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The Definitive Champagne Tasting
Tate Modern - April 2025
It is a bold claim that Westbury Communications made for this tasting, and I'm wondering if they can deliver on that pre-arrival promise. Let's be honest, it's Champagne and, for me, they're batting on a safe wicket to start with (sorry to all those people who don't understand the cricket analogies).
The 'Lizzie' Line transports me from Essex in a train that is so packed it would give sardines a bad name, and I find this form of transport worse than a flight with Ryanair. We try to avoid looking straight into someone's face, or if you're sat down, somewhere you wouldn't normally stare, if you know what I mean!
London is threatening a bout of sunshine, but I'm not buying at the particular moment as I wend my way along the Thames and feel more sneaky wind blowing off the wa than a room full of Australian beer drinkers at Sydney harbour!
The location for today's battle of the bubbles is the wonderful Tate Modern, that cathedral to all things artistic, and difficult to understand. It's a place I love to visit, and I'm wondering how they will manage with the roving hordes of the wineratti, traipsing past works of art disguised as household appliances, performance artists, or works of art!
I need not worry, because once inside I'm shephered past anything that remotely stinks of art, and after a couple of bag searches I'm in a lift which deposits me a few floors higher.
Name is checked, coat is discarded and sticky label (with my claim to fame) is placed on my shirt, where it instantly starts to peel like a week old sandwich, and in moments I've grabbed a tasting book, a glass and I'm ready to make a nuisance of myself.
I realise that through a variety of reasons I've not been to a tasting for a while, and I'm feeling quite nervous as I enter a room with that variety of tables one would expect to find. I decide that my tactic for this event will be to cause as little fuss, and just taste a variety of old and new friends from the world of Champagne. I have just under two hours before lunch and another tasting on the other side of London. I'm eager to get started, and rush to the first table.
This turns out to be a damp squib because somebody is monopolising the pourer's time and not allowing anybody else to get a slither of wine in a glass, or a syllable of conversation out of the man with the bottle. I raise my eyes to the heavens and move on.
I try twenty-seven wines before my time, and tired tastebuds give up and I have to leave, and the following are amongst those that really stood out for me. The shame is that today's Champagne field was so crowded with elegance, finesse and a lot worth recommending, and I feel a little churlish just recommending seven to you.
Bollinger
La Grande Année 2015
40% Chardonnay - 60% Pinot Noir.
Search for the mousse, which is tiny but there, and it leads you into a nose which is clean with a biscuit edge and fresh bread dough coming through.
When you taste, there are bags of tropical fruit and a mix with herbal flavours. It's drier than a Wildean quip, and a beautiful expression of what is possible, but wait a moment and you'll get almonds and lemon in abundance. This is such an elegant wine it should be on a show about eighteenth century furniture!
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RRP £175
PN AYC18
100% Pinot Noir.
The mousse lingers, not like an unwanted guest, but an illicit date you want so much.
On the nose I'm getting subtle baked goods that flow rather than charge at you, and this is a wine to ponder over, to ooze compliments to and to utter sweet nothings to in between savouring the taste, which is crisp pear, baked apple, citrus fruit, a balanced fruit bowl laying on an apricot, brioche, grapefuit and nutty platter. You little beauty!
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RRP £99
Chanoine Freres
Tsarina Rose NV
30-40% Chardonnay
30-40% Pinot Noir
30-40% Pinot Meurnier
At the beginning this is a little disappointing because the mousse is thinner than a book on a politician's wisdom. Take the nasal route and it's a reassuringly typical wine with redcurrant fruit coming by to say hello. In the mouth the fruit is bolder than it should be, and it's led by red fruit and raspberries. floral flavours and minerality It's honest with a lovely floral taste , more minerals than a South African goldmine, and a strong backbone of bread dough.
Now, if only those bubbles could excite at the beginning?
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RRP £50
Louis Roederer
Roederer & Philippe Stark Brut Nature Rose 2015
37% Chardonnay
50% Pinot Noir
13% Pinot Meurnier
It's worth saying hello to this wine because the label is so distinctively interesting, but what about the contents?
