London Wine Fair at Olympia last week, feeling slightly guilty about my recent post on their pricing policy for champagne — High pricing flatters discounts offered at Majestic. He didn’t approve. Before I had even asked him a question he said he’d read the post and wanted to point out that Majestic customers very rarely purchased single bottles of champagne, so in effect the [much more competitive] two bottle price was the norm.

He didn’t want to talk on the record generally about champagne pricing in the UK (which is a shame because I know his comments would make interesting and uncomfortable reading for champagne suppliers and supermarket retailers alike) but did make the quick aside that it seemed to be more than a coincidence that all the major champagne houses have been putting their prices up together, and at a time when sales are falling.

Majestic’s policy of, let us say, emphasising the discounts it offers, has of course been influenced by the supermarkets’ ‘false’ half price deals on champagnes that are not remotely worth the claimed full retail price. And to its credit Majestic certainly hasn’t aped that policy. In fact the company has some very decent current offers, particularly under its ‘buy two save 33% deals’, with  big name brands featured like Bollinger (£33.31 for Special Cuvée); Pol Roger Réserve (also £33.31); Perrier-Jouët Blason Rosé (£29.98) and Piper Heidsieck £23.32.

And if any of its customers do want to buy a single bottle of champagne in their minimum purchase of six bottles there are also good single bottle price deals on Taittinger Brut – down from £42 to £25–   plus three wines from Ruinart, including the sought after Blanc de Blancs and Rosé styles both priced at £41.66 when they are more regularly featured at well over £50.

My top ten pink champagnes (mostly not sold in supermarkets)

I used to be unenthusiastic about rosé champagne. I have an issue with the fact that it is generally priced at a similar level to vintage champagne, but rarely offers anything like the same emjoyable drinking experience. However I have to admit there are now many more Charles99VintNewLabelwithglass2013-01-22 13.43.06attractive pink champagnes on the market and for Valentine’s Day lots of people will be drawn into buying pink fizz. So what are the best options, outside the supermarket norm but not in the stratospheric price territory (over £200) occupied by the big brands’ rosés, the likes of Cristal, Dom Pérignon, Krug, Comtes de Champagne, Clicquot’s La Grande Dame and Laurent-Perrier’s Cuvée Alexandra?

I am particularly attracted to the more winey, Burgundy style Pinot Noir driven pinks that age really well and work surprisingly well with food, particularly game. In this camp I’d include Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée Rosé, ideally the 1989 vintage which is still available, if in fairly limited distribution. Ten years younger, but both delicious in their different ways are Charles Heidsieck’s 1999 Rosé and Bollinger La Grande Année 1999 Rosé, Closer in style to the Clicquot with powerful rich Pinot Noir from Les Riceys playing a significant role in the blend comes Nicolas Feuillatte’s Palmes d’Or Rosé. I have the 1999, 2004 and 2005 vintages and will probably open the ‘99 myself on the 14th.

More delicate in style, but slightly more expensive is the creamy textured Billecart-Salmon’s Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon 2002. Great value but certainly not inferior comes the delicately fruity, but distinctly classy Joseph Perrier 2004 Rosé. Bruno Paillard Premier Cru Rosé is another winner resonating breeding and, as the best pinks are, very moreish. And Gosset Grande Rosé, which I tried again only this afternoon, is a very desirable, seductive pink that rapidly disappears.

That only leaves two remaining slots to fill and for these I am going to go to the Côte des Bar region to the south-east of Troyes where Michel Drappier makes a charming Burgundy-like pink and bio-dynamic producer Fleury produces something substantial and savoury, that would easily and enjoyably be consumed with an Asian duck dish. Finally I am going to cheat and add an 11th pink that is widely distributed in the supermarkets, that from Veuve Clicquot. This is probably the pink fizz I have tried most often in the past 18 months and has been consistently among the most enjoyable.

Is Champagne losing its kudos, its pulling power?

Although Champagne prices for the major brands continue to increase, reflecting the fact that grape prices in the region have risen continuously over the past two decades between the 1993 and 2013 harvests, UK supermarkets continued to sell some champagne around the £10 mark at the year-end. Why? Clearly they can’t be making any margin selling fizz at this price. It is simply to pull in the punters.

