An Antipodean Christmas barbecue

Smoke, char and spice can be cruel palate partners to delicate Champagnes. It’s a shame to bypass the bubbles entirely, though.

So look out for Pinot-heavy Champagnes that have perhaps seen some oak or a decent level of ageing (vintage level or above), such as Bollinger’s latest B16 limited edition vintage.

This is also great territory for juicier, deeper styles of rosé Champagne, where use of red Pinot Noir can bring a little substance and food-friendly grip to tackle those richer flavours alongside gentle dosage.

With the barbecue smoking away, it’s best not to over complicate things – Taittinger, Piper-Heidsieck, Veuve Clicquot and Laurent-Perrier offer more pronounced red-fruit expressions among the maisons, with Perrier-Jouët’s Blason Rosé also on juicy, easy-going form.

A traditional Japanese…KFC?

KFC reportedly makes one third of its annual sales of fried chicken at Christmas time in Japan, in a tradition that developed in the 1970s thanks to the efforts of Takeshi Okawara, who managed the country’s first outlet in Nagoya.

Arguably this makes Japan home to the most Champagne-friendly Christmas dinner in the world – crisp, salty and with minimal spice or sweetness, fried chicken is a well-worn Champagne match, especially with blanc de blancs.

There’s no need to think that fast food only merits entry-level Champagne, though.

To really hold up to the traditional accompaniments such as mac ‘n’ cheese, you might want a dash of ageing, or oak richness.

Long-aged prestige blanc de blancs, such as Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne, are a classic match, and vintage options such as Pol Roger Blanc de Blancs 2016 or Palmer Blanc de Blancs 2018 are also well suited.

Ripe, oak-influenced non-vintage grower Champagnes such as those from Carré Frères or Doyard would work beautifully.

A Greek feast

Mediterranean flavours call for Champagnes with some breadth and vinosity.

Dishes with red meat such as traditional roast lamb, roasted vegetable flavours, or tangy and savoury lahanodolmàdes (stuffed cabbage rolls) in a lemony sauce would all do well with Champagnes that have seen some ageing post-release, or a non-vintage with a healthy dose of reserve wine.

Bruno Paillard’s Première Cuvée features a perpetual reserve of wines going back to 1985 which really ups the depth and savoury, food-friendly character on the palate.

Avoid anything too Chardonnay-heavy or pure in style. Oak-aged cuvées such as Billecart-Salmon’s Brut Sous Bois will be perfect, too.

A Swedish ‘julbord’

There’s plenty to enjoy with Champagne when it comes to northern European and Scandinavian food, but one ingredient that sets the hazard lights flashing is vinegar; pickled herring is one to save for the schnapps.

Traditional salmon and potato-based courses, though, provide happier matches, although strong smoky/sweet marinades used for hot smoked salmon and gravlax will kill delicate Champagnes. So go for something Pinot Noir-forward (even rosé), fruity but not too vinous, and probably not zero dosage.

Of the houses, Charles Heidsieck’s Brut or Piper Heidsieck’s Essential Blanc de Noirs would be good bets.

Or look to the Aube, where rosés, such as Drappier’s Rosé de Saignée, would be perfect.

South Korean winter favourites

31% of Korea’s population is Christian, and while Christmas is a minor holiday here – there’s no traditional single holiday meal – the winter period features traditional foods such as manduguk (dumpling soup), tteokguk (rice cake filled with meat or seafood and served with clear broth), and sweet potato noodles.

South Korea has proven a growth market for Champagne, with the country’s umami-rich cuisine well suited to certain styles.

To match this, look for some savour from Pinot Noir and Meunier, longer lees ageing, or reserve wines, as the strong flavours in the food may kill very fresh styles.

Henri Giraud’s wines, such as MV20, could tackle many of these savoury, deep and even spicy layers.

Related articles

• Wine with turkey: A food pairing guide
• Our best wine books for Christmas: Nine great reads and perfect gifts
• New Champagne releases to buy this festive season as prices ease

Tom Hewson, Eugenio Egorov and Sarah Knowles MW tasted 79 wines, with 2 Outstanding and 50 Highly recommended

Blanc de noirs Champagne: Panel tasting scores

79 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 2

Highly recommended 50

Recommended 26

Commended 1

Fair 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their current-release blanc de noirs Champagnes (made from 100% red grapes: Pinot Noir and/or Meunier)

Scroll down to see the top-scoring wines from our blanc de noirs Champagne panel tasting

Celebrating Champagne’s heritage

Although Chardonnay is a mainstay of Champagne today, making blanc de noirs – or ‘white from black’ – from black-skinned Pinots is written in the region’s DNA.

The practice of gently pressing the bunches whole in order to extract almost no colour from the skins was a speciality in the time of Dom Pérignon (17th century), and today the Pinot Noir and Meunier grapes – especially (but not uniquely) from the regions of the Montagne de Reims, Marne Valley and Côte des Bar – yield a fantastic diversity of styles.

Among the wines scoring 90 points or more in this tasting were plenty of familiar growers and small houses.

Yet it was also exciting to discover the fine performance of lesser-known, limited-edition cuvées such as those from Boizel (see recommendations), Jacquart and Piper-Heidsieck.

Prominent houses such as Cattier and Nicolas Feuillate offered fine, approachable styles with a touch of toasty, buttery richness, while plenty of independent estates offered precise, invigorating and dry options.

High-end

‘The quality was, broadly speaking, very good,’ says Sarah Knowles MW.

‘We had very few poor wines at all in a large lineup. I also found the diversity of styles particularly interesting – from more traditional, long-aged, plum-scented wines through the more reductive styles (which I particularly enjoyed) and out to the more elegant, brighter wines.’

Eugenio Egorov was similarly impressed by the broad diversity of styles.

‘While the rich, Pinot-driven character is the signature of the blanc de noirs style, the influence of the winemaker plays a big role,’ he notes.

‘Through masterful choices in vinification and dosage, a vast spectrum of expression is possible. We encountered everything from rich, vinous Champagnes to elegant, precise and highly approachable cuvées.’

With plenty of top wines from the excellent 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020 vintages, which are all currently on the market, there’s no doubt that it’s a particularly good time to explore Champagne’s Pinot heritage.

What to eat with blanc de noirs Champagne, by Fiona Beckett

The Champenois have always paired Champagne with food, but many people still think of it purely as an aperitif wine – a wine for parties and other celebrations.

Not grower Champagnes, and not blanc de noirs, which are much more serious, complex wines that can happily be enjoyed through a meal.

Their typically rich toastiness makes them a natural for roast chicken, a richly creamy risotto with truffles – almost anything umami (think dishes with white miso and sesame). And because they’re effervescent – they share this with other Champagnes – they work with almost anything fried, including chips!

Lighter, fresher styles will work with seafood, especially grilled lobster and scallops.

In general, I find it helps to think of hot food rather than cold with wines of this weight and quality, though they would be spot-on with a pâté en croûte or rare roast beef.

In a restaurant, they’re perfect with the luxury snacks that increasingly kick off a meal, especially with anything on toast or in pastry. Oh and don’t forget Vacherin Mont d’Or; it’s a sublime cheese match for a blanc de noirs.

See all notes and scores from the blanc de noirs Champagne tasting

The judges

Tom Hewson correspondent for Decanter and Decanter Premium online, and a DWWA judge. A jazz musician, he writes on sparkling wine more broadly on the Six Atmospheres Substack

Eugenio Egorov is wine director at Six Senses London hotel & spa. Born in Ukraine, he began his hospitality career in restaurants in Italy and Florida, USA, before moving to London in 2014

Sarah Knowles MW is a buyer for The Wine Society, covering categories including Champagne. A DWWA judge, she has been a Master of Wine since 2015 and previously worked in buying for on-trade specialist Amathus Drinks

Blanc de noirs Champagne panel tasting results:

Wines were tasted blind

Related articles

• Champagne Barons de Rothschild: 20 years of patience and a brand new winery
• International Pinot Meunier Day: Celebrate a grape shining from Champagne to Oregon
• Decanter Festive Wine Guide: See 230 great buys for Christmas and New Year

Champagne needs little introduction, nor does it require a celebratory occasion to pop open — but this Champagne Day, held annually on the 4th Friday of October, we can think of a few exceptional examples worth discovering.

Year after year, results from the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) attest to the quality of Champagne, and the 2025 competition was no exception with 18 Gold, six Platinum and three Best in Show medals awarded to this classic region.

Champagne’s three Best in Show medal winners are of particular note: Barons de Rothschild, Rare Collection Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut 2014, Lanson, Noble Brut 2008 and Rare Brut 2012. We haven’t featured three Champagnes for our Top 50 Best in Show in recent years, but all three wines impressed the Co-Chairs. It’s the second consecutive year we see 2014 vintage for Chardonnay in Champagne receiving the highest accolade. The wine is incisive, darting and mouth-watering, the judges noted.

Scroll down to see a top selection of 96-97 point Champagnes from DWWA 2025

Vintage Champagnes saw a majority of top medals awarded, with 20 of the top 27 (Gold, Platinum and Best in Show winners) awarded to sparkling wines from a vintage. The 2018 vintage stands out with five Champagnes awarded 95+ points from this vintage.

Magnum bottles also saw a huge success this year with two wines receiving top medals. Platinum-awarded Henriot, Cuve 38 Réserve Perpétuelle Edition 6 Blanc de Blancs Brut NV was praised for its complexity and pure understated elegance, while Gold-awarded Saint-Réol, Brut Grand Cru 2008 was described as refined and nuanced.

