First taste: Moët & Chandon, Collection Impériale Création No. 1 Brut Nature

For the last 23 years, Moët & Chandon has been remarkable for being Champagne’s most prominent name not to offer a permanent prestige cuvée of its own. Twenty years before the house’s 300th anniversary, though, all this changes with the release of Collection Impériale Création No. 1.

Dom Pérignon, associated with Moët & Chandon for most of the 20th century, has not had Moët & Chandon on the label since 1999 (and has had a separate winemaker since 1947).

Scroll down to see tasting note and score for Moët & Chandon Collection Impériale No 1 Brut Nature

Today the two are considered entirely separate, although family ties are hard to deny; both sit in the front row of the LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) Champagne portfolio, so it’s no surprise that Moët’s new cuvée is in search of its own limelight. With a fraction of Dom Pérignon’s production volume, a multi-vintage, multi-vinification blend and zero dosage, Collection Impériale Création No. 1 is no doubt a very different proposition.

‘It took us 20 years to craft this Champagne,’ says Moët & Chandon global director Renaud Butel at the Paris launch, referring to the oldest wines found in the blend.

The importance of the cuvée is literally written in stone; visitors to Moët & Chandon’s cellars will be able to see a remarkable bas-relief, created by American artist Daniel Arsham for the launch, which celebrates what Butel calls the ‘archaeology of the future’.

Reminiscent of Champagne’s pure white chalk, with scenes from the house’s 280-year history set in classical forms yet also cracked and distressed as if seen from the distant future, the piece looks forward to the house’s 300th anniversary in 2043.

The wine itself throws a light on the sheer range and depth of reserve material available to cellar master Benoît Gouez. A blend of seven vintages, the youngest of which is a stainless steel-aged Grand Vintage 2013, followed by 2012, 2010, 2008, 2006, 2004 and an oak-aged 2000, this multi-vintage concept will continue to be released in new iterations as a permanent addition to the portfolio.

The wine is also the first that Moët & Chandon has ever released without dosage, something Gouez thought he would never do: ‘I always believed Champagne needed dosage, but in this wine there was nothing lacking’, he says. ‘We have haute couture, haute cuisine, so why not haute oenologie?’

At a time when the story of top Champagne is increasingly being told in terms of single vintages, single terroirs and even single vineyards, Collection Impériale is an apt reminder that blending can do much more than simply ensure consistency. In the hands of a cellar master responsible for one of the region’s most comprehensive collections of reserve wines, it can be used to carve a cuvée’s personality in sharp relief. The result is a wine of brilliant aromatic range that definitively fills what has long been one of Champagne’s more notable absences.

Collection Impériale Création No. 1 will be available in the UK from 1 December at Harrods and will retail at £200 per 75cl bottle.

See tasting note and score for Moët & Chandon Collection Impériale No 1 Brut Nature

Related articles

• First taste: Champagne Gosset Celebris 2012
• First Taste: Clos des Goisses 2014 & new Philipponnat releases
• First taste: Jay-Z’s Armand de Brignac, Blanc de Noirs Assemblage Number Four