Drinking Salon, Krug Clos du Mesnil, Taittinger Comtes Daily Would Be Nice.

This Is Like That.

Dear Artisans,

Let me say the obvious part first. Krug Clos du Mesnil, Salon, and Taittinger Comtes de Champagne are three of the greatest Blanc de Blancs made on earth. If you have the occasion, buy them, and you'll surely commune with your God(s) upon the first sip.

There is a version of me who opens Krug Clos du Mesnil on a Tuesday for no reason at all. He is a wonderful man. He does not exist, and he certainly does not have two retail leases in Mountain View.

So the question I actually care about is not which Blanc de Blancs is the greatest. It is which one makes you put the glass down, look at nobody in particular, and say something undignified out loud. For me, spending $2,000 less on a Tuesday, the answer has been the same bottle for a while now.

The Larmandier-Bernier Latitude makes me levitate.

Getting it is another matter. Wine Spectator’s own note on this release gives the number: six thousand cases made, and one hundred cases imported to the United States. Not a hundred cases for us — a hundred cases for the country. That is the sort of allocation where you find out very quickly how 'judgy' some of these importers can be.

I do not have three Michelin stars. What I have is that I am affable, reasonably funny, extremely persistent, and, when it matters, quite convincing.

Which is how I am standing here with twenty-four bottles and an unreasonable amount of enthusiasm about them.

Every wine on this list is worth its price. That is rather the point.

Nobody is claiming this is Clos du Mesnil. What I am claiming is that it belongs in the conversation — one that costs less than a monthly car payment.

Here is the difference between this and the three bottles above it, and it is not quality. Krug, Salon and Taittinger are houses. Larmandier-Bernier is a family farming its own eighteen hectares across Cramant, Chouilly, Oger and Avize, all Grand Cru, plus Vertus, the premier cru village where they actually live. Pierre and Sophie run it with their son Arthur. There is no marketing department. There is a tractor.

Latitude used to be called Tradition. They renamed it because every grape in it comes from the same latitude, on the southern side of Vertus — land that was historically planted to Pinot Noir, with deep topsoil that gives a rounder, richer, frankly Pinot-shaped wine out of one hundred percent Chardonnay. That is the trick, and it is why this drinks with weight instead of just acid.

Seventy percent of the blend ferments in large old oak foudres and neutral Burgundian barrels. The other thirty comes from a perpetual reserve they started in 2004 and have never emptied. Dosage is two grams per litre, which is essentially nothing, so what you taste is the fruit and the chalk with no sugar hiding the seams. Lemon confit, marzipan, tangerine peel, mint, brioche, and a mousse that behaves more like custard than bubbles.

Buy the two thousand dollar bottle
for the wedding. Buy this one for Thursday.

A hundred cases came into America. One family farms every row of it. Two grams of dosage, a reserve that has been running since 2004, and a texture the critics keep reaching for words like custardy and fluffy to describe. Twenty-four bottles at $84.99, and then I go back to being affable at somebody until they give me more.

Cheers,

— James Tran

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