Below find a selection of 96-97 point Champagnes, well worth discovering, from the 2025 Decanter World Wine Awards, with many more to discover at awards.decanter.com

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

Best in Show

Barons de Rothschild, Rare Collection Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut 2014

Best in Show, 97 points

For the second year in succession in our Top 50 Best in Show, the strength of the 2014 vintage for Chardonnay in Champagne (and notably on the Côte des Blancs) is gorgeously evident in our winning Blanc de Blancs. It wasn’t an easy summer (July was cold and wet) but great Champagne, remember, is made by a long, lingering and luminous growing season, with heat an almost optional extra. A fine spring and a glorious September teased Chardonnay to the sort of delicate perfection that you can taste in this bottle. Even the mousse is delicate, while the aromas evoke the wet-stone, seashore and seaweed notes typical of Extra Brut rather than the sweet creaminess of luxurious Brut Blanc de Blancs. The palate is incisive, darting, driving, aquiline and mouthwatering. As you sip, once again it’s wet stones, spring leaves and plant sap that come to mind: fine vineyards, clearly. No hurry to drink: this bottle would love a little more time in a cool cellar. Alcohol 12%

Lanson, Noble Brut 2008

Best in Show, 97 points

In contrast to the 2014 Champagne vintage described above, the 2008 vintage was looking like a dud – until a fine August and a wonderful September saved the day. The lesson is the same, though – great Champagne is the consequence of a painstaking, incremental ripeness that inches rather than races towards harvest. This wine is a classical blend of 70 per cent Chardonnay with 30 per cent Pinot, and its decade-and-a-half on lees have paid huge dividends. It’s hard to get the kind of aromatic complexity you’ll find here – that refined synthesis of fresh autumn fruits with bread dough, baking fruit tarts, nuts and preserves – in any other way, and it’s achieved with great assurance and panache. The palate is layered, but after the aromatic symphony you may be in for a surprise: this is very darting, athletic and lively in the mouth, and the resonant acidity is almost a pole of interest on its own. Yes, it’s fully aged – but there’s no hurry to drink, either. Alc 12.5%

Rare Brut 2012

Best in Show, 97 points

We haven’t featured three Champagnes for our Top 50 Best In Show in recent years (though this was the case in both our 2019 and 2020 DWWA competitions), but this blend of 70 per cent Chardonnay and 30 per cent Pinot Noir proved as hard to ignore as its two peers. The 2012 vintage pattern differed from those of 2008 or 2014 – but still demanded both patience and fortitude. April frosts were cruel this year, and for those whose vineyards jumped that hurdle, the cold spring weather that followed was unencouraging. Late summer, though was very dry, and just warm enough to create the nervy ripeness blenders love. You can almost smell that tension in the aromatic restraint of this Champagne, but keep looking and you’ll find much to relish, too, including flowers from the Chardonnay and root spice from the Pinot. Age mingles the two seamlessly. Once in the mouth, this is a Champagne of structure and proportion, and it’s here, too, that you can see the skill and restraint with which all the elements have been chamfered and jointed into place. Alc 12%

Platinum

Deutz, Amour de Deutz Brut 2014

Platinum, 97 points

A delicious interplay of honeyed toast, ripened fruit and smoky savoury notes with a soothing, creamy mousse and svelte acidity. Exuding charisma and typicity with a thrilling swirl of oyster shell minerals at the end. Alc 12%

Esterlin, Cléo Blanc de Blancs Brut 2012

Platinum, 97 points

Everything that a vintage Blanc de Blancs should be: exquisite vertical tension on the finely beaded mousse, seamless acidity and a gorgeous flavour profile of honeyed brioche and lemon confit with a lick of apple crumble. Alc 12%

Esterlin, Éclat Brut NV

Platinum, 97 points

Rapturous orange blossom, yellow apple and lemon tart aromas linger deftly over the nose and harmonise delicately with the creamy mousse. Smooth and subtle with a decisive freshness from the acidity and crunchy mineral finish. Alc 12%

Henriot, Cuve 38 Réserve Perpétuelle Edition 6 Blanc de Blancs Brut NV Magnum

Platinum, 97 points

A triumph of complexity: rippling beads of smoky saline and vibrant lemon tension drive through the centre and resolve with abounding ripened white peach and toasted nuts, ending with a succulent chalky finish. Pure understated elegance. Alc 12%

Mandois, Clos Brut 2012

Platinum, 97 points

A succulence of smoky lemon, honeyed yellow apple and quince fantails over the nose uniting with the plush toasty warmth of the palate, weaving around the racy lime zest acidity. Finely textured, long and immersive. Alc 12.5%

Telmont, Blanc de Noirs Brut 2015

Platinum, 97 points

Bursting with red fruit and floral splendour wrapped around a sweet vanilla pastry cream cushion. Mouth-filling and rich with an orange rind acidity to sustain and a zing of gingerbread spice on the long finale. Alc 12%

Gold

Piaff, Blanc de Blancs Brut NV

Gold, 96 points

Blissful aromas of pear, peach and lemon panna cotta magnify over the palate, flirt with the chalky mineral acidity and unite on the glistening seashore ending. Alc 12%

Taittinger, Prélude Grands Crus Brut NV

Gold, 96 points

Opulent tropical and stone fruit interweaves with lush hazelnut and creamy brioche which spills out onto the silky palate. Poised and fresh with an expansive mousse. Alc 12.5%

Veuve Clicquot, La Grande Dame Brut 2018

Gold, 96 points

Whistle clean strawberry fruit aligns beautifully with a throng of plush peach, apple tart and ginger biscuit characters. Lifted and driven with a buttery texture and chalky finish. Alc 12.5%

Search all DWWA 2025 results

Related articles

• Fake Champagne: Winemaker appeals conviction in fraud case
• Where has all the vintage Champagne gone?
• Introducing the DWWA Resident Co-Chair: Welcoming Caro Maurer MW

The countdown is on for the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter London (DFWE) returning to The Landmark on Friday 7 and Saturday 8 November. and this year’s masterclass line-up is shaping up to be one of the most exciting yet.

Friday will open with an intimate tasting featuring 70 exceptional producers alongside exclusive VIP lunches. On Saturday the spotlight shifts to three unmissable masterclasses, each designed to inspire wine lovers of all levels.

These exclusive 75-minute sessions will bring together world-renowned winemakers, rare vintages and some of the most respected names in the world of wine.

2012 Vintage Champagne

Opening the day, Charles Curtis MW – one of the worlds leading Champagne experts – will present a deep dive into the stellar 2012 vintage, hailed as one of the finest of recent decades. Shaped by adversity yet celebrated as a triumph, 2012 produced champagnes of remarkable character and longevity.

Guests will explore a hand-picked line-up including bottles from Laurent-Perrier, Pierre Paillard, Delamotte, Diebolt-Vallois, Marc Hébrart, Drappier, Marie Courtin, Philipponnat and more.

2012 VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE MASTERCLASS

Château Smith Haut Lafitte

In the afternoon, Bordeaux takes the spotlight with a vertical tasting from Château Smith Haut Lafitte, led by Head Winemaker Fabien Teitgen. This guided tasting will showcase both white and red wines spanning 25 years, including two aged magnums from 2005 and 2000.

This masterclass will highlight the estate’s exceptional Pessac-Léognan terroir, it’s commitment to sustainable viticulture, and the age-worthy elegance that defines Smith Haut Lafitte wines.

CHÂTEAU SMITH HAUT LAFITTE MASTERCLASS

Journey to the Tuscan coast with Antinori

The final masterclass offers a rare chance to experience the Antinori legacy with Alessia Antinori, sixth generation and the future of this legendary family, and Renzo Cotarella, CEO & Chief Wnemaker.

Together they will guide guests through four decades of Bolgheri brilliance, featuring two of the estate’s most iconic wines: Guado al Tasso, a Cabernet-led blend and Matarocchio, a 100% Cabernet Franc made only in exceptional years. Expect top-scoring vintages such as Guado al Tasso 2022 (94 pts) and Matarocchio 2013 (96 pts).

ANTINORI MASTERCLASS

With only a limited number of seats available, these unmissable masterclasses are expected to sell out quickly. Whether you’re an expert or exploring wine for the first time, this is your chance to taste, learn and be inspired by the people shaping the world of wine today.

Essential information

DFWE London

Date: Friday 7 November 2025 from 3pm – 8pm

Saturday 8 November 2025 from 11am to 5:30pm

Location: The Landmark London, NW1 6JQ

Price: Friday Grand Tasting Ticket £115

Saturday Grand Tasting Ticket £115 | with Cellar Collection access £155 | Masterclass tickets from £125

BUY TICKETS

There are few wine regions in the world where vintage means as much as it does in Champagne.

But what exactly are vintage Champagnes, and is this once-exalted category starting to fade in importance?

Tom’s pick of the best vintage Champagnes listed below

Champagne aficionados of the first half of the 20th century would likely find themselves baffled by today’s Champagne terminology: non-vintage, multi-vintage, single-vineyard, limited editions, late-disgorged releases, vintage, premium vintage, prestige cuvée, library releases…the list goes on.

Fitting today’s Champagnes into neat style categories is rather complex.

What’s more, Champagne houses regularly have six to 10 cuvées in their range, where once there may have been two or three.

Up until the 1970s, though, the choice was simple: either non-vintage or vintage.

Vintage Champagne: What does it mean?

The region’s appellation regulations help to simplify things somewhat: a non-vintage Champagne cannot carry a year of production on the label; it may be produced from a blend of harvests; and it must spend a minimum of 15 months ageing before release.

A vintage Champagne, on the other hand, is the product of one sole harvest (which has to appear on the label), and it must spend a minimum of 30 months ageing before release (although they are regularly aged for much longer).

Price gap

Vintage Champagnes have always been more expensive than non-vintage Champagnes. Today, the price gap has widened further.

André Simon’s 1962 book The History of Champagne reports that a 1945 agreement between the Ministry of Food and the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, aimed at suppressing the black market after World War II, stipulated final selling prices of grandes marques vintage and grandes marques non-vintage as 28 shillings and 25 shillings respectively.

Hardly much of a premium when you consider that today’s vintage Champagnes are commonly around two or three times the price of their non-vintage counterparts. Take Taittinger for example, whose non-vintage currently retails at £36 while its vintage is £61.

The emergence of prestige cuvées

By the 1970s, the idea of a category even more exalted than vintage began to form.

According to writer Cyril Ray in his 1971 book Bollinger, Tradition of a Champagne Family, Bollinger realised in 1961 that it was ‘expected to produce a premium quality wine’ above its non-vintage and vintage offerings.

This premium offering later became Bollinger’s prestige cuvée, RD.

This followed on from the early successes of Moët et Chandon’s Dom Pérignon and Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne.

Since then, the basic understanding of Champagne’s quality has been three-tier: non-vintage, vintage and prestige cuvée.

But is the middle child now being forgotten about?

Vintage squeeze

Ray writes of grandes marques producing single-vintage wines as ‘a means to getting talked and written about’.

Today, however, it’s the prestige releases that tend to steal the limelight, with the vintage category languishing.

Champagne’s 2024 export report showed that prestige cuvées represented a huge 18.9% of the region’s value, while the vintage category was the smallest of all at 1.5%.

Some houses, such as Billecart-Salmon, have stopped making vintage Champagne altogether. Others, such as Ruinart, make such tiny quantities that they are not even found in the UK market.

Value hiding in plain sight

Even if quantities are small, though, many of the major houses still make mid-tier vintage Champagnes that retail between £70-£100.

Producers such as Lanson, Piper-Heidsieck, Deutz, Taittinger and Laurent-Perrier all make vintage cuvées that offer serious value, regularly available for £80 or less.

That value stems from an excellent growing season, top-notch base wines, rigorous blind tastings and an open-minded approach to finding the grapes that best tell the story of the year, even if they’re not from the sort of prized grand cru sources that are used for prestige cuvées.

To illustrate this last point, Elise Losfelt, former cellar master of Charles Heidsieck, says that the house’s 2018 vintage relied heavily on Chardonnay from a rather unlikely source: the little-known village of Trigny, in the Petite Montagne de Reims.

