Champagne: Magnums, Methuselah's etc...

Does anyone have experience buying and serving the larger bottles of Champagne? Is there any advantage outside of kitschy fun? And how in god's name do you keep a nebudchanezzer cold?

thanks

ab

Some of the larger ones really can't be justified outside of the "fun factor", but champagne, because the second fermentation takes place in the bottle, and fermentation speed increases nonlinearly with volume, doesn't age as quickly in larger bottles as it does in smaller ones. So, the larger the bottle, the younger the wine, and in general, the higher its resultant quality because the process takes longer.

Aficionados love their magnums!

I have always enjoyed opening large format bottles on New Years eve if there are enough people to justify it. Although the list price on them is astronomical (I am talking sizes larger than magnums), sometimes stores will negotiate on them. The large format bottles were hugely overproduced for the millenium, and they were easy to come by for a couple of years after. I remember in January 2002 I was at Wine discount center and they had a couple of 9 liters of Pol Roger marked at $599. I told the manager that if he would sell one to me for the wine value, 12 x$25, or $300, I would take it. He said fine because he had gotten them for free. There were so many leftover from 2000 that the distributer was giving one away with every 10 cases of regular bottles that the store ordered. I doubt that there are deals like that around now, but it cant hurt to ask.

-Will

I went to a wine dinner once at Le Titi de Paris where they actually served the same champagne from regular bottles and magnums, to show us the difference. It isn't night and day, like the stuff in the small bottles was undrinable, but the champagne from the magnums was noticeably better.

As for the really big bottles, if you don't have a walk-in cooler, your best bet is probably to pray for snow.

In a bathtub?

leek wrote:In a bathtub?

I would second the bathub recommendation.

Like a very classy version of the beer-in-bathub college party sitch.

I read an interview with someone at a major house in France (sorry; can't recall which one) and they said they always use magnums as the standard for tasting purposes. That person also mentioned something about circulation of air within the bottle. I've always wondered why that would be.

The biggest advantage to me is that you can run around saying "nebudchanezzer" at the party-it rolls off the tongue pretty well.

basis wrote:Some of the larger ones really can't be justified outside of the "fun factor", but champagne, because the second fermentation takes place in the bottle, and fermentation speed increases nonlinearly with volume, doesn't age as quickly in larger bottles as it does in smaller ones. So, the larger the bottle, the younger the wine, and in general, the higher its resultant quality because the process takes longer.

is that still true? I'm under the impression that for any sizes larger than a Bottle, the second fermentation takes place in a magnum bottle then the contents are transferred to the nebudchanezzer or whatever size bottle. maybe that's not the most traditional method (though it may actually be...), but i'm certain many places in reims/epernay do it that way

I'm under the impression that for any sizes larger than a Bottle, the second fermentation takes place in a magnum bottle then the contents are transferred...

You are absolutely right. The largest bottle size that is used for secondary fermentation is a magnum. All bottles of Champagne larger than than a magnum were filled after secondary fermentation in bottle or magnum.

No kidding! Thanks, I obviously didn't know that. =)

I've drunk a LOT of champagne over the years and I seriously doubt that thier is a difference that you could tell in a blind tasting of the exact same wine aged for the same time in a single bottle or Magnum.
I second the Millenium purchasing strategy as we ended up with a few Jeroboam's! -Dick

budrichard wrote:I seriously doubt that thier is a difference that you could tell in a blind tasting of the exact same wine aged for the same time in a single bottle or Magnum.

Actually, there is a difference, and with your experienced palate, I'm sure you could taste the difference if given the opportunity. At a small dinner party, we opened a single and a magnum of 1985 Krug. Both were excellent, but the Krug from magnum definitely tasted less evolved. The Krug from the regular bottle tastes better now, but the magnum will eventually surpass it.