Veueve Clicquot Yellow Label, Half Bottle

[hotwine]

This non-vintage champagne in the 375 ml size is perfect as a little celebratory wine for two. It provides four flutes, each filled half-way; two glasses each, in other words. The wine is clean and crisp, with subtle notes of lemon pound cake and fresh-cut daisies. About $20-22 retail, but many wine shops periodically feature specials on it, when it can be purchased for $12-13. We keep one chilled in our little fridge of "ready whites", just in case an event occurs that's worthy of celebration.
The current calf crop looks promising, so that's reason enough for us....

[Bucko]

The Yellow Label is always a very good bargain IMHO. I've helped kill more than my share. :-)

Bucko

[hotwine]

Same here, Bucko.
I was surprised at the difference in flavors between these little half-bottles and the full 750 ml size. Normally, I characterize the Yellow Label as peaches & cream, with just the faintest nut-like undertone. But since we picked up some of these little ones, we've noticed they have very distinct differences. The wine still can be identified as Yellow Label, but it seems to have a different character, a sharper, almost flinty nip to it in place of the mellow nut-like undertone. Interesting.
Just transferred a replacement from Rack A in the cellar to the little fridge, aka Rack F. One never knows when another celebration will be in order...

[Bucko]

I've found the same wines in Magnum to taste different from 750s as well. Just my imagination? I don't think so, but I'm always open to a little on-line psychoanalysis...... ;-)

Bucko

[mrdutton]

There have been several postings scattered throughout the Wine Board concerning the ability of a wine to maintain its quality based on the size of its bottle.

The consensus seems to point toward the larger bottles with the magnum being at some sort of pinnacle on the list.

It would, indeed, be interesting to find out why there is such a difference. It seems to me that there must be some kind of objective, quantitative reason for this, rather than the subjective, qualitative reasons that we've used to justify "resting" (for instance).

[hotwine]

I think the difference in taste (and age worthiness, since the small bottles decay more quickly than the larger formats) is probably related to ullage; since the air space below the cork is about the same size, regardless of bottle size, then there is more of the small bottle's contents exposed to O2 than is the case with the larger format.

[Thomas]

That is the gist of it Hotwine.