1999 Champagne
Learn more about 1999 Champagne
For Champagne despite hailstorms in early May, things were initially looking good in general, with a warm August filling the grapes with sugar and promising great things. Just at the wrong moment, in the second week of September, there were days of heavy and quite persistent rain, diluting the fruit and downgrading expectations from great to good.
The wines are marked by generally low levels of acidity, and are therefore not really for the long-term. Gosset performed really well in 1999 however, as did Pol Roger. It was the first vintage for Dominique Petit, at the time newly recruited from Krug and keen to make a good impression! Which he did….
Simon Field MW, BBR Champagne Buyer
Bottle 3 x 75cl 1cs
Bottle 6 x 75cl 1cs
Magnum 3 x 150cl 1cs
Bottle 3 x 75cl 1cs
A serendipitous luncheon with his soon-to-be muse Odette Pol Roger, proved to be the start of a very happy relationship between Churchill and the famous Champagne House, a relationship now in its twelfth vinous commemoration with the launch of the 1999 Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, a wine made only in very special years. Challenging is perhaps an equally appropriate epithet for 1999, some untimely rain in September taking the edge off what hitherto looked set to be an excellent vintage, which has had to settle for recognition as merely a very good one. Very good indeed, in point of fact for the Pinot Noir, which dominates this blend, outweighing the Chardonnay by a factor of three to one.
1999 was the first vintage vinified by Dominique Petit, formerly of Krug, and perhaps it is not entirely whimsical to detect a trace of the Krug power and concentration here. But above and beyond that of course is the supreme elegance and harmony for which Pol Roger is famous, the wine demonstrating an almost baletic elegance on the tongue to belie its ten years of cellaring.
The mousse is generous and the fruit is both pure and powerful, backed up by a subtle minerality and gentle hints of ginger and spice. A long finish presages ageing potential until 2018. All in all a very worthy wine to celebrate the 150th anniversary of this great House.
Simon Field MW, Champagne Buyer