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("I drink champagne when I win, to celebrate ... and I drink champagne when I lose, to console myself." - Napoleon.)
I have had a lot of great vintages of Dom Perignon, but I do not remember any as impressive as the 1996. Even richer than the brilliant 1990, the 1996 is still tightly wound, but reveals tremendous aromatic intensity, offering hints of bread dough, Wheat Thins, tropical fruits, and roasted hazelnuts. Medium to full-bodied, with crisp acidity buttressing the wines wealth of fruit and intensity, it comes across as extraordinarly zesty, well-delineated, and incredibly long on the palate. Moet-Chandon deserves considerable accolades for this prodigious example of Dom Perignon. Anticipated maturity: now-2020+ 98 points, Robert Parker Junior
Dom Perignon is the prestige cuvée of the giant Moët et Chandon Champagne house. It is named after the famous monk, who was the most important early influence in the development of Champagne into the sparkling wine we know today. It was not the first Champagne to use his name, as early in the last century small proprietaire-recoltants (farmer-growers) at Hautvillers, employed it for their wine.
Vintages, that unique expression of a given year, are made using grapes that are from one year's harvest and which display truly outstanding characteristics. Although Champagne is traditionally a blend of various crus and several different years, a vintage is produced from the grapes of one year only
Jean-Remy Moet handed the house over to his son and his son-in-law, Pierre-Gabriel Chandon de Briailles, but while the business may owe its reputation to this deftly palated clan, it perhaps owes its existence to one very merry monk who some years earlier mastered the art of blending, fermenting and bottling champagne.
Dom Perignon, born in 1640, is credited with perfecting the methode champenoise while overseeing the vineyard at the nearby Hautvillers monastery. Really, the first record of sparkling wine being produced in France dates back about a century before Perignon's birth, to 1531 in Limoux (in the south), but the Dom Perignon story is a good one and Moet's sticking to it. Perignon died in 1715 and was buried among the vines of Hautvillers, where the church and tomb remain, and having bought the land in 1794 and in 1921, Moet has adopted him as its own. Freya Petersen, SMH
Yes, I know, I have written about this wine previously, but it is impossible to leave it out. Dom is great in any vintage, but in 1996 it metaphorically reaches the stars that the monk Dom Perignon saw 300 years ago. Its glistening fruit reaches every crevice of the mouth, it's seamless balance, harmony and length is sheer perfection. 98 points James Halliday
