Moët & Chandon has launched a ‘new’ prestige cuvée called Collection Impériale Création No. 1 to celebrate the house’s 280th anniversary, and which effectively replaces the discontinued MC111. The wine is an assemblage of seven different vintages with the base, the vibrantly fresh 2013 Grand Vintage aged in stainless steel tanks, accounting for 42.5% of the blend. It is complemented by five older vintages of Grand Vintage that have all been aged on 50Hl oak casks that between them make up another 42.5% of the blend. Speaking at a pre-release tasting on 28 June this year, chef de cave Benoït Gouez described these five vintages as: “the very complete 2012, the powerful 2010, the fine tenson of 2008, the richness and power of the full-bodied 2006, plus the vinous and lively 2000.” Gouez added: “The wine is then topped out with 15% of the 2004 vintage aged in bottle on its lees. It doesn’t have to be a seven-harvest blend, future versions might be six or eight.” The wine, a 50/50 Chardonnay Pinot blend, was not given any dosage at all and is thus the first Brut Nature champagne that Moët has released. Gouez explains that “before I was convinced [such a wine] needed some dosage, essentially to assure its ageing potential. But I found that the no dosage versions [of this wine] to be the ‘truest’,” though he qualified this by saying “but maybe some dosage would make it better still”. Referring back to its predecessor MC111, the last blend of which was based on the very specific 2003 vintage,
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Champagne
