LCBO Food and Drink Holiday 2016

For occasions when nothing but true Champagne will do, we’ve enlisted the LCBO’s Champagne buyer and Food & Drink ’s Senior Editor to outline the flavour profiles of six benchmark and iconic brands—so you can make winning choices. CHAMPAGNE IS MANY THINGS. It’s delicious, glamorous, simultaneously serious and frivolous; it’s also expensive, with even entry-level bottles costing close to $40 and a great cuvée de prestige nudging $300. Above all, it’s the real thing, and that’s important for all sorts of reasons. At this festive time of year you may well need to buy a bottle of authentic Champagne—but which one will you buy? We felt it was time for a taste test, looking at a range of white brut Champagnes and plotting the differences with the expert assistance of Igor Ryjenkov, the LCBO’s category manager for European wines and the first of Canada’s six Masters of Wine.     “The luxury cuvée may be seven times as expensive as the entry-level bottle,” explains Igor, “but that doesn’t mean it’s seven times better. Even the least expensive Champagne is 90 percent there; after that, the more you pay, the closer you get to perfection.” Three grape varieties can go into Champagne—Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier—blended from many vintages and in whatever combination the winemaker chooses. Then a long, complicated process turns them into Champagne. The second fermentation in the bottle creates the bubbles and also unique aromas from the spent yeast lees. All Champagnes have these things in common; but let’s see where they differ. the real deal BY JAMES CHATTO  •  PHOTOGRAPHY BY VINCE NOGUCHI

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