Surprisingly, it had a ‘kick of freshness and concentration’ from a vintage that could be ‘heavy and mature,’ she says.

Perhaps Trigny’s Chardonnay will never step into the limelight again, but it’s a perfect example of why the blending of vintage Champagne tests the winemaker’s creativity, rarely using the exact same ingredients from one year to the next.

Vintage cuvées evolve

Elsewhere, inventive producers have taken to re-imagining their vintage cuvées, with names and identities beyond a simple millésimé.

At Champagne Palmer & Co, vintages are made in top years, but only released once the quality is deemed high enough after a six year ageing period.

It’s a sort of ‘double selection,’ according to managing director Rémi Vervier. Palmer & Co’s vintage cuvée is now known as Grands Terroirs, to highlight its link to the vineyards of the northern Montagne de Reims.

Other houses are also seeking to lend these more expensive wines a stronger stamp of identity and heritage than simply the vintage.

Louis Roederer, for example, which makes its vintage release from Pinot Noir from the clay-rich terroirs of the house’s own La Montagne estate in the northern Montagne de Reims. By contrast, the shallower, chalky plots are selected for the (much larger) production of Cristal.

Philipponnat’s cuvée 1522 is another example. ‘Clos des Goisses [the estate’s top wine] is a single-vineyard cuvée, and I felt we needed a superior vintage cuvée,’ says head of the house Charles Philipponnat, ‘so we created 1522 in the year 2000 as a homage to our ancestors, who owned vines in the [lieu-dit] Le Leon in Aÿ in 1522.’

The 1522 cuvée is based heavily on Pinot Noir from the Le Leon lieu-dit.

A vertical back to the original 2000 release confirmed what many in Champagne know well: despite their relative insider status today, these meticulously made wines, sourced from some of Champagne’s top villages, can age beautifully, even if they may reach maturity a little before their prestige siblings.

Tips for buying vintage Champagne

Current sweet spots for vintage Champagne range from the 2008 to 2012 releases.

Well-stored vintage releases back to the mid 1990s are also well worth exploring.

It can be worth trading up to magnums at vintage level, too. The 1996 shone at a recent tasting, and even promised further ageing potential.

Even if prestige cuvées have taken vintage Champagne’s seat at the top of the table, this remains a happy hunting ground for anyone in search of true value.

Identifying the cuvées may be a little more complex than it was in 1945, but as a way to explore the heights of long-aged, well-sourced Champagnes – and even plan fascinating comparative tastings without breaking the bank – the vintage category is hard to beat.

Top 15 vintage Champagnes to seek out:

Related articles

• Does affordable Champagne still exist? Here are 15 of the best
• Petite Montagne, grand ambition: Ten top wines from an exciting corner of Champagne
• Champagne Laurent-Perrier: Rosé perfectionists

After a cautious six months, Champagne is back into release season with a string of wines at vintage and prestige cuvée level, many from the 2018 harvest.

This was a year of relief in the region. After a dismal 2017, the vines abounded with enormous natural yields, easy summer conditions and trouble-free ripeness.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the latest Champagnes released this spring and summer

As the vintage’s character becomes more clear with time, the wines continue to display a charming, forward nature, with few of the downsides of some of the extreme vintages of the last decade.

Dilution and low acidity, though, can mean the wines are not often as dynamic or structured as some of the more ageworthy vintages, and it looks to be the most straightforward of the touted trilogy of 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Pol Roger has captured some density and ripeness of Pinot Noir admirably well in an immediately glossy, creamy and forward Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill that will see smiles on the faces of any longtime fans of the cuvée – not least given how expressive it already is upon release.

Likewise Charles Heidsieck offers both white and rosé 2018 cuvées, both tuned beautifully for early drinking but not lacking the potential for mid-term cellaring.

Deutz, too, has found success with the latest two single-vineyard releases from Aÿ under the moniker Hommage à William Deutz, which, rather similarly to Pol Roger, feel like a step up in precision and clarity over the previous 2015 releases.

The release from the Meurtet parcel in particular stands out.

Older vintage releases

Beyond 2018, Bollinger carries on with its successful PN series of Pinot Noir creations by returning to the village of Tauxières for the PN TX 20. It’s a juicier, more hedonistic take than the superb PN VZ 19, yet just as imaginative and complex.

These wines continue to be superb purchases, especially since the PN AYC 18 edition.

There are also vintage releases reviewed from Ayala (La Perle 2015), Perrier-Jouët (Belle Epoque 2016), Lanson (Noble 2008) and perhaps most notably two fine releases from Billecart-Salmon in the prestige cuvée blend Nicolas François 2012 and a particularly sumptuous, sensual edition of Le Clos Saint-Hilaire from 2009.

Meanwhile, in the world of independent Champagne there are wines reviewed from one of the Montagne de Reims’ most prominent names, Eric Rodez in Ambonnay, as well as a pick from up-and-coming négociant project Valetin Leflaive.

The latter has been making some noise in the quiet village of Oger by releasing an ever-growing band of single-parcel Champagnes.

Finally, the latest two Krug Grande Cuvée editions – the white 173ème and the rosé 29ème – arrive relatively forward and open, with the majority of the blends coming from the torrid 2017 vintage.

Krug’s track record of producing fine blends even when faced with difficult harvests is unmatched, though, as a recent vertical including wines built on 2011 and 2010 harvests showed.

While avid Champagne followers may be reticent in approaching wines that show the particularities of this vintage to even a modest degree, these wines will hit the mark for those in search of the spirit of generosity and depth the house is known for.

The newest Champagne releases to look out for:

Wines are listed alphabetically, white then rosé

Related articles

• Champagne releases for autumn & winter 2024
• Champagne: 2024 spring & summer releases tasted
• Best Champagne houses to visit

Mother’s Day falls on Sunday 30 March in the UK this year, when the trees are beginning to blossom, buds are breaking and there are signs of new life.

Flowers, plants and bulbs make for wonderful presents on Mothering Sunday, but your gifting skills can be elevated by a bottle or two of sparkling wine.

The list of recommendations below includes varying styles of sparkling wine from classic Champagne and Crémant to English sparkling and Prosecco. Prices range from under £20 to over £100.

Scroll down to see our selection of sparkling wines for Mother’s Day

Quick guide to sparkling wine styles:

• Champagne – Mostly made from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, this must come from the French region of Champagne. It’s produced using the traditional method, with secondary fermentation taking place in the bottle.
• Traditional method – This refers to wines made using the same method as Champagne, where a second fermentation takes place in the bottle. The key examples are:
• Cava – Sparkling wine from Spain using both native grapes, such as Xarel·lo and Parellada, as well as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Reserva and Gran Reserva Cavas undergo extended ageing in bottle, bringing additional complexity.
• English sparkling wine – The cool climate and limestone soils in southern England are similar to those in Champagne, producing many fantastic sparkling wines.
• Franciacorta – From the northern Italian region of Lombardy, this serious traditional method wine can be both fresh and complex.
• Crémant – There are eight appellations in France where Crémant sparkling wines can be produced, and local grape varieties tend to be used. Examples include Crémant de Bourgogne, Crémant de Limoux and Crémant de Loire.
• Other very good traditional method sparkling wines can be found in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.
• Prosecco – Made in the Veneto region of northeast Italy from the Glera grape, using the tank – or charmat – method.
• Pétillant naturel – This is in fact the oldest method of making sparkling wine, also known as méthode ancestrale. Unlike Champagne, the wine is bottled before it finishes its first fermentation, so the bubbles develop in the bottle. They can be slightly cloudy due to sediment, fairly low in alcohol, with a gentle fizz and sometimes a touch of sweetness. For the more adventurous mothers out there, what’s not to like!

At a glance: top picks for Mother’s Day

Top Champagne pick under £50:

Ayala, Brut Nature, Champagne, France

Top supermarket Champagne pick:

Alexandre Bonnet, Waitrose Brut, Champagne, France NV – £24.99

Top splash-out Champagne pick:

Champagne Stroebel, Pour Toi! Brut Nature, Champagne, France – £119

Top traditional method pick:

Clotilde Davenne, Brut Extra, Crémant de Bourgogne, Burgundy, France – £20.95

Top Prosecco pick:

Bele Casel, Col Fondo Agricolo, Colli Trevigiani, Veneto, Italy 2021 – £22

Top off-the-beaten-track pick:

Domaine Giachino, Don Giachino, Vin Mousseux de France, Savoie 2019 – £36

Sparkling wines for Mother’s Day:

The wines below were tasted by Decanter’s editorial team and experts.

Related articles

• Decanter cellar: 18 must-try Pinot Noirs
• Great-value rosé wine: 14 top bottles to try
• Great-value white wine: 20 bottles to try

Nowhere is the historical entente between Champagne and the United Kingdom more keenly felt than at the house of Pol Roger.

Even before Sir Winston Churchill’s famed love affair with the white-foiled cuvées which he ordered – in copious quantities – throughout his life, this was a house that saw considerable success in the streets of London.

Scroll down for Tom Hewson’s top-scoring vintages of Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill

‘Pol Roger became one of the big three Champagne brands in London during the 1870s,’ explains James Simpson MW of Pol Roger UK.

‘Whether he had money or not, Churchill continued buying Pol Roger throughout his life,’ he adds, hinting that Churchill may have consumed – or at least ordered – as many as 42,000 bottles.

The ‘Churchill taste’

It was after Churchill’s death in 1965, though, that the house decided to create a cuvée in his honour, beginning with the 1975 vintage.

As the house’s Hubert de Billy explained to an avid group of collectors and Champagne fans who had gathered at London’s 67 Pall Mall to taste through 20 years of Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill in magnum: ‘We have a recipe for the other wines, but Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill is different: we don’t speak about the Pol Roger taste, but we speak about the Winston Churchill taste.’

What Churchill seemed to like was Pinot Noir – and lots of it. Although the house doesn’t disclose the exact blend for the cuvée, it is almost always very close to a Blanc de Noirs, with Pinot Noir widely believed to be around 80% of the makeup.

Beyond this, details are a little harder to come by. This is a house that keeps its cards close to its chest, preferring to let the wines speak for themselves than to furnish customers with lengthy details about villages and vinifications.

De Billy pointed out, though, that we, ‘are not drinking what Churchill was drinking’. This year marks 150 years since the great man’s birth and much has changed in that time.

The wines of Churchill’s day would have been fermented in barrel (not stainless steel, as the house has done since the 1970s).

They would also have carried higher dosages (which would have included Cognac, too). The wines of the 1920s and 1930s, then, might have seemed rather sweet and heavy to modern palates.

‘It’s as close, though, as we can get in the modern way of making Champagne,’ De Billy explained.

Family ties

The link with the family remains, however. Churchill’s great-great grandson George Repard was present at this remarkable tasting – remarkable not least because 20 vintages were present, but also because they were sourced in magnum (with one jeroboam).

