Elite Traveler January-February 2016

INFLUENCE WINE COLUMN

elite traveler JAN/FEB 2016 57

Moët &Chandon’s new prestige cuvée is a bold vision and tribute to the unmatchable resources of Champagne’s largest house, argues Essi Avellan, Finland’s first Master ofWine and a judge in the Champagne and SparklingWineWorld Championships Essi Avellan on the newMoët

carefully protected from oxidation. These reserve wines were stored as the year’s final Grand Vintage blend so contain all three varieties (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier). The most lavish stratum in this wine comes from the finished, undisgorged bottles of Grand Vintage that are blended in, each of them a fabulous Champagne in its own right. These Champagnes (1999, 1998 and 1993 vintages) still resting on their lees tend to sit on the reductive side, injecting the blend with freshness and vitality. Even if the wine is itself non-vintage, every single wine comprising it is a vintage wine. It will then spend 10 years maturing on the lees as the final blend. Finally, the Champagne is dosed at 5g per liter, with the residual sugar helping preserve its aging potential. This limited-release cuvée is priced at around $510 per bottle, reflecting its precious, aged content, as well as its luxurious image. The design is very masculine, the bottles equipped with a metallic cap and bottom. Letting the Champagne breathe in large-bulbed Burgundy glasses is rewarding, since the wine has so much complexity built into it that I can’t help comparing it to a genie in a bottle waiting to be released. The reserve wine elements take the leading role in the wine, with their richness, aged honey-toned, walnut and patisserie aromatics and polished, mellow, palate texture. Despite the aged elements, however, the wine sits safely on the reductive side, with fine coffee and gunpowder notes pushing through the mature wine exuberance, leaving behind a fresh and lively overall impression. Voluptuous by any measure, it is caressingly soft. With the scented lemony and boosted toasty character, MCIII comes with a clear Moët winemaking stamp, despite its unusual recipe. Particularly delightful is its peaking form just now. Essi Avellan MWwon the Lily Bollinger Medal for best taster and is the author of several wine books. She revised the third edition of Tom Stevenson’s award- winning Christie’s World Encyclopedia of Champagne and Sparkling Wine

When Dom Pérignon, some 10 years ago, diverged from Moët & Chandon to become a Champagne family of its own, it left the tip of the Moët Champagne pyramid unoccupied. Creating a wine to replace something as iconic as Dom Pérignon sounds like a daunting task, but Moët & Chandon came up with an unforeseen winemaking concept for Champagne. Its new prestige cuvée MCIII is a tribute to the resources of Champagne’s largest house – notably its vast library of reserve wines and stock of vintages aging sur lattes . The exceptional concept Moët & Chandon went for has its origins in Esprit du Siècle, the ultra-prestige Champagne the house launched for the Millennium – a lavish blend of 11 great vintages spanning 1900 Moët & Chandon MCIII to 1995. The new cuvée is not quite as extravagant as Esprit was, but it too relies on a luxurious pool of mature wines to build its complexity. The MCIII is a mélange of three universes of Champagne maturation. To simplify the rather complicated

concept, the wine is crafted of three parts. The first third comprises the wines of the vintage born in stainless steel vats; the second, reserve wines that have spent some time in oak; and the third, Champagnes up to 10 years old that have been aging on the lees in bottle. Moët & Chandon began the blending trials for the new cuvée with the 1998 and 2000 vintages, but soon learned they required a particularly ripe and sufficiently powerful base year for this cuvée. The base wine that comprises some 37 to 40 percent of the final blend has Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in equal proportions. The northern Côte des Blancs Cramant, Avize and Chouilly old vines yield the sought- after Burgundian Chardonnay style. For Pinot Noir, Moët looks for an Aÿ profile, for which it possesses the right balance of sophistication and structure. The second stratum is blended from reserve wines (2002, 2000 and 1998 vintages) that have been aged in large oak casks for some four to eight months and, afterward, stored in concrete or stainless steel vats,

The wine has so much complexity built into it that I can’t help comparing it to a genie in a bottle waiting to be released

This feature originally appeared in The World of Fine Wine , published by Progressive Media Group