ORIENTAL HOUSE pulled out all the stops today with an amazing introduction to the world’s most expensive Non-vintage Champagne.

Armand de Brignac’s CEO, Sebastien Besson was on hand to talk us through three expressions of the iconic Ace of Spades.

The first pour, from a shiny Emerald bottle, was originally made for the PGA tour (US Open?) to match the classic green blazers worn by tournament winners. AdB makes only 3000 numbered bottles of this wine each year, completely by hand, right down to the pewter logos mounted on each emerald bottle.

Villa 32 put up a delicious series of bite-sized h’ors d’oeuvres and followed up with the classic gold-bottle expression.

These wines are at once wonderfully accessible and subtly complex, the ultimate expression of the Cattier winemaking Craft, achievable only with complete disregard for cost of production.

I sat across from Sebastien Besson and next to my dear friend Sunny Wang-Julien, owner of ORIENTAL HOUSE. On my other side was AdB’s VP for International Sales, Marc Jolly. Cecile Chen, Sunny’s executive officer had placed him there, strategically, amid three of the most beautiful women I’ve seen together in Taipei. You know who you are. I was too shy to take your picture, and I’m not usually shy.

Then we tried the Rosé. I love Rosé champagne anyway, but this one had an ever-so slightly bitter note in the finish that’s still going on the ride home from Beitou, and that’s an amazingly good thing.

On the whole I can say that these wines are far from geeky. They boast very little of the brioche and autolytic notes that attract Champagne sophisticates, unless they have palates finely tuned enough to appreciate the fine bead, the fine floral aromas, and the fine elegance in subtle layers within each crisp mouthful.

Although age-worthiness is evidently not part of AdB’s marketing, I can’t help but wonder how they might develop with a few more years of bottle aging, but that’s my evil geek twin talking.