Dom Pérignon, 2009

A new vintage of Dom Perignon always elicits a good deal of excitement. Preceding the tighter, not-quite-ready 2008 seems to have been a sensible tactic; the 2009 that we tasted is as upfront and present as we can remember a young DP being. Similarities have unsurprisingly been drawn with 2003 and 2006, the two other particularly warm vintages in the noughties, and yet as Geoffroy remarked “we made 2009 thanks to the experience we gained in 2003”. The house style is still very much on show; the reduction, the tightly wound flavours, the ripeness, but the latest release seems far less extreme and less radical than the 2003. If the latter was a dark, ,earthy and robust, 2009 is a ripe, bright embrace, sun-kissed in texture and loaded with fruit.