As magnums almost always age more slowly and gracefully than standard bottles, this was surely the coup which made the difference. 67 Pall Mall’s Paul Richards, who was charged with sourcing this special line-up, was understandably paying close attention as the magnums were opened.

‘Quite a few of the magnums are from Épernay, but some of the vintages have been more elusive,’ he explained before the event. ‘I hope the contents are all in the best shape they can possibly be.’

Champagnes of this age are notoriously delicate and, as expected, a handful of vintages were the victims of oxidation or cork issues.

The hit rate of fine bottles, though, was undoubtedly high for a tasting as ambitious as this (and much higher than would have been the case had the tasting been using 75cl), helped as it was by the presence of two magnums of each vintage.

Pinot power

Folk wisdom in Champagne dictates that the longest-ageing wines usually need a fair helping of Chardonnay for backbone, but in top vintages Cuvée Winston Churchill shows a gorgeous, fragrant Pinot power and decadent creamy, spicy richness of its own, which ages with engaging complexity.

The wines showed a marked change from the 1990 vintage onwards, becoming a little more tightly bound and fresher in style, with the sweet spot appearing to arrive at around 20 years of age for many magnums (and lasting for at least 10 years for the top wines).

‘Winston is a man of simple tastes: he is always prepared to put up with the best of everything,’ Churchill’s friend Lord Birkenhead once said. With modern vintages such as 2008 and 2012, though, there was plenty of cause for collectors to hope for the same.

Selected below were the top 10 wines from the tasting. The complete line-up tasted was: 1979, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999 (oenothèque release), 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2015.

The 1988, 1990 and 1996 were not rated due to bottle variation.

Tom Hewson’s notes and scores for 10 Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill vintages:

Related articles

• Producer profile: Pol Roger, plus tasting the 2013 Brut Vintage
• Roederer: A lifetime of rosé Champagne
• Wines of the year 2024: Champagne, Rhône & Regional France

Dom Pérignon 2015 has been one of the latest major releases on a fine wine market that has largely continued to see prices under pressure. Dom Pérignon has been a major star of Champagne’s greater presence on the secondary market in recent years, and the new launch follows the release of the 2013 vintage in early 2023.

UK merchants offered Dom Pérignon 2015 for between £848 and £875 per six-bottle case in bond (ib). That’s below the release price of Dom Pérignon 2013, according to Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, but it also said the 2013 vintage had fallen about 15% in price in the past 12 months.

On Bordeaux Index’s LiveTrade online trading platform, Dom Pérignon 2012 and 2013 were offered below £800 per six-bottle case. Liv-ex data suggested secondary market prices in general remained under pressure. The headline Liv-ex 1000 index fell 6.3% in value in six months to 30 June, and its Champagne 50 sub-index dropped 6.6%.

‘It’s a sign of the times that Dom Pérignon doesn’t sell out immediately,’ said Alex Turnbull, head of private and online sales at UK-based merchant Jeroboams. ‘We have seen stable demand [for the 2015 vintage], but go back three years and Dom Pérignon sold out within the hour.’

Turnbull also said that Dom Pérignon owner LVMH (Moët Hennessy) has ‘steadily increased the release price over the years, and so it doesn’t offer the same value on release that it used to’.

Vintage Ports command record prices at auction

Legendary vintage Ports from a UK private collection have generated strong buyer interest at a Christie’s auction in London.

Christie’s recently reported new auction price records (measured in terms of price per single bottle) for several vintage Ports in the sale. These included high-quality bottlings such as Dow’s 1924, of which a two-bottle lot sold for £6,875 including buyer’s premium (high estimate: £1,200), and Fonseca 1934. Two six-bottle lots of the Fonseca 1934 each fetched £9,375 (high estimate: £4,500 per lot).

The Ports were from Raby castle cellars in County Durham, near Darlington. ‘The exceptional cellar conditions, cool and damp, have ensured that all vintage Port bottles in this collection are in perfect condition,’ said Edwin Vos, senior director and international head of Christie’s wine and spirits department, and Noah May, Christie’s head of wine and spirits for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Provenance pulls in the bids

Auction house Sotheby’s has recently reported strong bidding on certain blue-chip Burgundy wines, but the wider market picture for the region remains mixed.

Sotheby’s said more than a third of lots sold in its Burgundy-focused ‘Live in the Vines’ auction in Beaune, in the heart of the Côte d’Or, on 2 July achieved prices comfortably above pre-sale high estimates.

Asia-based bidders were particularly prominent in the sale, which was part of the Epicurean’s Atlas series of auctions featuring wines from noted collector Pierre Chen. Sotheby’s also reported new record auction prices on certain wines (see wines, below).

For example, it said a three-bottle lot of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC), Montrachet 2007 sold for the equivalent of more than €15,800 per bottle, including buyer’s premium – about 50% above the previous record bottle price.

George Lacey, Sotheby’s head of wine Asia, told Decanter: ‘When you offer older vintages in good condition with exceptional provenance – which are rare and not so frequently seen in the market – there’s clearly still great demand. That was really encouraging for us to see. People were really competing for those wines.’

Nick Pegna, Sotheby’s global head of wines & spirits, cautioned that the group’s focus on older wines that are ready to drink means that its results are not necessarily representative of the market in its entirety.

Lacey added: ‘People are willing to spend money on great wines. But, they are perhaps looking to replenish cellars or to buy wines that they can get immediate enjoyment from.’ In general terms, Lacey said Burgundy prices were ‘no longer sliding’, but were down versus their peak two years ago.

UK-based merchant Bordeaux Index said top-tier Burgundy prices were down by about 10% in the first half of 2024, albeit the price drift has slowed in recent months. It added that prices were still around 150% higher than a decade ago, on average.

Bordeaux Index pointed out that trading has improved this year on ‘bellwether’ producers DRC and Armand Rousseau, too. Burgundy wines now feature on the group’s recently relaunched LiveTrade online trading platform.

Data released by Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, showed that its index for DRC wines rose slightly in value earlier this year, before dipping again in June.

Sotheby’s Live in the Vines: six blue-chip Burgundy highlights

Six examples of Burgundy lots in the Sotheby’s Live in the Vines sale on 2 July that saw a record auction price for that specific wine (records were measured in terms of price per 75cl, except for Lot 130, which is a record price per magnum of this wine):

LOT 200 Domaine Armand Rousseau, Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru 1990 12x75cl. Sold for €100,000 – Estimate: €40,000-€60,000

LOT 202 Domaine Armand Rousseau, Chambertin Grand Cru 2009 12x75cl. Sold for €68,750 – Estimate: €40,000-€55,000

LOT 4 Domaine Leroy, Chambertin Grand Cru 2011 3x75cl. Sold for €50,000 – Estimate: €26,000-€38,000

LOT 140 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Montrachet Grand Cru 2007 3x75cl. Sold for €47,500 – Estimate: €19,000-€24,000

LOT 130 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, La Tâche Grand Cru 2005 1x150cl. Sold for €35,000 | Estimate: €16,000-€20,000

LOT 1 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Echezeaux Grand Cru 2005 3x75cl. Sold for €30,000 – Estimate: €6,500-€9,500

Data Source: Sotheby’s. ‘Sold for’ prices include buyer’s premium.

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com.

The net performance of top wines from Burgundy since 2021 remains very positive, with gains of 60% or more across 2022, especially, now having settled into more of a context of above-40% after the market having softened across H2 2023 and in 2024.

This can be summarised succinctly as a very skewed supply-demand imbalance being replaced by a much more balanced position – naturally this has seen the highest degree of correction among those blue-chip names which had particularly outperformed, but the picture overall is that most owners of top Burgundy have seen substantial gains in value in their collection.

At Bordeaux Index we have seen prices largely stabilise (albeit some auction performance is notably lacklustre) and we expect price growth to resume over the medium term; but the timing for this is unclear, given the discretionary nature of buying demand.

Our observations relate very much to blue-chip Burgundy, though – the top 20-25 names – as we see the segment(s) below, high-quality wines though they are, as being overpriced and without a firm buyer base for consumption of the wines.

Related articles

• High-profile Burgundy auction generates more than £5m
• English wine tycoon told to pay millions for misleading investors
• Shipwreck full of Champagne found in Baltic Sea

Aurélien Suenen is pouring vins clairs, the still base wines from the 2023 harvest that have yet to become sparkling Champagne. ‘It’s a new world,’ he says, raising an eyebrow. ‘The wines are opening up so fast compared to the last two decades. I really enjoy what I taste – but maybe too much!’

The Butte de Saran, a stumpy, tree-topped hill encircled by vineyards, dominates the view from Suenen’s smart new tasting room. From the villages of Chouilly, Cramant, Cuis and Oiry that surround it, a single, largely east-facing bank of Cretaceous-era chalk meanders southwards for 20km, through villages that resonate with significance like few others in Champagne: Avize, Oger, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Vertus.

On a bright day, the dry chalky tracks that split the Chardonnay vineyards seem almost backlit with white light.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 30 stunning Champagnes from the Côte des Blancs

This is the Côte des Blancs, the land of white grapes on white soils, historically prized for the delicacy, tension and longevity that its Chardonnay brings to blends in combination with the Pinots across the whole Champagne region.

It’s hard to believe today, though, that 100% Chardonnay – blanc de blancs as it’s known – only flourished in the second half of the 20th century; in his 1966 book Wine, Hugh Johnson still considered these wines ‘new-fangled’.

Indeed, up to the 1860s in Champagne, the grape that we now know as Chardonnay had been identified together with Pinot Blanc under the general name ‘Pineau Blanc’ – it wasn’t until the 20th century that a clear distinction was made between the two.

Key crus & their key producers

Chouilly: Guiborat, Legras & Haas, Pertois-Lebrun, Pierre Legras, Roland Champion

Cuis: Les Frères Mignon, Pierre Gimonnet

Cramant: Aurélien Suenen, Dhondt-Grellet, Diebolt-Vallois, Lancelot-Pienne, Les Frères Mignon, Lilbert-Fils

Avize: Agrapart, Corbon, De Sousa, Jacques Selosse

Oger: Domaine Vincey, Vauversin

Le Mesnil-sur-Oger: André Jacquart, Claude Cazals, Girard-Bonnet, JL Vergnon, Pierre Péters, Salon-Delamotte

Vertus: Larmandier-Bernier, Pascal Doquet, Veuve Fourny & Fils

Today, the villages are buzzing with grower-producers while the larger-scale houses continue to blend their top blanc de blancs largely from Côte des Blancs fruit (entry-level examples tend to blend in less expensive Chardonnay fruit from elsewhere in Champagne).

Nowhere else – with the possible exception of the villages of Trépail and Villers-Marmery in the east of the Montagne de Reims – compares in character.

‘You can plant more Chardonnay, but you can’t plant more Côte des Blancs!’ says Louis Roederer’s chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, a believer in the ‘freshness’ that the chalk soils, with their unique water-retentive properties, bestow on the wines.

