Vintage Vs. Non-Vintage Champagne | How Sparkling Wine is Made?

What better juice to be having a go on than champagne? And I'm going to go through each one of these, tell you a tiny bit about them, just the right amount, and then I'm going to go shopping. First up, Moet. Let's taste it. So golden colour to the wine and I'm going to have a smell, so I push it up to the top of the glass and I get what I really love in champagne. So there's a little peach, a little bit of nectar and it's quite stone fruit and then when I taste it I really want a little bit of citrus. So I want it to be refreshing. Have a go. No really distinctive fruit, just a harmony of like citrus, peach, nectarine and a little bit of breadiness to it too, which you get from the dead yeast. So that, Moet de Chandon, and it is Moet de Chandon, you pronounce the T, a really good champagne at 42 quid. Now, Verve Clicquot. Now this is a special one, it's named after Widow Clicquot. While Christopher Merritt, English dude, invented the second fermentation, Madame Clicquot invented riddling, which is getting the ---- out of the bottle. So that's the turning, twisting, blowing the top off, shoving it in and making it look pretty. So she gave us clear sparkling wine. Off with the foil again. So this was founded in 1772. We twist the bottle, not the cork, out it comes. Depending on how much of each grape variety these wines use, we get slightly different flavours. Chardonnay gives the lemon, Pinot Noir gives the red apple. And Verve is 50% Pinot. So in we go. Right, so that's a really heady mousse. Love that. Same sort of colour, maybe slightly paler. So Pinot Noir is a black grape, but what they do is they squeeze the grape and ferment the juice. Because the juice of all black grape varieties is white, with very few exceptions. Right, let's swirl it around. So whereas the Moet is more peach nectarine, this is more apple-y. Shove it in me gob. And I can taste the slightly more apple-y. It's got more structure, more power. Anyway, that's Verve. Good, but not absolutely outstanding. Next up, Polly Roger. Made famous by our ex-prime minister, Winston Churchill. Drunk 42,000 bottles of this while he was alive. Apparently two a day. It's got a Royal Warrant. Queen Elizabeth absolutely loved it. I think I'm going to love it. In fact, I know I love this. It looks jolly smart, that, doesn't it? Love it. So this is 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay. And it's aged in bottle for three years. Twist the bottle. Not the cork. Missed. Right, in we go with this. Very slightly pale in colour. Lots of lovely, we call this the mousse on top. Swirl it round. No, that's corked. Whoops! Right, so I have just got a corked bottle of Polly Roger. Sniff that. Boom. So this champagne is normally fantastic. I've got a corked one. And what that means is that the wine has had a reaction, wait there, with this cork. There's little bacteria that live in corks and found in wineries that get in here and start doing funky things. There's a long Latin name for it, but we'll know it as TCA. And it's a contamination. And it basically means it actually smells like someone's armpit. Smells like wet cardboard. And you can quite often smell by the cork. So if I get this cork, which is the Jolly Roger cork versus this cork. Bear with me, team. That's really fresh. Smells quite fruity. That's the Verve Clicquot one. This smells like a wet cardboard box. It's not the producer. This could happen to anyone. It's just this bottle is bleeding bad luck. But if ever you get a glass that smells like that, send it back and go, don't like that one. Most of us just drink it and think it's ----. That, sadly, is ----. A ---- bottle. Louis Roderer. Brute, non-vintage, super classy. Let's hope that this isn't corked. This foil comes off the best. They win the foil competition. Now, this is a Chardonnay dominant blend. So almost 50% Chardonnay. So we might get a little bit more citrus to it. So in we go there. Boom. Nice little mousse on there. Lovely. Sort of golden yellow colour. And I smell a lot less. This is less aromatic. So whereas I've got peaches from the Moet, I've got apples from the Verve, I've got armpits from the Paul Roger. This is less aromatic. Doesn't mean that it's not fabulous. So we've got to get that in here. Absolutely bloody yum. So where we say we've got more Chardonnay, 50% nearly, I can definitely, definitely taste that. And I am a complete tart. I love Chardonnay. It's got that citrus, freshness, little bit of peach, more lemon and a little bit of biscuit. So this has spent five years aging in bottle and I can actually taste that. It makes the wine significantly smoother, crisper, fresher and more complex. It is an absolute banger. Bollinger, the champagne of James Bond. This also, very good foil, really fun bottle as well. So it's very different, this bottle, really narrow there, quite fat here. So Bollinger, predominantly Pinot Noir. The grapes for it come from Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards. Now what that means is that they are the best. Let's pop that on there. Big fat Jolly Moose, same sort of colour. I mean, we could ponce all day about the colour, but generally it's sort of light gold. And this, I can smell this. Do you know what? I love this because that is giving me red apple and it's really absolutely beautiful. With a champagne like that, it's no wonder James Bond drunk five bottles a book or had it in the glove compartment. Really good. Next up, Ruinat Blanc de Blanc. Now this is significantly more expensive than the others. So we'll go through prices in a minute. Bollinger is about 40, the rest are there or thereabouts. Here we jump up to 80 quid. So it's Ruinat, oldest champagne house in Champagne, founded in 1729. Let's have a go. Blanc de Blanc means it's a white from white. So they only use Chardonnay. Look at the big fat frothy moose on that baby. Look, love that. Really lovely small bubbles. And I've got that citrus. So Blanc de Blanc, forget your red apple, it's lemon every day. It's lemon meringue pie tasty. And it is a lemon meringue pie. I don't know whether that's the official taste, you know, if you look it up. But for me, it's a lemon meringue pie. It is absolutely delicious. But I would quantify and qualify that with, I'm a tart and I like Chardonnay. So I'm now going to whiz through these with a spittoon. So I'm not absolutely hammered. My jam should sit in and decide which we're going to go for. Just to note, the Moet and the Verve, they're about 40 quid a bottle. The Louis Roderer is about 55 quid a bottle. Bollinger, mix six, all the bells and whistles at Majestic, 40 quid. And then Ruinat is, I'm not going to even think of giving you a discount, 80 quid. Having done the tasting for the money and all of them are expensive, these two guys are not going to get my vote. So Bollinger and Verve Clicquot, you're out. It's leaving these three. The best value is Moet et Chardonnay. It's a very, very good champagne at 40 quid a bottle. Absolutely delicious is Louis Roderer, which at 55 quid, yes, it's a lot of money, is a complete banger. And then we've got Ruinat at 80 quid, which I think is the undisputed heavyweight and the best of these champagnes. But what am I buying for Christmas? I'm not going to go 80 quid. So Ruinat, we're out. Leaving our two contenders. And I think I just want something a little bit more special than you for Christmas. You're jolly good, but you're not on my table. You, my friend, Louis Roderer, are definitely invited to the Gilby Christmas. And this is why I've chosen it. So delicious, refreshing, beautiful salmon bellini-tastic champagne. I'm going to smash that in from about 10.30 on Christmas Day. Lots of it. Happy Christmas.