A Champagne moment

After all the bashings I have dished out to the larger Champagne houses regarding their fatuous attempts to match their products with unlikely foods, I can, at last, report on perfection.

Early in September I took myself to the AndazHotel in Liverpool Street to attend the latest ofthese largely futile marriages. (I still chuckle over Taittinger's 2006 recommendation of its bubbly with honey-roasted quail and girolles and strawberry crème brulée.) There, inside the hotel's awesome 1880s masonic temple - employed, so a friend told me later, as a set in a Harry Potter movie - I encountered gorgeously bling-covered bottles of Piper Heidsieck under the soi-disant Rare label.

The usual nonsense prevailed. The winemaker spouted a crazy litany of the extraordinary nuances, which always sound so convincing in French, to be found in each of the vintages and there were little tidbits to chew on, designed to prove that splashing out £102 on a bottle of Rare 1999 would enable one to find tuna and scallop the sublime accompaniments. (They failed.) True, beanshoots, an amusing minor conceit garnishing foie gras and a cheese risotto, did go well with the 1998, but this happy collusion was rather like being at a wedding where the bride elbows the groom and goes off with the best man.

Only with the Rare 1988 did the event truly take off. Not only was this a sumptuous, fresh (yep!), hugely complex and balanced Champagne - unlike its juniors - but, gob-smackingly surprisingly, it went scrumptiously with interleaved slices of old gruyère and Valrhona white chocolate. Indeed, I am inclined to opine that this ensemble was the most sane matching of a multi-layered mature Champagne with a remarkable (and so elegantly simple) dish that I have encountered, and I went off with my friend to dinner in high spirits indeed. It is, moreover, an experiment in food-and-wine matching any damn fool can repeat at home, as the components are not difficult to assemble.

Ah! Chuckle chuckle. Well, not difficult, that is, if you are extremely well-heeled. The Rare 1998 cost £200 a bottle. As I drank two glasses of this majesterially deep golden liquid and ate the cheese and chocolate, I momentarily regretted the poverty which condemns me never to be able to repeat such a moment.

Malcolm Gluck is the wine critic of The Oldie magazine.

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