Champagne Côte des Blancs: the facts 

Villages: 10, covering 3,190ha just south of Epernay

Bedrock: Belemnite and micraster chalk with topsoils of varying depths

Orientation: Largely east-facing, although Cuis and Grauves (and some of Chouilly) face north and west

Grape varieties: 97% Chardonnay, 2% Pinot Noir, 1% Meunier

Village matters

Much of the Côte faces to the east, meeting Chardonnay’s sensitive needs for early morning sun (to ward off frost) yet avoiding fully intense southern exposures or the cooler, frost-prone western and northern exposures.

Subtle shifts in exposition and soil create a varied palette from which to blend, though; in the north, warm Chouilly meets cool, northerly Cuis – ‘the most acidic Chardonnay in Champagne’, as Cuis-based producer Didier Gimonnet puts it – above the famous twins of Cramant and Avize, arguably the classic heart of the Côte.

Then, south of Avize, there is a subtle change that marks the border between the northern and southern Côte: the village of Oger. ‘Oger is a bowl, so the sun has more impact. You always have this tropical fruit, this maturity in Oger,’ explains Paul Girard, a rising superstar of Le Mesnil (at Champagne Girard-Bonnet) with 12ha to his name in the southern Côte.

Hewson’s pick: 30 top Côte des Blancs bubbles

Timeless blends

Three classic prestige cuvées of the Côte des Blancs

Billecart-Salmon, Louis Salmon Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France 2012 96

Taittinger, Comtes de Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France 2013 96

Charles Heidsieck, Blanc des Millénaires Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France 2014 95

Terroir transparency

Tasting the individual terroirs of the Côte des Blancs

Pierre Péters, Les Chétillons Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Oenothèque Brut, Champagne, France 2009 97

Agrapart, Minéral Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2018 95

Aurélien Suenen, Les Robarts Cramant Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2017 95

Guiborat, De Caurés à Mont-Aigu Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2016 95

Louis Roederer, Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France 2016 94

André Jacquart, Mesnil Experience Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 93

Domaine Vincey, Le Grand Jardin Grand Cru Brut Nature, Champagne, France 2019 93

Pertois-Lebrun, Le Fond du Bateau Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2013 93

Pierre Legras, Idée de Voyage Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France 2013 93

Veuve Fourny & Fils, Monts de Vertus Blanc de Blancs 1er Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2016 93

Petit & Bajan, Nuit Blanche Grand Cru Brut, Champagne, France NV 92

Coup de Coeur

The dazzling, the unusual and the memorable

Henriot, L’Inattendue Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2016 96

Pierre Péters, L’Esprit de 2019 Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France 2019 95

De Sousa, Cuvée des Caudalies Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2013 94

Legras & Haas, Les Sillons Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France 2016 94

Girard-Bonnet, A Mi-Chemin Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 93

Les Frères Mignon, L’Aventure 1er Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 93

La Rogerie, Le Bourg Sud Grand Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 92

Larmandier-Bernier, Rosé de Saignée 1er Cru Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 93

Veuve Fourny & Fils, Vertus 1er Cru Rosé Brut, Champagne, France NV 93

Affordable stars

Remarkable wines to begin a journey into the Côte des Blancs

Delamotte, Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France NV 94

Claude Cazals, Cuvée Vive Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 92

Diebolt-Vallois, Prestige Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France NV 92

Lilbert-Fils, Perle Cramant Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 92

JL Vergnon, Murmure 1er Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature, Champagne, France NV 91

Pierre Gimonnet, Cuis 1er Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut, Champagne, France NV 91

Roland Champion, Eclat de Craie Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut, Champagne, France NV 91

Le Mesnil-sur-Oger takes some of the power of Oger but turns it into something steelier, more austere, and even more long-lived – this is the gold standard for immortal, mineral Chardonnay.

The character can be so strong, in fact, that Le Mesnil is often blended, as Isabelle Diebolt in Cramant does for Diebolt-Vallois’ brut cuvée Prestige: ‘Le Mesnil is fantastic, super-elegant, and Chouilly is very fruity – apricots, Williams pears, yellow peach. So when we blend, it gives us the best of both.’

Then with Vertus and Bergères-lès-Vertus, both rated premier rather than grand cru, the feeling switches to something a little easygoing. ‘Vertus is a little less intense,’ says Girard, who follows others such as Larmandier-Bernier in using Vertus more for accessible styles.

The village, with its slightly heavier clay in places, even has a historical Pinot Noir plantation to the south, which the village’s growers – such as Veuve Fourny & Fils – blend into rare, delicate rosés.

Preserving elegance

What the warming climate is taking away in terms of natural crispness can be replaced, in capable hands, with a sort of mineral intensity and low-pH energy brought on by a new approach to viticulture.

‘Of all the changes we noticed, it was stopping herbicides and working the soils which made the biggest difference to the wines,’ says Antoine Bouret of Pertois-Lebrun in Cramant, who, like many others, finds that mechanical weeding and cover cropping help keep the pH low in the wines.

Five Côte des Blancs producers to watch

Domaine Vincey: Natural-leaning, expressive wines from Oger and Le Mesnil in the hands of Marine Zabarino and Quentin Vincey.

Girard-Bonnet: Intensity and energy from a future superstar of Le Mesnil.

Guy Charlemagne: It’s early days, but sisters Marie and Justine Charlemagne (below) are starting a new journey at this family domaine with enviable holdings in Le Mesnil and surrounds.

La Rogerie: François and Justine Petit Boxler bring their modern Alsatian expertise to a young domaine based near Avize.

Les Frères Mignon: Ultra-precise, transparent takes on the northern Côte from Florent and Julien Mignon.

Despite this, as for all Champagne, much of the vineyards’ output is still sold by the kilogram to the négociants and cooperatives, where quantity – rather than quality – pays the bills and modern (if more expensive) viticulture comes a distant second. The untapped potential remains huge.

For now, Suenen’s worries seem misplaced; even if ripeness and power are on the rise, the top wines here still channel what Didier Gimonnet calls a ‘philosophy of harmony and elegance over ultra-concentration’.

Yes, there are now wines showing low-yield intensity and oak influence that may win over drinkers who find more classical styles too narrow. But, even in warm vintages, the classicists can still prevail.

Current vintages

If anything, the challenge for the new generation is to afford the time – for bottles to age on the lees, or via aged reserve wines – that propels the very top wines in this current-release report forward.

The 2019 vintage – ‘the best raw material’ Rodolphe Péters in Le Mesnil has ever seen – is a gift for youthful blanc de blancs, powerful yet fresh (and sure to be a long-term classic), while 2020 promises a little more heat.

2018 is easygoing, whereas 2017 was intense and fine (despite travails elsewhere in Champagne). 2016 has exceeded expectations with its compact, ripe sense of refreshment (if not, perhaps, the greatest longevity), although 2015 has proven mixed, sometimes missing snap and refreshment value.

Perhaps the greatest news for current drinkers is that 2014 and 2013 both yielded a slew of classic, long-lived and focused blanc de blancs that are maturing beautifully (2013 a little more piercing and cool, 2014 a little more open).

Will these bright, acidity-driven, pre-2015 wines end up feeling like characters from another era? Perhaps. If there’s anywhere in Champagne that can find its balance in a changing climate, though, it’s here in the Côte des Blancs.

30 Champagnes from the Côte des Blancs

Wines are ordered by colour then descending score

Related articles

• Independent Champagne: Top trends & key names to know in 2024
• ‘Ultimate’ Champagne auction hits €1.35m in sales at Sotheby’s
• How to store Champagne at home

Seven years in the making, Krug’s new winery and vinification centre was designed by Paris-based AW2 Architects and engineered by local Gnat Ingénierie. Christened Joseph 2.0 after the house’s founder Joseph Krug, the new site is located in the grand cru village of Ambonnay.

‘Seven years may seem like a very long time, but in fact it’s no more than the time in the cellar of an edition of Krug Grande Cuvée,’ says cellar master Julie Cavil during the revelation of the new winery to the press in April 2024.

Until now Krug has made most of its wine in the historic winery in the centre of Reims. But it wasn’t an easy place to work, with many constraints, notably space and temperature control. Cavil says that as climate change brings increasingly hot weather, controlling the temperature of vinification becomes more difficult.

The time had come to embrace modernity and ‘create the best conditions possible for the wines and the people of the next generation,’ says Cavil.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Krug’s two new releases plus eight other wines tasted

Environmental and ergonomic

With 9,500 square metres of floorspace (you could fit my small London flat into the space 130 times over), there are eight separate above-ground cellars, five underground vinification spaces, 4,300 barrels (for Krug’s famous plot-by-plot micro-vinifications, never for ageing) and 330 tanks.

Much emphasis has been afforded to the practical nature of the new winery. Making workflows more ergonomic and prioritising the comfort and safety of those working in the space were central in the decision making processes.

The project was certified as High Environmental Quality (HQE) from its conception, giving the team a framework and management tool around which to base their decisions. The certification is designed to minimise energy and water consumption, maximise the reusing and recycling of waste, and limit the impact on the surrounding environment.

This was the perfect opportunity to truly analyse every step of the process for every member of team: ‘We took three years to decide on the ideal flow of work,’ says Cavil, ‘to find out what we don’t want to do anymore, and what we dream of doing’. This means the site maximises efficiency, comfort and ease for those that work there, but also enhances the already high levels of precision for which Krug are so well known.

Barrels are stacked on specially designed racks with small wheels (which perfectly match Krug’s purple-red pantone) to avoid heavy lifting and facilitate cleaning.

Minimal impact

The two identical buildings that make up the winery are linked underground, where the cuverie, reserve wines and racking tanks are kept. Having a large portion of the construction below ground has minimised the overall visual impact of the buildings.

It’s undoutedly modern-looking, sleek and smooth, yet it doesn’t impose itself audaciously on the village; on the contrary, much thought has been put into how the site flows into the feel of its surroundings. The colour of the copper roof blends in well with the nearby houses.

The feel of the place is more understated than you might expect, functional but classy. ‘It’s a bit rough luxury,’ says Cavil, and you can see what she means; it’s a working site, but it has the undeniable sophisticated stamp of the house.

Why Ambonnay?

Krug has a deep connection with Ambonnay, and the building was constructed on the edge of the village alongside the house’s prized walled vineyard, the Clos d’Ambonnay. The village was an obvious choice because ‘it is really the darling growth of the house,’ says Cavil.

Logistically it will be much easier for the team to operate in a larger winery in a village as opposed to the centre of a city, where Cavil says it wasn’t an easy place to work, having to move casks around every day to create enough space.

Can a new winery location affect the eventual style or quality of the wines? Cavil doesn’t think so, but ‘if you think about the energy of the team of the people who are working,’ she says, ‘that could be felt in the wines, so yes that is what could change.’

