Roger Brun Cuvée La Pelle Grand Cru 2012

Tiny mouthfuls of deliciously light canapes deserve perfectly elegant bubbles with a delicate fruitiness with a soft fizz ideally in a dry style. The flavours in these canapes are classic, elegant and a little show-offy. If you want to nail the presentation and don’t trust your blini making skills you can buy premade blini in most fresh fish shops or continental delis. But if your guests won’t walk out on you for a slightly more rustic look, then give them a try from scratch – what they lack in precision and uniformity, they more than make up for in flavour and fluffy lightness. As a dinner party starter, or a bring-a-plate-to-a-party nibble, these canapes can stand alone – assemble them with care and you can step away from the bench, your work here is done and people will praise you with nods and grunts while they scoff the lot.

Dill blini (makes around 25-30)

Ingredients

I was lucky enough to head off to Prowein again this year, then to Champagne and Italy. As usual Prowein was nuts, with 6800 wineries showing off their goodies from 64 countries spread out over 71000 square meters... I racked up as much as 14ks a day scooting around to meetings. Plenty of time in Champagne too, catching up with Bernard Remy, Champagne Bouche, Le Mesnil and Roger Brun. Found a spectacular producer in Grand Cru Ambonnay too... stay tuned for more on that front. The big news out of Champagne is the deeply held fear within the region that within 20 years there will be hardly any small producers left... and that perhaps this will also bear out in the Bordeaux, what with the big companies paying up to 7 euros for a kilo of grapes, vineyards now fetching 1-2 million Euros per hectare and recent changes to succession taxes. Now is a very good time to buy small producer champagne...

We are now importing FOUR Champagne Houses direct from the source in Champagne, France. Our newest producer is Roger Brun and we decided to bring in just two of his best Champagnes to begin with, his Réserve Grand Cru and Cuvée des Sires. Both offer a breathtaking intensity of flavour and complexity. The Brun family have been vignerons since prior to the French revolution. Noted Champagne expert and author, Michael Edwards included these two cuvées in the following description “Now on to the exceptional Roger Brun Cuvées that really count… the Réserve Grand Cru is made only from Ay grapes, four fifths Pinot Noir, the rest Chardonnay, with 50% reserve wine… a wine for fine cuisine. Finally, two truly great wines fermented in Oak [including] the Cuvée des Sires, a classic Ay 70/30 mix of Pinot and Chardonnay, has strength and finesse in equal measure, lemony aromas ceding to butter and toast…”

We packed Matt off to Prowein and Champagne again this year to hunt down some quality reds from Europe and perhaps another Champagne producer or 2 to add to the 3 awesome producers we already import... Click here to see the Champagne houses we currently import and you can check out some articles on our previous expeditions via this search query. Prowein was especially nuts this year, with 6,500 exhibitors from over 60 countries showing their wares (that’s around 4,000 more producers than there are in Australia) and about 60,000 trade visitors tasting and buying.