The blurb
To understand champagne, you must not only drink it but also taste it – and that means education at a proper champagne tasting. Shifting from its Spitalfields location to the Horticultural Hall near Victoria, Tyson Stelzer’s Taste Champagne is the bubbly stepping stone you’ve been searching for. Stelzer, multi-award-winning writer, presenter and speaker, is the author of 16 wine books and regularly contributes to Wine Spectator, Decanter and Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine.
Devoted completely to champagne and no other sparkling wines, Stelzer’s expertise and passion has amassed a unique champagne overview in one setting. Here, you can taste over 300 wines from the top growers and houses. Stelzer knows his stuff: his annual book The Champagne Guide: 2020-2021 is a must-read for any aficionado, so detailed that it covers every aspect of what you need to know about buying and drinking champagne this year.
In the last seven years, Taste Champagne has become the biggest global champagne showcase. Last year, it welcomed more than 4000 trade, media, agents as well as the public to experience hundreds of cuvées in events in Hong Kong, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. This is the most comprehensive showcase for champagne in the world.
The style
With a spiral-bound guide to the champagnes available at the event, clean glasses, cheese and crackers to clean the palate – and give you some sustenance in the event that you have actually swallowed – the style of Taste Champagne is focussed, clean and professional. You’re here to talk and taste from the long tables in the hall.
Assorted buckets, bottles, bottle tops, cages and corks abound, all telling of each bottle’s history. Champagne is, after all, a living thing that changes with age and maturation. With so much to slurp, the design of Taste Champagne maximises your tasting time.
The crowd
This is not a crowd of merrymakers; the people who come to Taste Champagne are serious about what they imbibe. So, although the occasional person may queue for a particular mark, and someone might be a little slurry, this is rare. These are people who are here to talk, taste and spit, delicately and professionally. There are so many bottles to try that it’s a waste of your ticket to swallow everything – it’ll ruin your opportunity to taste more afterwards. I’ve not met a better, happier, more professional crowd of tasters and sellers at any tasting event. To be sure you fit, here are the etiquette rules and FAQs: www.tastechampagne.com.au/etiquette-and-faqs
The champagnes
Last year, when the event was held in a Spitalfields church, 211 cuvées from 46 champagne négociants, growers and cooperatives were served. This year’s showcase features 57 houses with over 300 cuvées to taste and experience, all carefully selected.
If you are serious about learning about champagne, tasting some of the best available and finding out how they’re made, what makes them special, food matching, what to buy to drink now and what to buy to store away, you cannot miss this annual event. If you come once, you’ll want to come again.
In a nutshell
If you not only want to taste the stars but learn about them too, Taste Champagne is designed by champagne champion Tyson Stelzer to be a singular opportunity for intensive tasting.