The team is preparing for 2024 to be the first harvest processed in the new space, ready to be filled with new energy.

Krug’s latest releases

Coinciding with the unveiling of the new winery, Krug released the two newest iterations of its Grande Cuvée and rosé.

Grande Cuvée 172ème édition

The 172ème édition, based around the 2016 vintage, is a delicate, floral and saline Grande Cuvée at this early stage in its life. The palate is taut, tightly wound, gradually unfurling into toasted fruit bread, rye bread and roasted nuts, wrapped around an intricate and taut lemon core. It’s exceptionally long, spicy, rounded and spherical in shape.

Notes of sweet unsalted butter round out the finish, which has such length, elegance and balance. 58% of the wine is from the 2016 vintage, which saw a lot of rain in the spring and close to flowering, with 42% from reserve wines. The blend is made up of 146 separately vinified wines from 11 different years, and the oldest wine in the blend is from the 1998 vintage.

Rosé 28ème édition

Already gorgeously aromatically expressive, playing notes of delicate raspberry leaf and rose petals alongside exotic orange and grapefruit rind. There’s an inherent freshness here, long cascading lines of acidity banked by uplifting minty notes. What a sexy wine, one that teases sweetness against bitter fruit skin, like biting voraciously into a plump, succulent cherry and savouring its fleeting, electrifying impact.

I love the toothsome, tasty fruit profile. The blend is 62% from the 2016 vintage, with 38% of reserve wines dating back to 2010, and 10% of Pinot Noir red wine, made up of 32 separately vinified wines from six different years.

Krug new releases and eight more wines tasted:

Wines are listed by colour, then by score.

Related articles

• First Taste: Krug 2011 vintage release
• Producer profile: Krug
• Collector’s Guide: Champagne

In the modern era, the idea of single-vineyard Champagne is commonplace, yet the concept of making a Champagne from a single site is comparatively new. The first that we know of, or that has stood the test of time, is Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses, which the house has been producing for nearly 90 years.

One of Champagne’s most renowned vineyard sites, the Clos des Goisses is also one of the most picturesque, its steep slopes descending dramatically towards the Marne river below. It was purchased by Philipponnat in 1935, and since that time the house has used it to make a single-vineyard Champagne of intense expression and distinctive personality.

Scroll down for notes and scores for 31 releases of Clos des Goisses and Clos des Goisses Juste Rosé

The Clos des Goisses vineyard

Located in the village of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, the Clos des Goisses is most notable for the steepness of its slope: in the old Champenois dialect, gois or goisse indicates a very steep hillside, and in the gently rolling terrain of Champagne, the 45-degree slope of the Clos des Goisses is all the more conspicuous.

Its fully south-facing exposure creates an unusually warm microclimate, averaging 1.5℃ more than the surrounding parcels and usually four to six days ahead in ripening. This creates a wine of pronounced richness and power, yet it retains acidity and structure thanks to its poor, intensely chalky soils.

‘These are the ripest Champagnes you can get,’ says Charles Philipponnat, director of the house today. ‘Yet even though Clos des Goisses is south-facing, it’s fully on chalk, so that balances the extreme ripeness.’

The vineyard covers 5.5ha in total, of which three are planted with Pinot Noir and the rest Chardonnay. The typical blend today is about 60%-70% Pinot Noir and 30%-40% Chardonnay, although prior to 1964 Chardonnay was actually in the majority, as it thrives in the site’s chalky soils.

Due to the exceptional warmth of the site, Philipponnat has sought to bottle wine from the Clos des Goisses in as many vintages as possible, rather than making vintage Champagne only from the best years.

Since the inaugural vintage of 1935, there have been remarkably few years in which the wine was not made: there was none in 1944 or 1954, nor in 1963, 1965, 1967 or 1968. The vintages of 1972, 1974 and 1977 were omitted, as were 1981, 1984 and 1987. However, the house has made every vintage since, meaning that between 1935 and the current release of 2014, there have only been 12 vintages that were not produced, which is testament to the extraordinary quality and character of the Clos.

First Taste: Clos des Goisses 2014 & new Philipponnat releases

Rosé arrival

In 1999, when Charles Philipponnat took over management of the house, he began making a small quantity of rosé Champagne from the Clos des Goisses as well. Named Juste Rosé due to its pale colour, it was originally made with the addition of a small proportion of red wine from old vines of Pinot Noir in the Clos des Goisses vineyard.

Since 2006, however, it has been made with the saignéemethod instead, macerating Pinot Noir to produce a delicately coloured rosé that is then blended with the white wine. ‘We moved away from blending with reds to blending with saignée, because saignée is less tannic,’ says Philipponnat. ‘It stays fresher for a longer period of time, as the red wine tends to become heavier earlier.’

The saignée portion accounts for about a third of the blend, and overall the Juste Rosé usually maintains the classic Clos des Goisses proportions of 60%-70% Pinot Noir and 30%-40% Chardonnay.

A very special occasion

In October of 2023 I attended a vertical tasting of Clos des Goisses in Malmö, Sweden, organised by collector Marina Olsson for the 25th anniversary of her Gomseglet Wine & Champagne Connoisseurs tasting group.

Both Charles Philipponnat and his son François were in attendance, along with an international group of writers and wine tasters, and our tasting featured no fewer than 25 vintages of Clos des Goisses, as well as all nine vintages of Clos des Goisses Juste Rosé released to date.

Clos des Goisses is a famously long-lived wine, often needing many years to show its best, yet the opportunity to taste vintages in maturity has grown increasingly scarce. The house has comparatively few bottles in its cellars, and prices on the secondary market have risen significantly in recent years (figures from Liv-ex, obtained in January 2024, show that the 10 most recent vintages have all increased in value over the last five years by between 16%-44%). Despite a 18.3% decline in Liv-ex’s Champagne 50 index (which tracks the price performance of the most recent physical vintages of the 13 most actively traded Champagnes) in 2023, the demand for old and fine Champagne has still increased when viewed from April 2020 to today.

This, then, was a rare opportunity to see the evolution of Clos des Goisses over time, from the 1970s up to the modern day. I have tasted large verticals of Clos des Goisses in the past going back to the 1960s and 1950s, which at the time offered a historical retrospective of the site; this tasting, in contrast, highlighted for me the contemporary era, and the advances that the house has made under Charles Philipponnat’s direction.

Old versus new

To be fair, a number of the older vintages didn’t show well at this tasting, perhaps due to underperforming bottles, and three vintages were obviously corked, without replacement bottles: 2008, 2006 and 2000. Even so, the more recent releases clearly showed a greater clarity, precision and purity of flavour than the older wines, as well as more complexity and detail.

The 2009s, both the white Clos des Goisses and the Juste Rosé, were some of the highlights of the tasting, and the trio of 2012, 2013 and 2014 was outstanding, seemingly indicating the direction that the house is going.

The disgorgement dates varied among the bottles in the tasting, as indicated in the notes. Some wines were from original disgorgements, while others were LV, or Long Vieillissement, meaning a late-disgorged release.

Philipponnat doses all releases of Clos des Goisses at 4.5g/L, in order to preserve consistency. Beginning with the 2008 Clos des Goisses and the 2007 Juste Rosé, the labels read Extra Brut rather than Brut, but this was a labelling change and not a change in dosage.

In general, Clos des Goisses needs a great deal of post-disgorgement ageing to fully reveal its character, and it can continue developing for decades. As good as the recent releases are today, they will greatly benefit from further ageing, and will reward patience on the part of the consumer.

There is no doubt in my mind that Philipponnat is making better wines today than ever before, and that today’s releases will show greater complexity, expression and potential longevity than the older wines in this tasting, especially given an equivalent amount of ageing. With Philipponnat’s relentless pursuit of quality, however, all signs indicate that the greatest wines are yet to be made.

See notes and scores for 31 releases of Clos des Goisses and Clos des Goisses Juste Rosé

Wines are listed by vintage and by style.

Related articles

• Regional profile: Champagne’s Montagne de Reims
• Champagne: Latest autumn releases tasted
• First taste: Moët & Chandon, Collection Impériale Création No. 1 Brut Nature

Next to Champagne’s rare treasures, the humble term non-vintage doesn’t exactly stir the passions. Defining something by what isn’t there seems a strange approach. Even the French term ‘brut sans année’ (literally, ‘brut without vintage’) sounds a little apologetic. But these are wines that are worth talking about.

Changes are afoot in the region, and it’s time to re-examine Champagne’s entry level. Non-vintage is the bread and butter of Champagne, accounting for some four-fifths of all Champagne sold, according to the most recent figures from the region’s governing body. The term refers to Champagnes made by blending wines from a base year – the most recent harvest – with reserve wines held back from previous years. The wine must spend a minimum 15 months in bottle for the second fermentation and ageing on lees, in contrast to three years for vintage wines.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 15 non-vintage Champagnes

Consistently inconsistent

The long-held line about non-vintage wines is that this blending process renders them consistent, year after year. In André Simon’s The History of Champagne (1962), the celebrated late author writes: ‘The non-vintage cuvées… are, and are always meant to be, as much as possible the same in type and style, whereas the vintage cuvées of the same firms vary from vintage to vintage.’ Champagne, though, has changed.

‘The idea of non-vintage is consistency in taste,’ explains Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, cellar master at Louis Roederer, adding that non-vintage was made to ‘correct poor years’ in an era when Champagne frequently struggled to ripen its grapes. ‘I think it’s a mistake… this is making Coca-Cola,’ he says.

Coca-Cola always tastes the same. The problem, though, is that non-vintage Champagne doesn’t; how could it, when climate change has brought even more unpredictability to the region’s wines? Faced with the extreme rain of 2021, when at Bérêche et Fils it was reported ‘June had only eight days of dry weather’, followed by 2022’s prolonged and troubling drought, how could those base vintages be remotely consistent? ‘Non-vintage is the most difficult wine to make,’ confirms Ruinart winemaker Louise Bryden. ‘Every vintage is so different right now that we have to adapt our vinifications every year; it’s the trickiest part of our job.’

One solution is to make more information available to inquisitive drinkers by allowing them to track which base year their non-vintage is coming from. ‘We want to talk with more transparency, so in the last five years we have had a very complete back label and a QR code that lists harvest base, reserve wines, disgorgement – lots of information,’ explains Lanson cellar master Hervé Dantan.

Champagnes Philipponnat and Charles Heidsieck also print their base vintages on the back label (although, slightly confusingly, Charles Heidsieck states ‘Laid in Chalk Cellars’ – always the year after the harvest base), whereas the practice has almost become standard for small, quality-conscious producers.

For some, though, this is not enough. Louis Roederer, and now Lanson, are going a stage further and giving each year’s blend its own unique number on the front label, for all to see. This, then, is the sign of a new mindset in the region: multi-vintage, or MV.

