Last Wednesday I blogged about my visit to the hidden vineyard of Neuilly-Plaisance where Pierre Facon produces a sparkling wine called crémant. Following his presentation, I purchased a bottle from the 2010 harvest and took it home to taste.
I chilled it overnight in the refrigerator and pulled it out the following evening to serve with dinner. Monique took the bottle and proceeded to remove the cork. All of a sudden—pow! About one-third of the crémant shot out of the bottle in a burst of foam and wine. (See the photograph of Mr. Facon opening a bottle in last week’s blog.) That wine was under a lot of pressure!
Tasting it, I found that it didn’t have the dry, yeasty taste that I like in champagne. I suppose that I shouldn’t have expected it to taste like champagne, but I was hoping that it would. Its flavor was round and somewhat fruity, not dry.
The following day it was still fizzy in the bottle (we had corked it with a special stopper that retains the pressure). We tasted it again and found its flavor closer to that of champagne. We figured that the flavor of the previous day could be attributed to the excessive effervescence in the wine.
Tasting this wine was an adventure. Here’s to future harvests at Mr. Facon’s vineyard—may the crémant flow abundantly!
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Tags: crémant, Neuilly-Plaisance, Pierre Facon, sparkling wine, vineyard