Champagne is the Elixir of Life!

First up is the Bruno Paillard Première Cuvée Extra-Brut (Hedonism £44). Bruno Paillard was founded in 1981 and quickly earned a reputation for excellence.

I first tasted it in 1994 while at Laithwaites, and it’s remained a go-to wine. A blend of Pinot and Chardonnay, 25% of the base wine is fermented in barrel, adding richness and nuttiness to the elegant, peach and pear, brioche and lemon tones. Glorious on its own, it’s sublime with baked fish, fresh seafood and poultry.

Pol Roger Réserve (Songbird Wines £50.50) is always a joy. A classically styled wine comprising of equal parts of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier, there’s something comfortingly reliable about this wine.

White gold with fine, pearlescent bubbles, scents of orchard fruits, summer berries, and creamy yeast rise from the glass. Medium-bodied with a delicious mix of soft yellow and tangy red fruit tones, vanilla spice, and a touch of salinity, provides a savoury balance to the long, dry finish.

Next, we have a wine that’s never out of my cellar – unless it’s in the fridge, that is – the Taittinger Brut Réserve (Majestic £44 on a mixed six). Renowned for its elegance, Taittinger is a wine of substance too. The attractive white gold colour is broken up by tiny bubbles that seem almost languid in their graceful rise through the wine.

The bouquet is that classic apple, peaches in syrup, red berries and brioche that you’d expect from Taittinger, but the palate’s weightier and brings more intensity than you might expect. Pear and berries dominate the stage, but citrus, hazelnut, and saline traces create a complex, deliciously refined wine that went down perfectly with a Dover sole.

Following the logic that champagne will leave you feeling in the pink, then surely that goes double for rosé champagne. While I’m no clinician, I do find a glass or two of Veuve Clicquot Rosé (Tesco £57) life-affirming. Mid-pink with subtle shades of amber in the background, the bouquet offers a delightful mix of summer berries, cream, apricots and spices.

On the palate, it’s elegant yet rounded, the red and black berry fruit suffused with tangy citrus, and mandarin oranges before finishing on a toasty note. While this is a super wine on its own, I’ve always found it better with foods – pink lamb and game birds being particularly good.

While the Veuve Clicquot is all about elegance, the PIAFF Brut Rosé (Champagne PIAFF £42.50) is all about joy. This is one of the most exuberant rosé champagnes I’ve had in a long time.

Raspberries, loganberries, redcurrants, and flowers leap from its rose-petal body. In the mouth, it offers a jumble of red and black fruits with diversion added by hints of violets, creamy yeast, and crunchy, chalky minerals—the thing for a summer party.

Looking for something that stimulates the mind and the mouth? Then the mighty Laurent-Perrier Ultra Brut (The Finest Bubble £66) is for you. I’ll be honest, the first time I tasted this as part of a champagne tasting, I absolutely hated it. Severe, lean, and punishingly dry compared to the other wines, which were all Brut (dry) wines, I wondered why anyone would want to drink such a wine.

Over the years, I came to respect, understand, and finally adore it. There’s a purity to this style of wine, the ultra-low level of residual sugar of around 0.9 grams per litre (the Laurent-Perrier Rosé has 10 grams per litre) and six years of bottle age (up from four when I first tasted it) make for a fascinating experience. White gold, aromas of green apple, white peach, and flint are followed by flavours of lemon, grapefruit, white raspberries, and green apple.

On their own, this would make for a pretty stiff wine, but the long bottle ageing mellows the mix and adds a nutty yeastiness and a honeyed mouthfeel. Serve chilled as an aperitif, or with white fish, poultry, or roasted artichokes in butter.

Blanc de Noirs is a style of champagne that it took me a while to become fond of. I think it was because so Blanc de Noirs are produced to meet a low price point. The option to make a wine based on (or exclusively from) the high cropping Pinot Meunier making commercial sense if leaving consumers with a poor impression of champagne.

These days, many fine houses make excellent Blanc de Noirs that include a healthy proportion of Pinot Noir. Take the Champagne Palmer Blanc de Noirs (Finest Bubble, £50). 50-50 Pinot Noir/Meunier and given five years bottle, the result is a beautifully structured wine that, oddly, promotes white and yellow-skinned fruits, leaving the expected red berries in the background with the yeast, spearmint, and vanilla essences.

Blanc de Blancs champagnes, those made exclusively from white grapes, are noted for their refinement, but in the finest wines, they can also offer power and concentration. A wine that pulls off this tricky balancing act is the Ruinart Blanc de Blancs (N D John Wines £79.95).

Style and substance sum up this beautiful wine. The nose is a harmonious blend of pure white fruits offset by vanilla foam, hazelnuts and hawthorn flowers. Initially fresh and clean, the long cellar ageing brings richness and weight in the form of almonds, honey, lemon peel and yeast. Sensational with seafood, it has the intensity to pair well with pâte or game birds.

I’ll finish with the Moët & Chandon Collection Impériale Création N°1 (The Finest Bubble £194). Produced from a blend of seven remarkable vintages, when I tasted this last year against the Dom Perignon 2012, I was astonished to discover that I preferred this.

Sharing Dom Perignon’s sumptuous texture and dazzling complexity, there’s a depth of flavour here that I’ve rarely encountered in a champagne. Layers of white and red berry, pear and melon, lemon and green apple fruit have mineral, floral, and spicy notes interwoven into them to create a beguiling mouthful. Savour this with pink fish, lamb, or monkfish.