On Wednesday, I met with Benoît Gouez, chef de cave of Champagne Moët et Chandon, to try their recently introduced prestige cuvée, MCIII. ‘Since the mid-1990s we’ve been thinking of creating something special,’ he says. ‘Different ideas had been offered. Then in 2000 we released 323 magnums of ‘Esprit du Siécle.’ The idea here was to include a vintage per decade throughout the 20th century. The vintages included were 1900, 1914, 1921, 1934, 1943, 1952, 1962, 1976, 1983, 1985 and 1995. All except the last were from bottles, which were then used as base wines alongside the still wine from 1995. This was, or course, a super-expensive wine, but the success of the project led to the idea behind MCIII.

‘We came to the idea of making a blend of vintage wines aged in three different universes,’ says Gouez. They tried and failed to achieve this with a blend based on 1998, and failed again with 2000. But all the time they were learning. Gomez learned that the basis for the wine had to be a ripe, substantial vintage, and then it had to be finished with fresher older wines.

The concept is that there should be three strata to the wine. The first stratum is the base year for the wine, which is aged in stainless steel. This is named ‘metal’. Gouez poured me the 2013 ‘metal’, which illustrates the style of wine they are looking for. This was concentrated and pure, and much more of a complete wine than you’d expect from a Champagne base wine. It reminded me of a good, taut Grand Cru Chablis.

The second stratum is wood. This wine is aged for six months only in 5000 litre oak casks. The idea is not to impart an oaky flavour, but to bring some maturity and texture to the wine. Then the wine is taken from oak and kept as a reserve. We tried the 2006 version, which since 2007 has been in stainless steel after its sojourn in cask. This was quite lovely.

Stratum 3? This is called ‘glass’, and it refers to old vintage Champagnes from the Moët collection, aged in bottle and then disgorged and then poured into the base wine blend. We tried the Grand Vintage Collection 1998 and 1993, which showed lovely development and maturity.

So then we tried the first release of MCIII. This is a blend of 37.5% Metal (a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the 2003 vintage, fermented and aged in stainless steel); 37.5% Wood (Grand Vintage blends from 1998, 2000 and 2002 aged in word for a bit then stainless steel); and 25% Glass (wines from 1993, 1998 and 1999 that are disgorged and then added to the base wine).

The wine was bottled in 2004 and disgorged in 2014. There are 20 000 bottles of this first release, and four more of these MCIIIs are currently sleeping in bottle. Dosage is 5 g/litre.

‘It’s new, it’s different and it’s unique,’ says Gouez. ‘Nevertheless it is Moët et Chandon in that is has accessible complexity,’ he adds. ‘Even if you don’t understand anything, you can very easily drink it.’

Champagne Moët et Chandon MCIII 001.14 NV France
Concentrated, powerful, textured and quite broad with refined pear and peach fruit, as well as some subtle spiciness. Fine notes of toast and bread. This is a complex, rather taut wine, showing real density and nice balance between the richness and freshness. Real harmony and precision, and some beauty here too. 96/100

UK retail is approximately £330

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