Dom Pérignon Brut Champagne Vintage 2015 750ml Gift Box

Vincent Chaperon calls 2015 "appeasing and intense": a drought year picked from 7 September, sorted plot by plot, and blended 51% Pinot Noir to 49% Chardonnay.

The season was one of contrasts. After a mild winter, spring opened with freezing cold, then a heatwave ran from mid-May to mid-August and gave Champagne its warmest August since 1961. Rain in the last days of August restarted ripening, and Dom Pérignon started its harvest on 7 September, a few days after the first bunches were cut in the region, in one of the very rare years when Champagne picked before 5 September. The house reports sound vines, small bunches from a restrained crop, and about three weeks of picking under sun.

Chaperon has been candid about what the drought did. He describes it as one of the longest dry spells Champagne has known, running from mid-spring through summer, and says the result was "like a mosaic": the ten hectares of La Côte in Aÿ, high on chalk, suffered and gave harsh phenolics, while Verzenay and Mailly, with deeper soils and more rain, gave balanced fruit. Pinot Noir outperformed Chardonnay, so the final blend is 51% Pinot Noir and 49% Chardonnay. The base wines completed malolactic conversion despite low malic acid. The wine was disgorged in January 2023 after eight years on lees, with a dosage of 5 g/L, and bottled at 12.5% vol. Japan received its allocation through MHD in October 2024.

Dom Pérignon is only ever a vintage wine and only ever an assemblage of the two grapes and many terroirs, with a minimum of eight years in the cellar before release. Selection runs both ways: the same cellar master declined to declare a 2023 vintage, so a released year carries weight.

In the glass

The producer describes roasted and cocoa notes over lime blossom, jasmine and peony, spiced with aniseed and cardamom, then orange and green papaya; the palate shows peach, nectarine, citrus and the bitterness of gentian, with a structure it calls horizontal, broad and straight. Anne Krebiehl MW, writing in The Buyer after the July 2024 launch, found baked Mirabelle cheesecake on the nose, a juicy, concentrated palate with fine mousse, a creaminess close to chalk and deep umami, and called it a rounded but complex wine with fine freshness.

When to open

Krebiehl judged it open and ready in July 2024. Dom Pérignon recommends serving between 8 and 10 °C, with 12 °C as the point where the wine shows most, and cellaring at 12 to 16 °C.

At the table

The house pairs the 2015 with caviar, king crab and langoustine, with pork, lamb or duck in tangy preparations, and with kiwi, guava and green-curry spice.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Dom Pérignon; Moët Hennessy Diageo Japan (MHD, importer); The Buyer (A. Krebiehl MW, July 2024)