MichelLetterDGofMumm&PJatPernoRicardThe owners of the big houses worry that selling this very cheap champagne may be damaging the generic image of Champagne and it may also be making it harder for them to sell their international brands at £30 to £35 a bottle or more – several are now over £40 rrp. As Michel Letter the boss at G.H.Mumm at Perrier-Jouët said recently: “With discounts as large as this the consumer might think that something is wrong with the wine and I am afraid of this. You can have champagne selling at two different prices with one that is twice as expensive, giving the explanation that the grapes are sourced from grand cru vineyards or the wine is aged longer, but three times higher starts to be too big a difference.”

But newspaper columnists still like to use champagne as a symbol of extravagance, luxuryBollinger La Grande Annee Rosé 1999 and celebration and as a gauge of economic well-being, sometimes working it into the most unlikely stories. Under the heading:  ‘Champagne flows as house owners see surge in prices’ The Times newspaper ran a story last Saturday (18 January) saying house owners might want to break out the champagne as their properties were now worth £28,000 more on average than they were in January 2013, or £27,991 to be exact. The writer, Deidre Hipwell, clearly a lover of pink fizz, noted this was the equivalent of 560 bottles of gift bottles of Bollinger Rosé at £49.99 a pop.

It seems despite the aggressive pricing of supermarkets in the UK, mirroring what has been happening in France over the past three or four months, brand Champagne is retaining its cachet, its unique position as the drink of celebration. But the fear is this ‘two-tier’ market may cause damage in the longer term.

Bollinger War vintages

When I came into the office for the first time last week there was a message on my ansafone from a ChampagneGuru visitor, asking if I could help evaluate or provide any information about a very old bottle of vintage Bollinger from the war years.  Intriguing I thought, knowing there were several fine vintages between 1939 and 1945, some picked while the front line was very close to Reims.

Bollinger actually made three: 1941, Madame Lily Bollinger’s first vintage that produced wines that were ‘powerful and balanced’; 1943 – ‘a difficult year for an exceptional result’ with very concentrated wines; and finally 1945: ‘Solid wines that later proved to be a great vintage, powerful and able to be kept for a long time’.

Sadly I haven’t tasted any of these three and I don’t even know if they have bottles left in the cellars in Aÿ, though I suspect they do. I have tasted other wines from the 40s including Veuve Clicquot’s, but the oldest Bollinger I have a record of trying is 1979 RD a few years back. When I called back I discovered the wine in question was in fact the ’43 and we are now trying to find out its rarity, condition and thus its ‘value’. A quick look on Wine Searcher gives an average price for this wine of £798 ex tax per bottle and reveals four places, all in Germany, still offering the wine, although three of them only have half bottles.

In fact all four of them only have half bottles as I discovered when I emailed them (they do have 1941 and 1949 Bollinger in 75cl bottles though). So it is over to Bollinger to see if they still have any bottles of 1943 left.

Champagne deals flow over Easter

It was Easter in 2000 when the whole idea of slashing Champagne prices during key trading periods was started by Sainsbury’s, partly to get rid of unsold ‘Millennium’ stock. Fast forward 13 years and it is still happening, though the major international brands whose prices have all gone up recently, have mostly avoided the deep discounting. But Easter looks like bringing some great deals out and Sainsbury’s has cut its price of Bollinger Special Cuvée to just £25 a bottle until 2nd April while Tesco is giving 25% off six bottle purchases. See the Latest Retail Offers page.

Augustin and Leroux in new positions post Bollinger

Two former top Bollinger managers, well known to the UK champagne trade, have started new export orientated jobs. Hervé Augustin, previously Bollinger MD, whose ‘resignation’ as President of Ayala last September surprised many industry observers, has joined Champagne De Castelnau at the Reims-based CRVC co-operative as their export director. And earlier this month, Stephen Leroux, former sales and marketing director at Bollinger, who briefly worked last year on the export side at Louis Roederer, joined the EPI management team under MD Robert Remnant, specifically working on the Charles Heidsieck brand.