The mousse is good and stronger than a weightlifter on steroids. The nose of strawberry, red fruit and spice is quite evocative and means that you could spend an age smelling this fragrant wine before it gets near your orifice.
In the mouth there's bags more of the zingy red fruit, cinnamon, blossom, bubbling acidity, a little spice taste, and is supported by cream and chalk. Say hello to your new best friend!
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RRP £195
Pol Roger
Brut Vintage 2018
40% Chardonnay
60% Pinot Noir.
Pol Roger have a reputation to uphold, and the wines they were offering did it in spades, and this Brut Vintage had a lot to say for itself with a strong mousse that seemed to last longer than a teenage romance.
On the nose you're getting clean lemon zest, baked goods that remind me of a full bread basket, while the taste is a rich sherbet lemon, toasted bread, peaches, apricot, cream, baked apple. marzipan, and all lying is a bath of pear syrup.
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RRP £95
Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill 2015
A closely guarded secret blend of grapes.
The great man adored a sip of Pol Roger, and they were so honoured that they have constantly produced a fine wine in his honour, but is this a wartime Winnie, full of vim and vigour, or are we looking at the man who was rejected by the public after the war?
I'm please to say that, for me, this was the former, and those bubbles were bigger than they had a right to be, and led you into a wine that was bold with a pungent liquorice, juicy, ripe baked apple and pear.
Amazingly consistent throughout, this is a wine with breeding, and no wonder they keep the concoction a secret, but I'm getting honey, toasted almonds, and a general feeling of dipping my face in a bakery and then a biscuit barrel. I'll drink this on the beaches please!
RRP. £250
Devaux
Coeur Des Bar Blanc de Noirs
100% Pinot Noir.
The mousse is slight islands of delight, because after the initial pour, they are the sort of islands where one dreams of a life where Champagne comes free with every meal.
On the nose there's a clean loveliness, perfume and liquorice before you take a sip and find a frothy mouthfeel where lemon, ripe green fruit, pastry, tropical fruit, brioche and toasty almonds play an effective supporting role.
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RRP £55.99
Worth a Mention
​Pol Roger
Blanc de Blancs 2015
100% Chardonnay
The delicate colour is more enticing than disappointing and wishy-washy to look at, and as I lift the glass to my nose I'm getting creamy tropical fruit and over ripe pears, green crisp apples, buttered toast, slight smoke, vanilla and citrus rising in the background as I let the wine coat my mouth.
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RRP £110
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Bruno Paillard
Blanc de Blancs Grand cru Magnum
100% Chardonnay.
There's confidence on display when a maker pours their wine from a magnum. It's as though they know that they'll have you once you've sampled their fayre.
It's a shame that the mousse is too nervous to say a long hello, and in brief moments I'm nosing this wine straight away with my big hooter inside, taking a long sniff inside the glass.
Hello biscuit and brioche, almond and lemon curd, you're most welcome, as is a taste of rich green fruit, citrus, almonds, white floral blossom and toasted hazelnuts that come along as quite a surprise after the limp start, but this is a wine built for the distance, like a Harley crossing America!
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RRP (75cl) £73​
Most of the time, at a tasting, I find that for all the elegant numbers you long to discover, you have to wade through a number of wines that are either okay, of can make you wonder why they've come along to a party where nobody wants to date them. This was most definitely not the case at the Definitive Champagne Tasting, because the consistency of flavour, richness of mouthfeel and evocative dreams those cheeky bubbles can summon up were all in much evidence today.
I might have listed a few wines that stood out for me, but the high standard made the job difficult, and it could have been any seven from the many that I tried and that I could have been writing about. I'll bet that if you put a gang of us together in a room, there's be more opinions that a gaggle of influencers after ten cups of coffee!
I know that most of the ones I've listed are the big boys from the Champagne region, and I make no apology for this because part of the lore of this most special of wines is the magic that is interwoven by the name on that bottle. Fortunately, those giants of the Reims or Epernay weren't just trading on yesterday's news.
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If I ask for sympathy about my job, just point to this article and then laugh in my face. This tasting made me realise how lucky I am to be invited to share some time with such august company, and I believe there were one or two others there as well!