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Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Blancs

Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc De Blancs

I first tried this new release from Piper Heidsieck, the Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Blancs, last year on the Australia Day long weekend and I was very pleasantly surprised. I don’t drink a lot of Piper Heidsieck but it is my sister-in-law, Deb’s, fave house and we were going away for her 40th birthday so I decided to surprise her with a new option from her fave. We visited Piper Heidsieck together just six months earlier and didn’t even try this new blend there.

We did have a pretty epic selection to get through with a chardonnay focus (because the weather was so hot) and I have to admit…. I wasn’t taking this bottle very seriously. It was the first bottle we popped the arvo we first arrived while we were just messing about and…. it was really good.

In the glass, the Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Blancs was a really pale colour – less golden, more a hint of light green – and on my first smell there was a really strong smell of coconut! I was pretty shocked to smell coconut in a champagne and while I was processing this as a “WTF?”, my brother piped up and said “I smell coconuts too… in Deb’s sunscreen!”. My sister-in-law had just applied her coconut scented sunscreen and that was dominating the air around me!

Funny story but also a good lesson…. it can be hard smelling and tasting wines outside. We were poolside, on the water (they were man-made canals at Broadbeach Waters but we were close enough to the beach to smell the sea and the salt), with pot plants (and sunscreen!) all around us and that does affect your champagne tasting.

So I moved inside for a proper tasting where it was all lemony limestone with some hints of fresh bread. And my second glass was all crunchy green apples. This first experience has cemented the Piper Hiedsieck Blanc de Blancs as our family poolside coconut champagne and I feel obliged to pop again this year with my brother and sister-in-law.

The technical details for the Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Blancs

100% Chardonnay
35% Reserved wines
Dosage : 4 g/l

How does all that taste? Not like coconuts! Lemony limestone and crunchy green apples with a hit of fresh bread.

In a word…. surprisingly good! (I know, that’s two words).

Moment or mood? It has to be poolside!

Where to find it? For $73 a bottle of $64.99 in a half dozen at Vintage Cellars.

The Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Blancs featured in my Top Five Champagnes For A Long Weekend (2020)

Try the Piper Heidsieck Essentiel Blanc de Blancs and let me know what you think!  Comment below or over on the socials tagging @bubbleandflute and #happychamper #champagnelongweekend #frenchaustraliaday #champagneanyday #bubbleandflute

Bubble & Flute promotes the responsible consumption of alcohol for individuals of legal drinking age in their country.

Currency

AUD: Australian dollar (AUD$)