Comtes de Champagne is Taittinger’s flagship, and it only gets made in vintages the house actually believes in. It is 100% Chardonnay from grand cru villages of the Cote des Blancs, Avize and Cramant and Chouilly and Oger and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and only the first press makes the cut. It then sits for close to a decade in the chalk cellars under Reims, quarried by the Gallo-Romans and later put to use by the monks of the Saint-Nicaise abbey. What comes out is Champagne with real tension, chalky and saline and precise, and built to keep going for decades. Drink one now with something worth cooking, and put another away.