This post is a bit late coming in, but these things happen. No one follows anyways ;)
The reason this is so late (and yes, 4 days is very late, inexcusably so) is because Shane and I celebrated Champagne Thursday up at Mont Tremblant. I did not do my prep work beforehand, so it just got lost in the bustle of a mini-vacation.
The week was busy enough, the kids were over for the weekend, Shane's daughter was very sick (yuck), there was a mini-birthday celebration for Nick (Shane's middle one), and then packing and preparing for our get-away.
We left work early on Thursday, around lunchtime, and drove to Montreal to visit a brewery that we had tried a mixer pack and really only liked one of the beers in it. Unfortunately, you can't get a full case of the one type unless you go to the brewery: Brasseurs du Monde... So we did. And traffic was a nightmare. Welcome to Montreal.
August 20, 2015
Part way to Tremblant we realized we had forgotten glasses. Knowing the bottle that we had chosen, I felt it very necessary to stop and get some, rather than just drinking it out of a wine glass, or worse, a coffee mug. We stopped at the Rob McIntosh factory store near Lancaster and found a reasonably priced set of 4. They look fancier than they cost. *phew*
We did eventually get to Tremblant, and while we were unloading the car, we put the champagne in the freezer (it had been in the cooler all day, so was still a bit cool, but we wanted it to lower the temperature just a bit more). An extra special bottle, for an extra special location.
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| Fancy, fancy. Poor Tyson missed it :( |
This week we cracked into a bottle we got as a wedding gift (I do notice a trend, the special bottles aren't typically bottles we buy for ourselves...). The very special and very fancy Veuve Clicquot Brut. Like I said, this is not a bottle we would purchase for ourselves, but thank goodness for generous friends. (It even came in a box, and you know what that means! Yup, way out of my price range!)
When we first cracked into it, it had a bready-yeasty aroma, with hints of tart pears and melon. It has a lovely straw colour in the glass (not very well shown in the picture).
The first few sips are very dry and smooth. It's very well balanced and not acidic or bitey at the back of your palate. The carbonation is a bit harder to describe. It's not bubbly, per se, not even the fine bubbles we've gotten in other bottle, but it's fizzy. It's a smooth fizz though...
Later on, Shane said that it smelled like a "fresh loaf of delicious Portuguese sweet bread" (not sweetbreads, that'd be terrible in a champagne I think...). I've never had Portuguese Sweet Bread so I couldn't relate to that description, but it is oddly specific.
When we were finishing up, Shane mentioned that as an after after after taste (he hadn't had a sip in a while) he had a raspberry taste left, and I found that my mouth was still a bit dry after quite some time.
It was glorious. A very special treat. Super delicious and very well rounded. It had various flavours come through as various points of the tasting, consistent, but slightly different from glass to glass.
Verdict: Yes, if someone were to buy us another bottle, we would enthusiastically accept it, and do our best not to share.
~S
- Brand: Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin S.A.
- Type of Grape: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay
- Sweetness: 9g/L
- Price: $69.20
- Tasting notes: Well balanced, hints of pear and melon, aroma of fresh bread on the nose, slightly fruity aftertaste (I think it would pair well with a charcuterie platter with some sharp cheeses, but maybe that's just because I'm craving that...)
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