2013 Dom Perignon Brut Champagne 750 ml

Dom Pérignon is luxury personified. The bubbly of Marilyn Monroe and James Bond, poured at Princess Diana’s wedding, it’s “quite possibly the most iconic wine in Champagne, and perhaps the world” according to Antonio Galloni.

But Dom’s glamorous status belies that it achieved its position by being one of the greatest, most ageworthy wines in Champagne.  Dom Pérignon remains among Champagne’s most rigorous estates, selecting the finest grapes from Grand Cru vineyards and only releasing single-vintage wines in the best years.

The 2013 is “among the finest Dom Pérignon releases of recent times,” in the words of Decanter, and the bottle earned rapturous praise from a panoply of critics.

Despite commanding one of France’s most famous and lavishly funded exports, legendary chef de cave Richard Geoffroy thought like a small, independent grower, with an avowed habit for taking risks and pushing the envelope. Comparing vintages of Dom Pérignon to “the experimental, searching spirit that defines so many of the smaller-production, artisan Champagnes being made today,” Antonio Galloni pronounced Geoffroy’s efforts to be “nothing short of magnificent.”

This is one of his final vintages at the helm—Geoffrey retired from Dom in 2018—and it benefits from a challenging vintage that emerged as Champagne’s greatest of the decade, in the estimation of Vinous. They note that it’s turned out to be the last October harvest in the region, and the grapes’ long hang-time translated to brilliant complexity in this bottle, creating wines that “show tremendous concentration, depth and power allied to bright acidities and low pHs, a version of 2008 but with more mid-palate richness.” 

The 2013 Dom has all of those things. It’s delicious now and will age brilliantly.