What's Pressoir Drinking?

April 6, 2022
by Daniel Johnnes

Dom Perignon 1955

Our very own Raj Vaidya came across a bottle of Dom Perignon 1955 and very considerately thought of bringing it to share with me in recognition and celebration of my birth year.

After several attempts to find the time and place to open it we finally brought it to Runner Up, the fantastic gem of a restaurant owned by Daniel Eddy in Brooklyn. Daniel has several exciting projects opening in Brooklyn this spring and summer so keep an eye out. He also happens to be baking the best bread in New York right now!

So we settled down at our high stool table and we handed the bottle to the waiter to open it. He apparently pulled the cork with no problem and poured an ounce or so into my glass, giving me the honors. The small sample had a deep golden color with a hint of orange and browning. As he filled the other glass, you could see it was quite deep tawny, suggesting the wine had passed its time.

The first nose suggested oxidation but not fully Sherry-like. I found hints of baked apple, spice, a touch of VA but not altogether off-putting as it’s color might have suggested.

The pleasant surprise came when tasting it. Often the color and aroma is a precursor to what to expect and the taste only confirms the clues offered by the visual and aromatic markers. This wine still had sweet, ripe, clean fruit, good balance and was much more youthful than expected. There was barely a hint of effervescence.

We kept going back to it and all at the table kept commenting, “hey, it’s pretty good”. It was tasty yet we rather quickly suggested moving on to the Dauvissat Chablis Grand Cru Preuses 2017. Brilliant, saline, soft, with a mineral backbone and even better after twenty minutes while the DP started to fade away.

Having gone to the gym that day, I felt compelled to say to Raj, “Thank you for the beautiful bottle but some ‘55’s are aging better than others” :)