Bubblies: A Love Supreme and Dr. John

J

Joel Stewart

Joel Stewart
2005 Mlle Ladubay, Supreme, Brut, Saumur. $17-ish

this wine drinks best out of the chard glass...keeps the bead and the aromatics/palate open far better than with the spiegelau curved flute. chenin/chard, but chenin dominates the nose, with funk, white fruit, stone and flowers..with perhaps a rubber touch of sulphur fading with time.

petillance here is a lovely gossamer veil on the tongue...very delicate for the loire sparklers i've had to date.... flavors are 70/30 chenin/chard to me but i don't know the actual breakdown. the wine is dry and clear with notes of herbal sweetness in the background....decent acidity, some caramel notes showing on the finish. dry core around which the clean nutty flavors spin. more air time equals more coming from the wine. there's a crystal clarity to this wine that i like a lot.

2000 Gloria Ferrer, Royal Cuvee Brut, Sonoma - also better out of the chard glass

compared to the lithe, stony, glass like ladubay, the gf is all deep bass notes, funk, smoke, meat, toasted bread, yams and then lighter than air strawb mousse dessert. lots of fat here and a gorgeous contrast to the ladubay i can see easily pairing both with a dinner, starting with the ladubay and raw fish/asian oriented dishes...then moving onto darker meat to pair with the GF. this 2000 vintage brut is indeed a brute....still young, showing much promise. at $20, this is a mind numbing no brainer. Thanks Bill for the tip off!
 
I think that all bubbly (and particularly Champagne) drinks better from a Chardonnay glass, or at least a big Burgundy bubble stem. The flute was foist upon us by glass designers who knew that the jig was up with the traditional wide mouth Champagne glass (I'm of course referring to the glass, not the drinker).

-Eden (still prefer Roederer Estate over Gloria Ferrer, but there's not that much difference anymore - domestic bubbles have gotten a lot better over the past five years)
 
thats funny you mention the roederer estate Eden....i'd love to compare side by side with the GF, but my palate memory says to me they are indeed very similar...very dense and spicy...perhaps the R is a touch drier?
 
I'm glad you liked the GF RC, Joel. It's head and shoulders better than any other GF bubbly and still pretty decently priced.

The Ladubay sounds lovely as well. Good find!
 
had the '96 GF RC the other night....hard to imagine the wine getting any bigger in flavor than the '00 (chalk it up to vintage perhaps?) but it's even more Rubensian....ample flesh and soft around the edges....nice,if one rolls that way. i found myself wishing for a little more bubble, bite and tang tho. that said, it paired quite well with simmered oysters and other items in the pot. having had a few of these now, with such big flavors, it begs for food i think. i wouldn't doubt it could hold up to beef....something like a hearty stew comes to mind.

ps - just re-read my tn's on the '00 above....not sure if a "mind numbing no brainer" is a possible feat, but wtf...
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
ps - just re-read my tn's on the '00 above....not sure if a "mind numbing no brainer" is a possible feat, but wtf...
Click to expand...

Provided you insert a comma dead center in the description and subsequent actions occur in that same order ("mind numbing, no brainer"), it's a perfectly possible feat and perhaps even a laudable and humane feat, describing as it does the anesthesia appropriate to a brainectomy.

-Eden (not speaking from experience, mind you)
 
Rubenesque, I think. I still don't get the Roederer Estate thing, I've tried several, including from magnum, and found them uniformly unimpressive. Must be a personal taste issue.
 
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