egressus anni MMXXV

As I write this, 2025 has just ended and 2026 begun. Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your year is as jolly and quality booze infused as is possible.

2025 did not start too well at Elitistreview Court. I was in so much pain I was stuck in bed, trying not to move, dreading the next time I had to go to the toilet. Depression suffused the building. To be honest, things were so utterly terrible that I have blanked out large chunks of last winter.

February saw a great improvement when I had the spinal cord stimulator reimplanted, but there were teething problems which took months to find the right settings for it. The pain limped on into the summer. My organ continued to see a lamentable lack of action.

Then in May, Ricard organised a lunch for the twentieth anniversary of Elitistreview. Twenty years of writing this site! Such epic quantities of beautiful wine! Far too much intolerably evil filth! Limitless laughs of pure joy! Enough whining to shame a Scouser! The lunch was a boozed-up grin-fest and I would like to thank Ricard for organising it and all my lovely friends who turned up and brought wine.

At that lunch I asked if a select few friends would like to contribute to Elitistreview and, much to my surprise, they said ‘Yes’.

On the twentieth anniversary of the site, I started posting reviews of the wines we tasted at the lunch, and after a long time of being too jaded to write, I soon started warming to it again and the quality of the posts improved as they went along.

Since then, in addition to notes and rants from me, Leon, Peter and Ricard have all contributed content. Thank you, chaps, I am deeply grateful for all your hard work and quality output. You have infused the site with life again. From no posts published until 1st August 2025, twenty-five followed from that date, a bumper year for the site.

During this time I received much support from Jonathan K to keep writing (thank you, Jonathan, I assure you that you will love the Costanti and Gimonnet) and Keith P is and has long been a great support and encouragement when it comes to turning out posts and keeping fit (thank you, Keith! Keep on going, the world needs you!).

All my friends who have met up with us, especially those who trekked out to Elitistreview Court (given my issues with extreme pain and extreme fear of London), have been kind with their wine collections and opinions. I would be amiss if I did not additionally thank Alex, Guy, James, Jeremy, Katie, Lizzy, Max, Paul and Richard specifically for their generosity.

Finally, before I get onto the bit you want to read, the exegesis of last night’s and this morning’s wines, one person deserves most thanks of all: The Editor.

Not everyone may know that I am disabled and, as well as living with me and editing my drivel, The Editor is my carer. He has looked after me with kindness and the patience of someone who must endure Catholics going on about their bloody saints. From the entire volume of my heart and the still-functioning bits of my mind, thank you, Dani, you are the most beautiful of all people.

Last night, with a Chinese-inspired feast, we intended to drink Esprit de Tablas 2022 from Tablas Creek. This is a venture set up by the American Haas family (formerly of Wine Brands) and the Perrin brothers (of Chateau Beaucastel), who all wanted to do something with the stacks of cash they had accrued making Parkerised wines. Esprit is Tablas’ main wine and is a Mourvèdre-dominant, Chateauneuf-du-Papes-inspired blend.

The other day I opened a straight Mourvèdre from them. I did not realise it was one of their bargain wines because it was freaking expensive. It was also unadulterated crap. It depressed me so much I did not want to open another wine that day. Perhaps this is just as well as both The Editor and I were quite ill over Christmas. Proportionate, measured and large volumes of wine being ingested would not have improved our conditions.

At midnight we popped Special Club Cuis 2019 from Gimonnet. I love Special Clubs, they are the best Champagne has to offer (which The Editor and I can afford).

Gimonnet first made a Special Club from the 1er Cru village of Cuis in 2018, because the fruit from that vintage, 90% from one lieu-dit in particular, was so ripe and luxurious that it merited showcasing. The Editor and I drank this wine in the Autumn; it could not have satisfied us more fully.

About a month later I tried to get some more and was told it was sold out, the merchant only had 2019. Gimonnet have called 2019 ‘the vintage of the decade’. Moreover, their 2019 Fleuron is an intense and furious ball of lambent chaos that will, one happy day, resolve into a fabulous Champagne of considerable panache. I felt very happy to take up the offer of the Special Club Cuis 2019.

2025-cum-2026 drinking.