Augustin oversaw a complete restoration of Ayala’s fortunes and image moving over from managing Bollinger after the family bought the ailing house in January 2005. The CRVC MD Pascal Prudhomme says Augustin will help them achieve their objective of « reaching sales of 500,000 bottles for the De Castelnau barand by 2016, its 100th anniversary, with 50% sold outside France”. Aged 62, Augustin’s career in Champagne, which spans 37 years, began at Laurent-Perrier working with his uncle Bernard de Nonancourt.

The appointment of Leroux on the Charles Heidsieck brand shows EPI’s determination to build a talented management team capable of restoring this famous marque’s image, positioning it in the same territory as brands like Roederer and Bollinger.

Paillard accuses Bollinger of copying his ‘unique’ bottle

Bruno Paillard has accused Bollinger of copying the shape of his ‘unique’ bottle in a press release sent to UK journalists and magazines this afternoon (3rd August). At the start of the release entitled: “When Bollinger copies Bruno Paillard” it says: ‘Even when introduced as an innovation, an irresistible urge to make it rhyme with imitation takes us when we discover the new Bollinger bottle…

And between a picture of the two bottles it continues: ‘See for yourself to which extent it appropriates the exclusive bottle designed in 1984 by Bruno Paillard for the wines bearing his name.’

There is then a quite lengthy quote as follows from Paillard detailing his reaction. “I am deeply shocked that a house – who by the way advertises an ‘ethic’ charter and whose direction I regularly meet every month at the Union des Maisons de Champagne board never has the courtesy to discuss this subject – allow themselves to copy an existing model. At this stage we only have superimposed pictures of their bottle on ours and recorded they were rigorously identical. We will of course ask an expertise on their bottle, and if it turns out they are the exact same model, we will have to start a judicial process, our bottle being registered in many countries.

“I designed this bottle almost 30 years ago, not only to distinguish our House, but also to increase the exchange surface between the wine and the lees, increasing this way the complexity of our wines. This antique shape may remind of a small magnum, but it is not its goal.”

Posing the question to himself as to whether imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Paillard ends by saying: “Maybe, but in such case one can also consider it a servile copy. Which does not make me feel flattered but attacked to tell the truth.”

Bollinger’s offices in Aÿ are currently closed for a pre-harvest break but a spokesman issued the following statement: “We do not wish to comment directly on claims made last week regarding the redesigned shape of our bottle. However, as explained at the initial launch in May, we would like to underline the fact that this redesign drew inspiration from the collection of bottles in our cellars which date back to the mid-19th century.”

 

Bolly launches ‘mini magnum’ shaped bottle

Bollinger bottles new (on the right) and old shapes

Bollinger has introduced a new ‘magnum shaped’ bottle for its champagnes based on a bottle dating from 1846 found in the company cellars in Aÿ.

As well as looking more distinctive, the unique shape with a narrower neck, initially to be used for halves, bottles, magnums and jeroboams of Special Cuvée, comes much closer to replicating the ideal ratio of air to liquid found in the traditional magnum, a relationship which affects the rate of oxidation in this format. Experience tells us champagne matures more slowly in a magnum and for some reason always seems to taste better, so it appears that Bollinger is onto a winner here.

“In the new bottle format the speed of ageing will slow,” says Bollinger MD Jérôme Philipon, “keeping the wine fresher for longer. We have been working on the project for four years. The brut rosé will move to the new shape next year and we have bottled the 2008 La Grande Année in it too. The unique bottle shape will also enhance the authenticity of our brand and while it weighs the same we will be able to put 600 as opposed to 500 bottles on a pallet, making it more eco-friendly too.”

Bollinger MD Jérôme Philipon with the new Bollinger bottle at the London Wine Trade Fair launch in May

Matching Champagne and spicy food at the Cinnamon Club

Originally published in Imbibe Magazine Jan/Feb 2009

Spicy food with Champagne, it’s not an obvious choice. I once persuaded a CIVC henchman I was lunching with to try Champagne and oysters spiced up with a dash of Tabasco sauce and he quite clearly thought I was mad. But finding suitable styles of Champagne and other sparklers to match spicy food was exactly the challenge given to a number of on trade suppliers. It wasn’t just any old spicy food either, but a menu with a real kick put together by Vivek Singh at the Cinnamon Club.

