LA GRANDE DAME*

 * The Old Girl in French

The Old Girl's birthday is coming up soon. On the 7th of January 2025 she will turn 70 - a real 'grande dame'.

To celebrate this we will of course share a bottle of Champagne but, given the significance of this date it has to be something special. We have a few favourites among the Grande Marques of Champagne and have visited many of them in France. These include Louis Roederer, Lanson, Taittinger,  Charles Heisdsieck, Krug and Pol Roger and we regularly buy these in both NV and vintage form although Krug has become ridiculously expensive in recent years.

For this birthday however I wanted something extra special and have been on the hunt for luxury labels of the Grande Marques. Most Champagne 'houses' have, at the top of their range a super-premium label that is carefully crafted and nurtured and of course is much more expensive than the other labels in the range. These are in a way vanity labels that are intended to carry the prestige of the 'house' and which are in relatively scarce supply making them sought after. All was in balance with these for many years until the obscene wealth of rockstars, rappers, film stars and 'nepo babies' of billionaire parents allowed them to move on to these from Coca Cola. These upwardly mobiles, fuelled by ridiculous spending power have pushed the prices of the luxury Champagne labels up past the normal wine drinkers' reach. Bastards. Some examples of luxury labels are:

Krug - Clos de Mesnil

Taittinger - Le Compte

Pol Roger - Winston Churchill

Moet et Chandon - Dom Perignon

Louis Roederer - Crystal

Charles Heidsieck - Champagne Charlie

Veuve Cliquot - La Grande Dame.

Over the last few months I've been searching on-line wine retailers websites looking for fresh examples of the various luxury labels at sensible prices. I've been often disappointed with most being at astronomical prices ranging from $400 to $1200 a bottle and often with no indication of how long the wines have been sitting in storage. Generally speaking Champagne should be consumed within 12 months of disgorgement (for an explanation of this please go to The Wine Guy's blog: HERE) but good vintages and the luxury labels have a lot more oomph and can be kept much longer. You don't want to take chances though of spending hundreds of dollars for a bottle and finding that it's been cooked by sitting in a hot container, warehouse or worse, in a shop window or on a shelf under fluorescent light.

I thought that I might have to make a special trip to Auckland to a good wine shop but then - like as said to have happened to Saul on his way to Damascus (another of those inventions that came from the Councils of Nicaea in the fourth century) I had an epiphany when spying an offer of Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame. I'm familiar with the label and we've had a few vintages of this 'over the years' and knew that its current going rate was about $350 a bottle. The wine is superb and probably the reason that it doesn't sell in excess of $500 a bottle is because the rappers, hip hop crowd and rich kids are still guzzling (and vomiting up) Dom Perignon, Roederer Crystal, Taittinger Le Compte and Krug. Last weekend I spied an offer of the wine at $220 a bottle at a massive markdown from its 'normal' price from one of the smaller on-line retailers. Being a bit suspicious I checked out the offer, the vintage, the on-line blurb and the on-line image and am satisfied that the wine is fresh (it is in the most recent livery) and is the real McCoy.

Here's the offer:

I bought a bottle and the wine arrived yesterday (along with a couple of other Rose Champagnes that The Old Girl likes and a few bottles of Moet piccolo (200ml) Rose Champagne) which is prompt and damned good service Thank you The Good Wine Company. 

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Now here's the kicker. You regular readers (up to single figures now) know that I refer to the love of my life as The Old Girl. This is a term of respect and incredulity as for example Richard uses when referring to his wife as 'Right. I'll do that immediately my love'. 'La Grande Dame' can loosely be translated from French into English as 'The Old Girl'. I was quite good at French at school (not kissing then as after all it was a single sex boy's school) so you can trust me - I was in the 'P' classes after all. The 'G' classes studied geography I believe so to Richard, 'La Grande Dame' probably means some canyon in America or a policeman in France.

So, Veuve Cliquot - La Grande Dame turns out to be the perfect birthday gift for The Old Girl's 70th. The Wine guy might write a report on it.