During my fist, which will hopefully by of many visits to Champagne France this fall, I had the pleasure of visiting the Maison of Dom Perignon. I was hosted for an afternoon with one of their winemakers Nicholas Lane. This was truly a once in a lifetime experience which I will treasure forever.  It felt to fitting and appropriate for my first Champagne visit to be to Dom Perignon, one of the first Champagne houses in the region.

See more of my tasting with Winemaker Nicholas Lane below and if you have not already seen my behind the scenes tour of Maison Dom Perignon here, I would suggest starting there, then finishing with this post  sharing our wine tasting and time together.

Me and my host, Dom Perignon Winemaker Nicholas Lane

The lovely setting where we enjoyed our Dom Perignon tasting.

Beginning our Dom Perignon tasting with the lovely Dom Perignon Rosé.

All smiles as Nicholas shares the 2000 P2 Dom Perignon with me. What a treat getting to enjoy this wine tasting with Nicholas on the winemaking team.

The Dom Perignon P2 2000. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what P2 means, it’s what their former Chef de Caves created to distinguish the various aging levels of the Dom Perignon vintage wines. Depending on the age range the vintage has been aged it falls in three categories, P1, P2 or P3.

The 2008 Dom Perignon. This was incredible to taste, especially right next to the 2009. It’s incredible how just one year can make a difference in the taste, acidity and profile. The 2008 had much more acidity which made sense since it was a cooler vintage. For those wanting to age this, Nicholas explained the 2008 will most likely aged spectacularly because of the high acid.

Dom Perignon words to live by…