Tuesday 23 March 2010

Piper-Heidsieck Cuvee Brut

Reims, Champagne, cork

Yep my mother's in town and out come the bubbles. This non vintage offer from Piper-Heidsieck is made from 55% Pinot Noir, 30% Pinot Meunier and 15% Chardonnay and spends at least 24 months on lees (I think - there pretentious website - one of the worst I've seen - has absolutely no meaningful information).This is a pretty golden colour with relatively fine, persistent bubbles. It smells pleasant with lots of lemon along with yeasty bread, pear and red apples. The palate’s smooth, long and tasty. It’s dominated by a lemony, citrus flavour, though to be honest it’s pretty simple with not much else going on. With just the slightest hint of sweetness this is certainly a nice enough drink, however it isn’t particularly complex of interesting. Piper-Heidsieck Cuvee Brut is just OK la; from a region that’s meant to be the pinnacle of sparkling wine it doesn’t excite me and certainly is worth the money. Yet again, I sadly find myself underwhelmed by Champagne.

Visit winery's rather wanky website.

4 comments:

Helen said...

Oh too funny - had to check out the site on your recommendation - what's with the annoying noise when you hover over a tab...
with all the flashes and bubbles one would assume it tastess like crap, hence the over compensation

Andrew said...

Hey Helen

I know, I know. Even when you turn the sound off it still makes annoying noises! And all that flash stuff takes about a minute to load each page.

I was looking at the website to find information and walked away not finding what I was looking for (the percentages of the grape blend), but instead I just lost respect for the brand. I see the majority of commercial Champagne as over priced, over marketed, over-hyped and boring and Piper-Heidsieck's website just encouraged that sterotype.

Cheers
Andrew

Helen said...

Am with you there... am yet to be converted to champagne. This didn't help.

Andrew said...

Helen

There is good Champagne, but getting it in Australia at a decent price is near impossible.

If I was going to by imported bubbles I'd probably go with something from Italy or Sapin...