To help us decide what might work first of all we tasted all the wines that had been entered for the challenge, looking at the different styles and levels of sweetness, ranging in the case of the Champagnes from a bone dry Extra Brut (just 3gms sugar per litre compared to the Brut norm of around 11 or 12gms) to a Pol Roger Rich (a demi sec), which someone had thoughtfully put in. It appeared that those who merely entered the standard NV Brut style of the house they represented hadn’t fully thought things through, or perhaps they didn’t understand that we really did mean full on spicy.

But while it would have been better to have had some more obvious food friendly styles whether vintages, sec and demi-secs or perhaps cuvées that had seen some oak, among the two-dozen of so samples on the table, we certainly had enough options to get an idea of what did or didn’t work. We kicked off with three fishy appetisers, stir fried crab; garlic crusted king prawn and tandoori swordfish, matching them against several NV Brut styles initially as we kept back more concentrated, pink and sweeter options for some more challenging dishes later in the menu.

Each of these three dishes had accompanying sauces of varying density and strength, but the crab, which was spiced with garam seeds and the garlicky prawn dishes were easier to tame than the smoky tandoori swordfish.

Chef Singh said there were two ways of approaching the matching exercise: either putting together complementary flavours or else something that was a big enough contrast to cut through the spicy richness of the food. Of the non-vintage Champagne blends those with greatest intensity and the one all Chardonnay cuvée, fared best against the fish and seafood. The extra depth, maturity and a certain gingerbread-like spice of the Deutz Brut Classic and the lifted citrus notes of the Henriot Brut Souverain getting the best response from the panel of tasters while bright and fresh Piper Heidsieck, one of the best appetisers styles of Champagne on the market, was deemed an acceptable match.

For the next course of three different meat starters: tandoori chicken, char grilled partridge and spiced pigeon cake we tried a selection of the pink fizzes ranging from Lanson’s NV Noble Cuvée to sparklers from Tasmania, Argentina, Spain, Italy and the Loire; two Pinot Noir dominant blends of Champagne from small producers in the grand cru village of Bouzy in the Montagne de Reims and Pol Roger NV Rich for good measure.

Of the pink fizzes, the extra concentration of Lanson’s Noble Cuvée Rosé stood out as matching the intensity of spice in the first two dishes, although the lentils served with the chicken were hard for anything to cope with. Pinot Noir’s affinity with spice was also demonstrated by the 2000 vintage of Georges Vesselle’s Brut Zero while the other most successful match was Pol Roger Rich, which at least one panellist thought would have been the best option if you had drunk just one Champagne through the meal.

In the spiced pigeon cake the higher chilli quotient was just too much for the dry styles of fizz and even the Pol Roger was a fairly poor foil. As we went on to an even more intensely flavoured main course of smoked rack of lamb – marinated in mace, cardamom, cream cheese and yoghurt and served with two sauces: mint, cashew nut and chilli plus onion and saffron – nothing worked until we turned to the sparkling reds, where the lack of harsh tannin, sweet fruit, a minty element and the inherent spiciness of the Shiraz grape coped manfully. Both the longer aged style of the Black Queen Sparkling Shiraz 1999, and the spicy Majella Sparkling Shiraz 2004 (Coonawarra) worked well, the only issue was the high alcohol level at lunchtime.

General guidelines

With something lightly spicy and garlicky, especially if it involves fish or seafood, try an all Chardonnay style of fizz with a bit of zip.

More intense flavours need a wine with more depth and concentration like an aged vintage Champagne or a more oxidative style that is perhaps encouraged by oak fermentation, styles like Bollinger, Gosset and the Georges Vesselle vintage we tried spring to mind.

Off dry Champagnes, which may be classified as anything from ‘Extra Dry’ through ‘Sec’ to ‘Doux’, the sweetest, often work better with spicy food than they do with puddings.