‘Vintage is a positive word,’ says Lécaillon. ‘I use the power of the vintage to make a multi-vintage that has something extra, adding complexity, adding age, generosity, precision.’ It’s not just a rebrand, though; giving each blend its own identity is a liberation from the constraints of non-vintage. ‘I no longer have an obligation to reach the same taste every year. I can take the best of every year,’ he adds. No more worrying, then, that the hot, dry 2022 base won’t taste like the tricky, tense 2021. Instead, an opportunity to celebrate the difference.

At Lanson, Dantan is keen to point out that the Black Label cuvée’s metamorphosis into Le Black Création series – a subtle rebranding that was officially announced with relatively little fanfare this summer – won’t see a dramatic change in the wines themselves: ‘It is a slight evolution, but the style will be the same.’

For Roederer, though, the change from the old Brut Premier to the new Collection series has meant a complete rebuild from the bottom up. Where to start? With the reserves…

Reserve wines

Crucial to all great non- and multi-vintage Champagnes are the reserve wines – these are added to the base vintage at a rate normally between 20% and 50%. Some Champagne houses choose to keep all their reserve wines separated by variety and vintage; some are all in oak, some even aged in magnum format (as at Bollinger). Depth and complexity can be added by using older reserve wines, such as the 40% of up to 20-year-old reserve wine found in Charles Heidsieck’s Brut Réserve, whereas more youthful or smaller additions, such as in Ayala’s Brut Majeur, will emphasise freshness.

Increasingly common in Champagne is the ‘réserve perpétuelle’ – a way of storing reserve wines, sometimes mistakenly referred to as a solera [the multi-layered barrel-ageing system used in Sherry production], whereby each year a single tank has wines from the new harvest added to it, and then wines drawn from it for addition into the blends. The end result is a reserve tank that, as it ages, contains diminishing amounts of every single harvest since the system began: a treasure trove of complexity. For Lécaillon, it is this – rather than the base year – that is the foundation of the Collection series.

Rodolphe Péters, winemaker at Champagne Pierre Péters in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, highlights one of Champagne’s most distinctive perpetual reserves, which makes up to a remarkable 50% of the entry-level Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs. ‘Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs is not a crowd-pleasing wine when it’s young,’ Péters says. ‘I like to keep the crispness, the freshness, the purity, but 50% reserve wine helps to smooth it out, to create a creamy base with a good texture.’

Spotlight on terroir

What about smaller and independent producers without such a library of reserve wines? How do they create a great non-vintage? The emerging estate Pertois-Lebrun in Cramant tells a familiar story: ‘At the beginning we didn’t have many reserve wines – only 25hl,’ explains Antoine Bouret, who manages the estate with his brother Clément. The cellar is small, tucked into what appears to be a medium-sized residential property in the village – no space for rows of reserve tanks, then. Once again a perpetual reserve offers maximum complexity with minimum footprint. ‘We purchased three oak foudres, and now they contain our perpetual reserve, started in 2013,’ says Bouret. Each new non-vintage bottling promises more and more complexity as the reserve grows in age.

In general, with smaller producers looking to showcase specific villages and vineyards, perhaps it makes sense that reserve wines play more of a back-up role than they do for the larger houses. It’s logical, then, that the smaller the footprint of a producer, the more its non-vintage wines are going to vary year on year; depending on your outlook, either a disadvantage, or part of the fun of discovering small Champagne producers.

It’s not only small producers making non-vintage Champagnes from individual terroirs, though; increasingly the Champagne houses are tuning their skills to make super-NVs – wines that focus on particularly interesting terroirs, single grape varieties or styles. Emilien Boutillat, cellar master of Piper-Heidsieck, is debuting the house’s Essentiel Blanc de Noirs in autumn 2023, made from a creative, and at times unusual, selection of Pinot Noir and Meunier vineyards that focus on ‘vibrancy of fruit’, says Boutillat, and it will, naturally, be backed up by a perpetual reserve system. Essentiel Blanc de Noirs will be one of the first regular non-vintage blanc de noirs among the well-known houses, which typically opt only for all-Chardonnay blanc de blancs: ‘It’s still niche, still connoisseur – but I really believe that it can grow,’ he says.

Insider tips

Even with the basic non-vintage wines, one way to boost quality is to trade up to magnums. Not only do the wines age ‘more gracefully’ pre-release, according to Palmer & Co’s François Demouy at the launch in June of its Grands Terroirs 2015 vintage in magnum, but producers tend to age the same wines for longer in magnum than in standard bottle. Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve is currently released as a 2018 base in 75cl, whereas the current magnum release is still 2016.

The world of non-vintage reaches its most weird and wonderful point, though, with those that are actually covert vintage wines. Sometimes this isn’t really an upgrade, for example with small or young producers bottling entry-level wines made without reserves.

Other times – as noted by Essi Avellan in her book Champagne (AvelVino Media, 2017) – it is. At Palmer & Co in Reims, the current non-vintage blanc de blancs in magnum is, in fact, a single-vintage wine of considerable repute (it won World Champion Classic Blanc de Blancs at the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships in 2022), made entirely from the 2013 vintage, as I learned during a tasting with the producers. A far cry from entry level, and it’s something of a ‘formerly well-kept secret’.

Things get a little more surprising when larger formats actually contain a different wine from that offered in 75cl. During my recent visit, when asked about the formidable quality of his entry-level blanc de blancs grand cru in magnum, a twinkle appeared in the eye of Rodolphe Péters. ‘These are actually vintage – from the cuvée l’Esprit,’ he conceded. Magnums of what appear to be entry-level Cuvée de Réserve Blanc de Blancs actually contain the (much more expensive) vintage wine. Palmer & Co offers the same supersize bonus from jeroboam upwards; an insider’s treat for the intrepid Champagne fan with more than a handful of glasses to fill.

Getting the most from Champagne’s entry-level offerings can involve a little sleuthing. It can also mean accepting that, in the search to refine grape sourcing, increase ageing and build complexity, the good wines have crept upwards in price. Many still think of Champagne territory starting at around £20 a bottle. The truth, unfortunately, is that what £20 will get you in today’s Champagne will be little more than a jumble of cheaply assembled parts and dosage.

The wines presented below, though, come from producers whose wines are anything but a compromise. Wines that celebrate what is there – and not what isn’t.

New approach: Hewson’s characterful 15 non-vintage Champagnes to know

All wines recommended are non-vintage or ‘multi-vintage’ blends

Related articles

• English blanc de blancs: experts’ choice
• Champagne styles explained
• Best Champagne houses to visit and how to contact them

Throughout the year, Decanter’s experts receive exclusive first tastes of the top new Champagnes, and as the festive season approaches, our correspondent Tom Hewson brings you his verdict on a clutch of superb, just-released cuvées.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the latest Champagnes released this autumn

Taittinger, Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut 2013

The 2013 marks a significant release of this benchmark Blanc de Blancs, with Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs grand cru villages of Chouilly, Cramant, Avize, Oger and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.

After the highly expressive and outgoing 2012, the unusual 2011 and three skipped vintages before that, 2013 promises a classic, cool profile.

While the 2013 harvest began on 10 September, there were still grapes being harvested in some parts of Champagne on 19 October, making it one of the latest vintages of recent times. Average acidity levels across the region were the highest recorded since 2008.

The result is a wine that, while carrying Comtes de Champagne’s usual silkiness and verve, requires further patience upon release; even short-term cellaring (over just a year or two) will likely reap rewards, although the fullness of time will likely render this a classic Comtes.

The Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut 2013 retails in the UK for £190.

Billecart-Salmon: two new Rendez-Vous

Billecart-Salmon’s series of limited edition, single-variety releases continues with two wines from 2015: Rendez-Vous No 4, a Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs grand cru of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and Rendez-Vous Cinq, a Blanc de Noirs from Pinot Noir of the Montagne de Reims and Grande Vallée (Verzenay, Verzy, Ambonnay, Aÿ and Billecart-Salmon’s home village of Mareuil-sur-Ay).

2015 has remained a much-discussed vintage of contradictions in Champagne, with a number of critics agreeing that the wines (especially those involving Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) potentially show what author of Champagne: A Guide for Champagne Lovers and Gourmet Travellers, Essi Avellan MW, calls ‘vegetal’ characteristics, despite the abundant sun and ripeness of the year.

Chardonnay, though, often escapes this, with the selection of fruit from chalky Le Mesnil-sur-Oger highlighting ‘purity of fruit’, according to cellar master Florent Nys. The Blanc de Blancs especially presents a fine take on a vintage that continues to offer cause for discussion.

Rendez-Vous No 4 and Rendez-Vous Cinq both retail in the UK for £79.

Deutz, Amour de Deutz Blanc de Blancs Brut 2013

Less contentious is the character of the 2013 vintage, ably demonstrated by Deutz’s latest release of its flagship cuvée, Amour de Deutz Blanc de Blancs. It’s a wine that, while perhaps not grabbing the headlines (or investment interest) as frequently as some of Champagne’s better-known prestige blanc de blancs, offers a great deal of drinking pleasure and cellaring potential.

Amour de Deutz Blanc de Blancs Brut 2013 retails in the UK for £128.

Rare, Rosé Brut 2014

Champagne Rare’s rosé cuvée really is rare; there are just 600 bottles available in the UK according to Nicolas Marzolf, head of Champagne brands at its importer, Liberty Wines. Originally the prestige cuvée of Piper-Heidsieck, Rare now sits apart as an independent name in the EPI Group (which includes Charles Heidsieck), with winemaking duties conducted by Piper-Heidsieck’s chef de cave Emilien Boutillat.

It is Boutillat’s predecessor Régis Camus, though, who looms large in Rare’s rise to prominence over the last decade. And it is Camus’ love of Pinot Noir from the Aube village of Les Riceys that leaves a stamp on the 2014, ‘for its fruit, its strawberry fragrance,’ says Marzolf. Rare is made with the addition of a sizeable 18% of Les Riceys red wine, whereas the previous release, 2012, used just 8%.

The effect is a deeper, darker Rare Rosé, tempered slightly by the fact that Boutillat (who was in charge of disgorging the wine) used Chardonnay from Villers-Marmery as the liqueur de dosage (the wine and sugar mix added to Champagne after the yeast lees are disgorged).

Also tasted in magnum, which offered a slightly silkier texture and a promise of a slower ageing curve, this is a Rare Rosé well pitched for the table.

Rare Rosé Brut 2013 retails in the UK for £257.

Latest Champagne releases: tasting notes and scores

Related articles

First taste: Champagne Gosset Celebris 2012

First Taste: Clos des Goisses 2014 & new Philipponnat releases

First taste: Jay-Z’s Armand de Brignac, Blanc de Noirs Assemblage Number Four

For the last 23 years, Moët & Chandon has been remarkable for being Champagne’s most prominent name not to offer a permanent prestige cuvée of its own. Twenty years before the house’s 300th anniversary, though, all this changes with the release of Collection Impériale Création No. 1.

