I miss my wine & foodie friends.

There. I said it.

Honestly, the feeling of missing them is more of an acute vacuum. We’ve all lived either far apart for a while (Florida, Japan, etc.) or aged into the space where daily life doesn’t allow for spontaneous Tuesday night “wine & light bites”. Now that I’m back in a place where food & wine culture is at the forefront of everything from bodegas to pottery pop ups, I wish they were all here with me to TRY ALL THE THINGS.

One of THINGS I was lucky enough to try was the above array of champagnes from Epernay. Occasionally, we visit this one particular wine shop that specializes in classic European wines. Given how dedicated they are to the heritage and prestige of the Old World, I initially expected a stuffier, more conservative vibe. However, the staff is super nice and they have a KILLER vintage audio set up. You can go in and try a bunch of fancy wines out of proper crystal glasses whilst getting down with the latest from Melody’s Echo Chamber.

The last time we popped, in I was nosing around the Champage section for Cote de Champagne wines. If you’re lucky enough to find a non fizzy wine from Champagne, I highly recommend grabbing it. It will be the most sublime, light, acidic, candied white citrus peel experience you’ll ever have.

Anyway, this time, they didn’t have any flat wines but they did have an array of champagne styles that I’ve never seen outside of Reims. Since there’s always a bit of a thrill around having things you never thought you’d have again, I was all in. This time, we decided to do a “horizontal” tasting of 3 styles from one producer: a blanc de noir, a blanc de gris, and a blanc de blanc.

Forgive the paper towel background in the photo above as I was trying to discern the color gradient. You can see that they’re all so light and delicate – often a blanc de noir (on the left) has a bit more gold color.

In terms of flavor, they were indeed light. The blanc de noir was a bit heavier in terms of mouth feel and had more fruit & mineral on the palate. The blanc de gris (middle) had a very light & refined flavor palate akin to cremant d’alsace. The blanc de blanc was a perfect expression of its style with an initial brioche aroma and very light mineral and citrus finish. Heaven!

FInal verdict:

Blanc de noir – perfect for any kind of meal as it held up well to a steak frites dinner

Blanc de gris – probably the most nuanced and was great with Torres potato chips

Blanc de blanc – Perfect apero with a super aged gruyere or Old Witch

BTW, if you are a fizzy wine person as well, I highly recommend one of these stoppers. They do such a maxxxtreme job of keeping the fizz in bottle, you’ll probably need some ear protection when you flip the safety clip to reopen the bottle. It’s worth it though as those caps do a phenomenal job keeping everything fresh.