I’ve been wanting to try this wine for a while, so lunch with my friends seemed like a good time to pop one. The more I think back about this wine the more I worry about the dosage. At the time I thought it worked so maybe I should not be concerned.
Champagne Coeur de Cuvee 1996, Vilmart
Really quite impressively oaky on the nose. It is very biscuitty too. There are properly complex aromas here. Now this is a tasty palate, super fruit and just great complexity. Is the dosage a tad high? No, it works well with the fruit and oak. And oak there is on the finish, I can almost feel the need to pluck splinters out. It is really long. Superb. Excellent. Wonderful.
If you consider that this is a Champagne for aging, then I would not worry about that dosage. It is certainly on the high-ish side, Vilmart frequently is, but as time goes by, the sugar perception drops. My guess is that in 10 years, it would be even less of a problem that it is now. That wine was well and truly delicious.