A Dom Pérignon vertical 2012-2015 and more fanciness for the Canberran sign off

There’s an excellent viral video floating around at the moment that shows how a single drop of whisky can kill millions of bacteria.

My body is typically fuelled by wine and beer rather than whisky, but I’ve always thought this is part of the reason why I never get sick.

Never, or until I come back from an intense week wine show judging. Now, with a backdrop of shitty sideways rain in Sydney, brown snot is my existence.

So now, I can hark back to sunnier times, and the Winewise Championships Judges and Stewards dinner last week that yielded some proper top-shelf wines. This year, that meant a lineup of Champagne from Veuve Clicquot, Dom Perignon, and Krug, plus a few other French finery for lively talking points.

Before we get stuck into some fine wines, an obligatory final Canberran vista to remind you of the beauty of the Australian capital…

Canberra, it’s more than ok.

To warm into the wines, an entree of Veuve Clicquot Vintage 2015. It’s punchy and has quite a Pinot-forward personality, but there’s a persistent phenolic punch that I couldn’t get past. It’s something you’d expect to see in one of Bollinger’s dead serious PN Blanc de Noir releases, but here it just made for hard going. I didn’t finish my glass.

Luckily, up steps this indulgent vertical of Dom Pérignon to fill some glasses. Interestingly, I’ve had more vintage of Dom than nearly any other Champagne, so it feels very familiar – right back to the multiple bottles of legendary 1996 that a mate of mine used to bring out as a party starter (now that was a grand wine). I’m not strictly a fan of Dom – it’s a bit too linear and manicured for me, but still fascinating to taste. This three-wine lineup presents some disparate wines, too. The Dom Pérignon 2013, from one of the coolest vintages since 1991, is such a taut and backward wine that will live for decades. Even after a decade on lees it’s still backward, super pure, shaped by acidity if angular. Hold onto it! Dom Pérignon 2012 is the wine to drink now. Super composed, you can see more leesy autolysis (even though it only spent eight years on lees) and extra generosity to this Champagne, with more waxy, brioche and fine white fruit. It’s still a little angular for me, though unquestionably filigreed. It feels fancy, even if not my chosen Champagne style. Finally, the Dom Pérignon 2015 comes from the earliest vintage since 2003, and it’s a low-acid, punchy wine with some heft. What a contrast to look at the nervy railway tracks of grapefruit acidity that drive the 2013 versus the open, mouthful of the 2015, which could be Tasmanian. Intriguing stuff.

We’ve gone back a release here with the Krug Grande Cuvée 170ème Édition MV, which is based on the 2014 vintage. Last year I had the 171 and the extra width on this release didn’t go astray. Stylistically, I can acknowledge that the oak-matured boldness and richness of Krug is more my Champagne mode, but I’d still happily stand up and say that this is one swaggering grand cuvée that shouts its quality in every glass. Toasty, briochey, driven by reserve wine power, it feels round, larger than life and an entity in itself, without ever not being drinkable. Unsurprisingly, of all the wines opened the other eve, this and the Felton were the only wines I wanted back for seconds.

Underdone. That’s how this Deep Woods Reserve Chardonnay 2023 looked after the Krug. Sure, it’s very young, but the Margaret River grapefruit acidity and the push towards absolute delicacy make this feel a bit like grapefruit water. Structurally, it’s excellent, and it smells lovely too, so you’ve got zero worries about putting some away in the cellar, but for now, it’s too lean for real enjoyment.

By comparison, the complex and personality-filled Felton Road Block 6 Chardonnay 2023 was an absolutely delicious drink. There are these golden nutty layers here, yet offset by sprightly acidity, that make for a wine of great contrasts. It’s clichéd, but that taut-yet-grand Chardonnay style is what makes the best white Burgundy so bloody good. It would be fun to slip this Felton in a lineup of fancied Burgs, too, as it’d likely take down many.

Ho-hum. It was difficult to get excited about this pair of Bordeaux rouge, neither of which really jumped out as being anything other than sold Cabernet blends. The Domaine de Chevalier 2017 was especially smudgey and ill-defined, with black and red fruit showing some mixed ripeness, plus a bit of warmth at the edges. There’s classiness about the Domaine de Chevalier 2015, but I was expecting something more. Close your eyes and these could be ripe $50 Margaret River reds, without the detail that you’d expect in wines four times that amount.

‘One of these wines is doing it’s own thing’. More correctly, two of the three half bottles of this Chateau Suduiraut Sauternes 2010 weren’t doing the right thing, looking advanced and caramelised, the spectre of oxidation killing the interest. The final bottle of the three, pictured in the second bottle image, was a different beast altogether – lightly honeyed, all candied orange peel and toffee with lusciousness and beauty. You can see it in the colour – one liquid is brownish, the other more golden yellow. That fresh bottle was absolutely delicious – a wonderful, fully mature, complex Sauternes of the absolute top shelf. I’ve experienced this sort of variability with older Suduiraut before (I had a six pack of ’89 that was like an orange colour chart), and you have to ask questions about the corks. No, Meat Loaf, 2 out of 3 is real bad (especially for Sauternes like this), but if anyone gets a good bottle of 2010 Suduiraut, it’s a hallmark Sauternes.

Finally, a nod to the food at Waters Edge, which was mostly quite impressive. There’s a weird faded glory to this fine diner, complete with strange pebble wine displays in the hallways, but my scallops and pork jowl entree was especially delicious (and much better than my photos depict).