Dom Perignon 2010

Among the recent vintages Dom Perignon 2010 vies with 2012 for being the most delicious for drinking now. The quality is astonishing for such an irregular vintage as 2010 but Vincent Chaperon achieved such quality by rigurous grape selection which makes 2010 a production that is much smaller than usual.

Richard Juhlin champagneclub.com 95(94) This is a wine that risks being misjudged due to the slightly unknown reputation of the vintage. I think a lot of people will jump straight from the classically cool, elegant 2008 to 2012, but please don't! This is a wonderful wine right from the start with a much longer joyful life ahead than most people would expect. The problem with the vintage is related to colossal rainfall on August 15th and 16th which caused problems with botrytis. If you, like Dom Pérignon's eminent team, accepted 20% lower harvest yield and had ice in the stomach and harvested their pinot noir a few weeks later and also concentrated their selection on the steepest slope with good drainage, you could create magically fine wines with impressively high figures. The maturity and concentration of this wine is extremely impressive and the acidity is significantly higher than that experienced on the palate. Here is a richness and natural sweetness even though the dosage is only 5.3 grams / liter. Bouzy, Mailly and, above all, the chalky and precise Verzenay have been given more room than usual to compensate and balance up the Burgundian sun-ripened chardonnay that was used as a base when the cuvée was created. This wonderful wine is very reminiscent of how the legendary ’82 performed at launch. The scent is extremely generous and rich in deliciously inviting notes of roasted coffee beans, orange chocolate, nougat, mandarin, lily plants, freshly baked baguette and madeleine cookies. At the same time, there are exciting darker overnotes of mushroom cream, undergrowth and petroleum-like features of diesel fumes. The taste is impressively full with a super concentrated sweet & fruity boost with elements of both exotic fruits, sweet citrus and peach. This richness is embedded as usual in a seamless cocoon of silky texture with fine depth. Notice that the finish is paradoxically fresh with a little tannin that guarantees that this mighty wine will hold up very well in the cellar despite already showing impressive maturity with striking aromatic similarities to the 1998 P2.