Dom Pérignon Vintage 2012 Champagne, 75cl

Product Information

The French region of Champagne (comprised of the towns of Rheims, Epernay, and Ay) was the first region in the world to make sparkling wine in any quantity. Today, the name of the region is synonymous with the finest of all sparkling wines, and winemaking traditions of Champagne have become role models for sparkling wine producers, worldwide. Surprisingly, the region of Champagne is now responsible for only one bottle in 12 of all sparkling wine produced. Styles of champagne range from the basic brut (often blends of several vintages), single vintage champagnes, and rose.

The blend seems pitch perfect, elegance with breadth, complex but not overly so and a classic DP in every sense. Can one single glass be created to fully express the champagne across years, Plénitudes and colors? Thus guarantee the best tasting experience: on the eye, on the nose and on the palate. Dom Pérignon chose to take on this challenge with the experience of Richard Geoffroy, passing on its intangible legacy to its successor, Vincent Chaperon, and the savoir-faire of Maximilian Riedel, CEO of Riedel, and 11th generation of the family. The “Dom Pérignon” glass came to life in a creative process that unfolded over the course of a year. The new glass emerged through numerous tastings and ultimately took form following critiques and refinements.Flow: a tension, a “yin & yang” that enables the wine to express itself without exaggerating any dimension of its complexity All creative processes have their constraints. Dom Pérignon's constraint is the vintage. Dom Pérignon can only be produced from the harvest of a single year. Dom Pérignon is one and indivisible. For the second year and vintage in a row, Champagne Dom Pérignon was forced to conduct the declaration of its new vintage Dom Pérignon Vintage 2012 in a virtual setting. In a 45 minute video cellar master Vincent Chaperon presented the new wine in three locations – vineyard, cellar, tasting room – before taking questions from 10 journalists in a live Zoom hook-up. Incredibly complex nose of dried green apples, grapefruit pith, preserved lemons, toast, oyster shells, cloves, sourdough, salted caramel and quince. Layered, refined and so sleek, with salty minerality and a toasty edge to the dried citrus. Structured and tense, yet elegant and almost endless. In its youth, Dom Pérignon shows incredibly smooth, creamy fruit with perfect balance and weight. As it ages, it takes on wonderfully toasty aromas and a finesse equalled by very few of the other Grandes Marques.

Dom Pierre Pérignon, a French Benedictine monk, set out his vision to "create the best wine in the world" when he became Cellar Master at the sacred Abbey of Hautvillers in 1668. Dom Pérignon dedicated over 40 years to this mission, employing a visionary spirit and daring approach to the wine making process. Over that time, he became known as the "father of champagne" for laying down the fundamental rules for the traditional Champagne production method (La Methode Champenoise or Traditionelle). A favored wine of the Sun King Louis XIV, Dom Pérignon himself compared his wine to "drinking stars". Classic lemon-zest and tension nose that I associate with Dom Pérignon, but with extra weight and depth. And quite marked phenolics on the end which suggest this will have a remarkably long life. And, as Vincent Chaperon readily admitted, will definitely show up as a P2 star. Clean and neat and with light smokiness on the finish. Dom P always plays the reduction card. Hugely impressive persistence. Still a baby. 18.5/20 points+ (JR) What a magnificent bouquet for this Dom Pérignon 2012! Pastry, a hint of smoke and classic brioche notes provide a compelling counterpart to eager yet elegant aromas of citrus (lime, tangerine and kumquat) joined by those of fresh fruit, herbs, liquorice and menthol. There is even a refreshing note of ivy. The palate is tense, vibrant and very fresh despite its impressive density, which meets its match with an unending finish. This 2012 embodies the very essence of Dom Pérignon with such a concentrated degree of intensity, along with a capacity for ageing that it is surely destined for a second life in a P2 edition. Drink 2021-2050. Under the creative leadership of cellar master Richard Geoffroy, Dom Pérignon is reinvented with every vintage. The miraculous concept of assemblage – the delicate balance between Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – and the commitment to Vintage are instrumental in the act of creation, revealing the wine's extra soul.Precise and tactile to the point of seamlessness, tense through rhythm and vibrancy, vigorous and fresh yet mature, intense and complex – such is the sensual style of Dom Pérignon: so inviting, yet so mysterious...

Brut denotes a dry style of Champagne (less than 15 grams per litre). Most Champagne is non-vintage, produced from a blend from different years. The non-vintage blend is always based predominately on wines made from the current harvest, enriched with aged wines (their proportion and age varies by brand) from earlier harvests, which impart an additional level of complexity to the end wine. Champagnes from a single vintage are labelled with the year reference and with the description Millésimé. The nose is full and varied, mingling flowers with fruit, then vegetal with mineral. The bouquet is tactile, subtly enticing us along a trail of powdery white flowers and nectarous apricot, followed by the freshness of rhubarb and mint, and the minerality of ash. White pepper. Pinot Noir accounts for nearly 40% of the plantings in Champagne and lies at the heart of most blends - it gives Champagne its body, structure, strength and grip. It is planted across Champagne and particularly so in the southern Aube district.

It begins with a vision: Dom Pérignon’s creative ambition strives towards harmony as a source of emotion. When tasting the 2012 Chaperon says “my first impression was 2012 was a year when Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were offering a lot of maturity as well as a lot of concentration – this combination of maturity and concentration and balanced and harmonious, also rich, dense.” When it comes to wine, France stands alone. No other country can beat it in terms of quality and diversity. And while many of its Region, Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne most obviously, produce wine as rare, as sought-after and nearly as expensive as gold, there are just as many obscurities and values to be had from little known appellations throughout the country. To learn everything there is to know about French wine would take a lifetime. To understand and appreciate French wine, one only has to begin tasting them. The video was called ‘Revelations’ which presumably was chosen as the start of an ongoing series of instructional masterclasses from the House, rather than a reference to the apocalyptic book in the Bible in which we all meet a fiery end – with no glass of vintage Champagne in sight.

Antonio Galloni

Weather: The 2012 weather has been hallmarked by many as very challenging but has created some stunning Champagne. Relatively low yields due to various weather conditions throughout the year. The winter months brought some frosts and hail which damaged the early stages of bud burst. August and September were very warm and this helped rescue and give the grapes a stunning maturity.

Dom Pérignon was the 17th century Benedictine monk who has gone down in history as the person who "invented" Champagne. His name was originally registered by Eugène Mercier. He sold the brand name to Moët & Chandon, which used it as the name for its prestige cuvée, which was first released in 1937.The core of the blend are the eight historical Grands Crus, Aÿ, Bouzy, Verzenay, Mailly, Chouilly, Cramant, Avize and Le Mesnil, plus the legendary Hautvillers Premier Cru. Dom Perignon also has the unique privilege of being able to select grapes from all 17 Grands Crus in Champagne. giving birth to Dom Perignon's highly intriguing contrast". First he gave us an insight into the 2012 vintage, a ‘solar’ year noted for its warm summer that saved this turbulent growing season.