“Dancing, music, champagne. The best way to forget until you find something you want to remember….” Marlene Dietrich to David Bowie (youtube, Just a Gigolo, 1978) IF you are ever in the difficult situation where you have to make a choice from different vintages of Dom Perignon, don’t be shy. Here are my thoughts: The 2004 vintage sits between 2000 and 2002. If I had to choose between 2002 and 2000 then… 2002 wins hands down. Between 2004 and 2000? I would still choose 2002. Right now, the 2000 Dom Perignon has that sherry oxidative note taking on the toasty and brioche notes. The 2004 Dom Perignon can be happily opened now but will start getting better in 2017 and stay great until 2028. Despite tasting them many times, I’m still not totally convinced it was necessary to make 2000 or 2003 vintages – neither are a classic DP experience. Unlike the 1996 and 2002 vintages, which taste fresher and brighter. These bottles can be brought out at your funeral. Your friends will love and forgive you. The …

On a balmy Tuesday night in Paris, Jacquart Champagne launched their new prestige cuvee from Jacquart – the much anticipated Jacquart Champagne Cuvee Alpha 2005.  Inside the Atelier Brancusi, situated next door to the Pompidou Centre, the sculptures are breathtaking in their simplicity, but Brancusi’s life was anything but simple. He left his peasant family in Romania to travel across Europe to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He travelled to the United States with his sculpture, Bird in Space and customs were not convinced what he was bringing in to the country was art; he had to fight to stop them placing a duty upon its import as an industrial item. This went on to become the test legal case on the definition of modern art. And then there was the Romanian government, who refused to acknowledge Brancusi in his lifetime leaving him to bequeath his studio to the French government on his death. Although now he is celebrated, and his beautiful smooth sculptures represent some of the best of twentieth art, you can see in …

I remember vividly the two types of customers who coveted Dom Perignon Rose. There was the geeky Champagne collector who had an intimate knowledge of all the vintages and variations and then there was the Warlord-types who drink it everyday and live in central London for half the year for tax (and other) reasons. Not in either camps, it was a happy coincidence to be invited to the