Esprit de Tablas 2022, Tablas Creek

I have popped and poured a slug a couple of hours before dinner to see if it needs to be decanted. Jesus Christ, it has bored the tits off me already. Do not get me wrong, it has a suggestion of character and is not bad, it is just distinctly simple fare.

There is some meatiness, a hint of herbal flavour, a bit of dark red fruit… It is all rather feeble in expression. It has a slight whiff of sheep shit, an inkling of tannin, an approximation of acidity, which are good beginnings, I suppose.

Unfortunately, it is pretty volatile, which is distinctly less good. Also, given the varietals this wine is blended from, there really is bugger all tannin. A medium given this wine to interpret would have to wait for soupy-thick mists to clear, before their spirit guide would reveal it could be a hiemal vintage of Coudoulet de Beaucastel in a summer as depressing as Scotland’s.

I find it a bit lacking in the warm fruit of California, as well. Surely Mourvèdre would perform beautifully in this state and display at its brooding, complex finest? Apparently not in this wine.

It is ordinary… I loathe and despise ordinary! Ordinary wine is crap for ordinary people! People who write for and read this site are not ordinary; you and I, dear reader, are the merit-based elite, and we drink better wines than this!

I will not even absently quaff a glass to wash down my dinner. Getting root canal treatment might involve more boring than this, but I would hate drinking Esprit de Tablas more than getting drilled.

PS. Someone who should not be mentioned dropped very nearly, count them, two-hundred and ten coins(!) buying The Editor and I three bottles of Panoplie, Tablas Creek’s prestige cuvée, with the instruction that we must age it. I wonder, did I misunderstand them, and what they meant was ‘lay it down and avoid it’? I will give it a few years and report back.

Champagne Special Club Cuis 2019, Pierre Gimonnet et fils

Hell’s bells! Such intensity!

It smells like distillate of freshly cut nettles and limes so concentrated they have become Rose’s Lime Cordial. There is the aroma of a big box of school chalk being violently shaken directly under your nose.

The fruit is ripe, but it is ripe fruit of a greener hue: lime, pear and apple. Its fruit aromas are very dynamic and completely derived from impeccably healthy, sun-kissed grapes rather than any buggering about in the winery with cold fermentation. Pears, not pear drops.

Chalkiness grabs you by the sinuses as if it were a on the hands of a weightlifter about to start on a 200kg snatch. My arms and legs erupted in goosebumps at this stage in tasting the wine. It is so mineral!

That minerality shows a degree of gunpowder complexity. This only adds to the explosions up your nose as you sniff this dynamite wine. It is such an intense, but not exactly powerful (the distinction is between acceleration and top speed, respectively), set of aromas.

On the palate the flavours are delineated with the staccato perspicuity of skeletons fucking on a harpsichord. Fruit is to the fore, apple and pear again. For a moment I detected a hint of sweetness to the fruit quality.

Then a massive whack of green, slightly floral acidity slaps your palate about, almost leaving you reeling, such is its forcefulness. This tastes so energetic that you hardly notice the mousse is scandalously soft with commendable refinement to its bubbly texture.

The fruit and energy are livid across the whole tasting experience which ends with a thrilling afterburn of focussed, ferocious limestone action. All these flavours linger long enough to show this is fine wine indeed.

Wow! Tasting that is a profound use of time! It may be an intense experience, but the wine is delicious and totally ethereal. ’Elegance’ and ‘finesse’ are perhaps not quite the words to use for such a vigorous wine but, my, it could dance a winning and lubriciously arousing dance on the head of a pin!

So, which was better, this Special Club Cuis 2019 (that currently gets 94 points on Cellartracker) or the Gimonnet Fleuron 2019 (that currently gets 88.5 points). This had focus, precision and intensity (oh, how it had intensity); it was a, and I choose this word very carefully, brilliant wine. The Fleuron 2019 had intensity, harmony and complexity. For the person of exquisite taste and the lover of fine things, the Fleuron 2019 is clearly the superior Champagne.

Judging them in such a manner is not really the point (not a ‘point’ as such, more a specific location of zero volume in space) – relativism is absolutely false, after all. Two things are important. Firstly, I am god-damn-gleeful to have six more bottles of this. Secondly, I am over-the-moon to have seven bottles of Fleuron 2019. And you would be, two – and one, too!

Onward and upward into 2026!
Happy New Year!