27 Dec Top of the Pops with La Fête du Champagne

With the holidays here, lots of bottles of Champagne will be opened. But the Champagne has been flowing since November when La Fête du Champagne came to Los Angeles for the first time. A full weekend of events centered around the French bubbly took place, including seminars, a grand tasting, and a gala dinner of epic proportions. In conjunction with the festivities, a few Champagne houses in attendance had special reason to celebrate. As I wrote in my story for the Tasting Panel Magazine, many of the producers in town where also celebrating anniversaries and new releases. Charles and François Philipponnat, the father-and-son team behind Champagne Philipponnat, were there to mark the 500th anniversary of their estate. They hosted a tasting of Philipponnat’s Cuvée 1522, which commemorates the year their family settled in the village of Aÿ. Mathieu Billecart-Salmon, seventh generation CEO of Billecart-Salmon, came to celebrate the launch of his family’s newest prestige cuvée, the Billecart-Salmon 2008 Louis Salmon. Louis Roederer chef du cave Jean Baptiste Lécaillon was on hand to showcase the newly released Louis Roederer 2015 Brut Nature, packaged with a label designed by famed French architect and designer Philippe Starck. Read all about the wines in the January/February 2023 Issue of The Tasting Panel Magazine.