Schramsberg '99 champagnes
 

Hugh Davis visited Danbury last night, fortunately for us :). nice guy,
by the way - signed all of our bottles quite happily, was clearly
enthusiastic about the whole wine-making process as well as his own
products. We had a wide discussion on e.g. 'champagne' vs. 'methode
champagnoise,' wine-shipping laws, the economics of half-bottles and
just really enjoyed his little show.

Which we

'99 Blanc de Blancs. Buy this. Do it now :). Seriously, this really
whacked both Jenny and I into happy-grin blitherdom. We bought a ton;
it's meaty (yeah, that's an odd adjective for champgne), smooth,
complex, not a hint of anything rough or bitter, just *great*. max
points on any scale, drink now.

Everything else came afterward and hence had a tough time living up to
the BdB.

Rose: OK but not great; less smooth, a little more tart / showing edges.

Cremant: We were expecting this to be our favourite, as it has been from
several previous vintages, but it did not live up to the BdB: nothing at
all bad, just less assertive. Slips down so easily that one could
easily get drunk very fast (!) but doesn't make enough of an impact on
the way. Too bad.

CT tasting rules apparently limit the offerings to 4, so we did not have
the chance to taste the Blanc de Noirs but instead were offered
Mirabelle (?) which is the low-end sparkler; it didn't show well but was
in too exalted company to be fair, so I'm not going to rate really.

OK, mostly this post is an excuse to fawn over the BdB. It really is
(in our humble opinion) spectacular stuff.