There are babies everywhere. In the last six months of 2008, eight of my friends will have sprogged a life into this world, and another will be coming in February. I realise that I am at the age in life when friends start nesting, settling down and having children, and I, meanwhile, am young(ish), carefree and, while not single, have no plans in sowing my seed for anything other than recreational purposes! But I have a problem.I realised at a wedding yesterday that I have nothing to contribute to any conversation regarding babies. Surrounded by my old school friends, I discovered that breast feeding, labour pains and teething is now the topic of all chats. Foods that are off limits for a pregnant woman, lack of sleep once the crying ‘bundle of joy’ has arrived and even one person who announced that she had to go home to feed her baby because her boobs were hurting were also conversations that I smiled and nodded to. And it doesn’t stop once these petite people are grown up as within the next twelve months, I’m certain at least a couple of my friends will be moving onto baby number two, building their family and having to spread the love between the older child and the younger.
And it struck me that the conversation will then be the differences between the two children. How baby one spoke it’s first words at 12 months while it’s younger sibling took until it was nearly two. That baby one was crying it’s eyes out every night for the first year, and baby two was a blissful, happy child and didn’t keep it’s suffering parents awake at all. And then I realised that siblings are like non vintage champagne, and I’d be able to join in the conversation!
I know you think that I’ve lost control of my faculties, but think about it for a moment.
Non vintage fizz is made to a specific style. If Bollinger kept changing what their Special Cuvee they would be unable to build their brand. As a result, year on, year out, they keep the same basic building blocks to blend together their non vintage champagne. It doesn’t matter if you buy a bottle now or in three years time, the flavour template for a bottle just made will be the same when it is released. The same as a baby and his younger sibling. The genes, the building blocks, are the same. It is once the sprog has been born that things get interesting and different from it’s brother or sister. Similarly, once a non vintage champagne is bottled it starts to mature away from the style it was created.
And so I found myself with four quarter bottles of Moet & Chandon, two non vintage brut and two non vintage rose. One of each was with the older label, so it was at least a year and a half in the bottle, and the other of each was out of a recently opened box. I wanted to see if the tales I’d heard of Moet NV getting better with age was true.
Trying the new baby bottle of Moet NV, it occurred to me that I wasn’t overly keen on the nose on it. It is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not my thing. It has a lot of zest, quite violent lemon sherbert which leaps out of the glass, almost like when you are squeezing a lemon and it accidentally squirts juice in your face. The palate is zingy, but with a softness coming through. A touch of the biscuity element I like from NV fizz, with a little coconut husk on the finish. I definitely prefer the palate to the nose. 7.5/10
Moving onto the older baby of Moet & Chandon NV, I find that I have a much more appealing nose. There is a warm lemon juice aroma with more biscuit and a little tangerine, petrol and melon. It has rich biscuit on the palate, with a lot of honeydew melon skin. A rounder flavour than on the young bottle, but then it has a tangy element which clashes a bit with this fuller wine. That spoiled it a bit for me. Again, I got coconut on the finish, but this time coconut cream. 7/10
I hate to say it, but I’m preferring the younger child here. Despite appearing as a bit of precocious brat at first, it is an altogether more balanced package. The older baby bottle is initially appealing, it makes you coo over it with its wee chubby features, but then proceeds to deliberately vomit all over you with a disjointed palate.
Moet & Chandon NV Rose was a different thing altogether. The new bottle was bright pink in colour. The sort of pink that would be the colour of the leggings worn by fat girls in a council estate in the 1980’s. It’s aroma was sweet, with a strawberry milkshake aroma that lingers a bit much and makes it a bit sickly on the finish. 6/10 The older bottle however shows a salmon pink colour with a little orange around the edges. The nose is pretty closed, with a little Turkish delight stabbed with a pencil coming through. The palate is round, a strong cranberry and strawberry flavour and a bittle spice. A dry, tangy bitterness and a bit of heat on the finish is actually quite appealing. 7/10
It’s not a very scientific conclusion, but there we go. Age your Moet Rose, and drink your non vintage… just don’t have a baby and you’ll have more money to spend on wine.
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