Taste Champagne 2026
Prince Wine Store
Maybe its easiest to start with who and what we are not! We are not a supermarket, discount chain, or lowest-common-denominator liquor outlet. In some ways, we are not even a retailer who could be selling anything; tyres, widgets or beanie boos! We can only sell one thing…WINE!
What we are is an independently owned wine merchant, driven by our collective passion to source and share some of the greatest wines in the world with a similarly passionate group of punters…many of which are now friends and part of the PWS family.
There are two owners: Michael McNamara and Alex Wilcox (and their long-suffering wives), and together with 42 other committed (or perhaps should be committed) staff, they run three wine retail outlets in South Melbourne and Sydney as well as a wine bar/restaurant, Bellota and a wine cellarage business called Liquid Assets. In addition to this, we have, for some years, now run the benchmark WSET qualification in Victoria and NSW and a suite of more informal courses written by ourselves and our staff.
We import from a strong portfolio of producers from France, Italy, New Zealand, and California that reflect our love of wines that are made by people who share our passion for great wine and wines that reflect their place.
So, without getting too carried away, we love drinking, selling, talking about, and being in and around wine.
Who else would you wanna buy wine from!
Owned by Alex Wilcox and Michael McNamara.
Pol Roger
The family-owned house has, in part thanks to the enthusiastic endorsement of Winston Churchill, for long been regarded with great generosity and indulgence on the British market; in size terms, it is just a little larger than Bollinger, but much smaller than regional giants such as Moet, Laurent-Perrier, or Lanson. Stylistically, its range is much lighter and more delicate than Bollinger, for example… [the Blanc de Blancs] is all it should be, full of early-flowering grace and vanilla charm, while the vintage wine has a fine track record for slow, steady ageing. The 'prestige' cuvée, named after the company's most famous customers, was only launched in the mid 1980s and requires age before it begins to show the surging intensity and grandeur of dimension of some of its rivals. ANDREW JEFFORD, The New France
Stepping into Pol Roger's production facility in Epernay is like entering a different world. 'We call this the kitchen, ' introduced Laurent d'Harcourt, recently promoted Managing Director of the company. This was not like any kitchen I'd ever seen. Immaculately polished stainless steel tanks perfectly reflected shiny white tiles and snow-white surfaces. It was if we were entering a brain surgery until or a NASA assembly room, and I had an uneasy feeling that I might be asked to don a body suit, lest I contaminate this precision machine with a single molecule of foreign material. I have been buying Pol Roger for decades, but it was not until that moment that everything about this celestial estate suddenly snapped into perfect focus. The champagnes that emerge from this extraterrestrial building are as desperately precise, intricately delicate and flawlessly pristine as its polished interior, revealing the manifesto that defines all that lies within.
A blend of three champagne varieties in roughly equal proportions; 20% reserve wines; 150 parcels from 30 crus; 36-48 months on lees in bottle; 9-10 g/L dosage; bottle code indicates packaging date, with the first digit of denoting the year, and next three digits the day of that year. TYSON STELZER
Pierre Gimonnet
Didier Gimonnet is known for intensely bracing, invigorating Champagnes built on piercing acidity and salivating minerality, qualities that are enhanced through fermentation and aging exclusively in steel… when the wines are well-balanced, they are terrific. Readers will find a number of wines in this set of new releases that are gorgeous. One thing to note is that the reserve wines in the entry-level 1er Cru Cuis bottling are the NV blend of that year, which means those reserve wines are themselves blends of multiple vintages. Interestingly, the reserve wines are stored in magnum, which is a labor-intensive process, to say the least. ANTONIO GALLONI
Leclerc Briant
The goal at the House of Leclerc Briant is to create and market unique champagnes with an innovative style through a combination of meticulous attention to detail in both the vineyard and the winery, together with the utmost care of, and respect for, Mother Nature and the Terroirs.










