Salon Champagne

Salon 2002 has a lifetime ahead, years for its exceptional characteristics to develop, refine and magnify. While approachable now, it retains a sense of adolescent spirit, a latent charge of energy, and a lithe, youthful grace that will never fade. It is pale gold in hue with hints of green. The nose is complex - orange flowers with the merest hint of honey-dew, candied citrus notes, madeleine buns warm from the oven. The palate is inordinately fine, long and straight as an arrow, bridling with energy yet restrained and precisely poised. Like the blade of a samurai sword as it slices clean through a stem, the flower soaring high, then falling softly through the air. Salon 2002 is a great romantic, but also armed for battle! Its strength and audacity give it the balance of a classical dancer.

Timeless classic dishes are the way to go for this creamy, suggestive champagne, this quintessence of Champagne Salon. Simple yet refined dishes such as lobster bisque, a Bresse chicken in cream, scallop carpaccio, truffle risotto, veal baked with morilles mushrooms, seabass in a salt crust. Or plainer still : caviar from Aquitaine, a few translucent slices of Bottarga, a whole Parma ham or an Iberico, a handful of golden shards from the heart of an old parmesan or cave-aged cheddar. Taste it and drink it just cool, between 13 and 15 degrees. Be ravished.

What more can be said ? The soul of Salon, its fine bubbles, its energy, bursting with life ! To drink Salon 2002 is to touch the soul, to taste life itself.