Dom Pérignon, associated with Moët & Chandon for most of the 20th century, has not had Moët & Chandon on the label since 1999 (and has had a separate winemaker since 1947).

Scroll down to see tasting note and score for Moët & Chandon Collection Impériale No 1 Brut Nature

Today the two are considered entirely separate, although family ties are hard to deny; both sit in the front row of the LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) Champagne portfolio, so it’s no surprise that Moët’s new cuvée is in search of its own limelight. With a fraction of Dom Pérignon’s production volume, a multi-vintage, multi-vinification blend and zero dosage, Collection Impériale Création No. 1 is no doubt a very different proposition.

‘It took us 20 years to craft this Champagne,’ says Moët & Chandon global director Renaud Butel at the Paris launch, referring to the oldest wines found in the blend.

The importance of the cuvée is literally written in stone; visitors to Moët & Chandon’s cellars will be able to see a remarkable bas-relief, created by American artist Daniel Arsham for the launch, which celebrates what Butel calls the ‘archaeology of the future’.

Reminiscent of Champagne’s pure white chalk, with scenes from the house’s 280-year history set in classical forms yet also cracked and distressed as if seen from the distant future, the piece looks forward to the house’s 300th anniversary in 2043.

The wine itself throws a light on the sheer range and depth of reserve material available to cellar master Benoît Gouez. A blend of seven vintages, the youngest of which is a stainless steel-aged Grand Vintage 2013, followed by 2012, 2010, 2008, 2006, 2004 and an oak-aged 2000, this multi-vintage concept will continue to be released in new iterations as a permanent addition to the portfolio.

The wine is also the first that Moët & Chandon has ever released without dosage, something Gouez thought he would never do: ‘I always believed Champagne needed dosage, but in this wine there was nothing lacking’, he says. ‘We have haute couture, haute cuisine, so why not haute oenologie?’

At a time when the story of top Champagne is increasingly being told in terms of single vintages, single terroirs and even single vineyards, Collection Impériale is an apt reminder that blending can do much more than simply ensure consistency. In the hands of a cellar master responsible for one of the region’s most comprehensive collections of reserve wines, it can be used to carve a cuvée’s personality in sharp relief. The result is a wine of brilliant aromatic range that definitively fills what has long been one of Champagne’s more notable absences.

Collection Impériale Création No. 1 will be available in the UK from 1 December at Harrods and will retail at £200 per 75cl bottle.

See tasting note and score for Moët & Chandon Collection Impériale No 1 Brut Nature

Related articles

• First taste: Champagne Gosset Celebris 2012
• First Taste: Clos des Goisses 2014 & new Philipponnat releases
• First taste: Jay-Z’s Armand de Brignac, Blanc de Noirs Assemblage Number Four

King Charles and Queen Camilla began their three-day state visit to France in style last night as celebrities, sports stars, authors, winemakers and politicians joined the Royal couple at a state banquet in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.

Both the King and president Macron addressed the some 160 guests, who included high-profile figures chosen for their contribution to UK-France relations.

Attendees included novelist Ken Follet, French-British actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and British actresses Charlotte Rampling and Kristin Scott Thomas, playwright Sir Christopher Hampton and former French tennis player Amélie Mauresmo.

Bernard Arnault, CEO of French luxury group LVMH, was also present, as was Rolling Stones frontman Sir Mick Jagger, actor Hugh Grant and former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, as well as retired footballers Didier Drogba and Patrick Vieira.

Wines on the menu at the Versailles banquet for King Charles

Wines served during the lavish Versailles banquet have not been officially confirmed, but French newspaper Le Figaro said they included top bottles from Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne.

Ahead of the night, it said three of the wines served would be:

• Pol Roger, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 2013 was served from magnum
• Olivier Leflaive, Bâtard Montrachet grand cru 2018 from magnum
• Château Mouton Rothschild 2004 from double magnum

Before the banquet, King Charles and Macron were also due to share a toast at presidential residence the Elysée Palace with Champagne Salon 1948, the year of the King’s birth, the paper reported.

There is often meaning attached to wines chosen for such occasions. During his time as Prince of Wales, King Charles himself created a watercolour image that adorns the label of Mouton Rothschild 2004.

The vintage marks the centenary of the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France, established in 1904.

As a direct relation of King Edward VII, who played a prominent part in the agreement, the Prince of Wales allowed the label of Mouton Rothschild 2004 to be illustrated with one of his watercolours, inspired by a French landscape. He added in his own hand, ‘To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Entente Cordiale – Charles, 2004’.

Famous British prime minister Winston Churchill was known to be a fan of Pol Roger Champagne.

The house’s Sir Winston Churchill 2013 prestige cuvée was recently given 94 points by Decanter’s Champagne correspondent, Tom Hewson, who described it as ‘complex and dynamic’.

The wines reportedly were served alongside a menu created by Michelin-starred chefs Yannick Alléno, Anne-Sophie Pic and Pierre Hermé.

Dishes included blue lobster, Bresse French poultry with mushroom gratin, and concluded with a set of three hand-picked cheeses (two French and one English) before the dessert, Isfahan Persian macaroon, designed by Hermé.

It was reported that the Michelin-starred kitchen maestros finalised their menu before sending it to London for approval. It’s understood that King Charles does not eat foie gras, for example.

The royal couple are now set to meet sports stars playing in this year’s Rugby World Cup, which is hosted by France.

They will then arrive in Bordeaux, home to almost 40,000 Britons, where they will meet UK and French military personnel, meet firefighters involved in last year’s fires, and visit pioneering organic winery Château Smith Haut Lafitte in the Pessac-Léognan appellation.

There is also another banquet planned for the evening of the 22nd, and it’s believed some high-profile Bordeaux winemakers have been invited.

Related articles

• Château Smith Haut Lafitte prepares to host King Charles III
• Biden and Macron served California wines at state dinner
• From the archive: Inside the UK Government’s Cellar

All prestige Champagnes worth their salt need more than a story; they need a philosophy. Dom Pérignon has long been master of this art and it’s not hard to understand why, given the scale of the blending task facing the winemaking team: ‘At the start of the year I had 100 wines to assess from 1,000 plots – the largest quality vineyard area in France, maybe the world,’ Chaperon points out, referencing the 600ha of vineyard available to Champagne’s most prominent prestige cuvée. The ‘matter’ is certainly complex.

Scroll down to see the tasting note and score for Dom Pérignon Rosé 2009

Dom Pérignon is ‘not a property that is bottled,’ says Chaperon. ‘Our vineyard is a potentiality – what we bottle is a choice each year.’

Dom Pérignon is always a vintage wine, although the size and flexibility of the vineyards available increasingly means both the white and even the rosé can be made most years. Of the rosé he says: ‘I am not obliged to make it every year…but that is the aim. It is the most challenging wine to make, because of the challenge of blending the power of the red wine with the harmony of Dom Pérignon blanc.’

Dom Pérignon rosé is a rosé d’assemblage, meaning that a still red wine from Pinot Noir, here from the villages of Hautvillers, Aÿ and Bouzy, is added to a white Chardonnay blend composed almost exclusively from vineyards located in grand cru villages before the bottle fermentation.

The rosé is always released later than the white, with this edition seeing at least 12 years on lees.

Chaperon offered a window into the blending process via an improvisation cuvée from the hot, dry 2022 vintage. ‘The feeling I got, as I tasted the grapes in the vineyard on 17 August last year, was that it took me back to 2003,’ days Chaperon, referencing the heatwave summer when small grapes and baking July temperatures pushed harvest into August for the first time in Champagne’s history. ‘Everybody was still on the beach!’ he jokes. ‘We realised we had to harvest in three days…we were there shouting, “come back! Come back!”’

The 2009 harvest was not as early as either 2003 or 2022, beginning on the 12 September for Dom Pérignon after a slow start and a warm, dry August. The vintage is ‘embracing, generous and soft’ according to Chaperon, who explains that the rosé allows him to stretch his blending, playing on the ‘chiaroscuro’ – light and shade – between the acidity of the white wine and the tannin from the red wine addition.

Hot years do seem to suit what Chaperon admits is the ‘lesser known’ Dom Pérignon rosé over the widely known white cuvée, playing into the natural generosity and food-friendliness of the style – something that Chaperon calls a ‘frontier’ wine.

‘It’s Champagne, but it’s beyond Champagne. It’s a rosé, but it’s beyond rosé,’ he says, referencing the cuvee’s typically dark, copper-to-orange colour that comes from a significant red wine addition and long ageing.

Just as the 2006 rosé was a step up from the white, the 2009 dials up the drama and interest from the standard 2009 white release. Another example, then, of how rosé is nothing to be made light of in the hands of Champagne’s most ambitious producers.

Dom Pérignon Rosé 2009 will be available in the UK from 23 August 2023 and will retail at £350 per bottle from Clos 19.

See the tasting note and score for Dom Pérignon Rosé 2009

Related content

First taste: Charles Heidsieck Brut Millésimé 2013First Taste: Billecart-Salmon Nicolas François 2008First Taste: Champagne Rare 2013

Champagne Louis Roederer, one of the most forward-looking estates in Champagne, also learns from looking back.

The arrival of not one but five late-release vintage Champagnes from the 1990s redefines both heritage and vision, and reinforces the enduring style of the house’s vintage Champagnes.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for five Louis Roederer late-release vintage Champagnes

Revisiting roots

‘We are launching something that goes deep into our tradition and our history. This is our DNA,’ said cellar master Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon as he presented the wines in London.

Those who know Lécaillon know this is not mere marketing speak. Few cellar masters in Champagne have Lécaillon’s scope or perspective.

He explained that this release focused on the house’s vineyards in the Montagne de Reims, where Roederer ‘has made vintages since 1832’ and that similar late releases of rosé and blanc de blancs vintages would follow.

A personal aim

Lécaillon started at Louis Roederer in 1989, with 1999 his first vintage being completely in charge – admittedly with stints abroad at other Roederer estates.

‘Roederer is a house that traditionally did not keep all vintages. When I started in the 1990s, it was so difficult to speak about ageing potential but then not being able to demonstrate it.’

He thus decided to put some wines aside from each vintage ‘to show ageability,’ he said. ‘20-25 years of age is what I call the “window of beauty” for our wines. I think they really show their full potential. I am very happy that this is finally coming to life.’

The vintages

Lécaillon decided which of the 1990s vintages to release and chose 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999. Vintages were also made in 1993 and 1994 but are not part of the release. All wines are blends of Pinot Noir ‘softened’ by a smaller proportion of Chardonnay, depending on vintage character.

1990 A warm year, great for Pinot Noir which needed ‘freshening’ with Chardonnay.

1995 A ‘very classic year’ with a great balance between the two varieties, and the vintage with the highest proportion of Chardonnay.

1996 A year of high ripeness and high but ripe acidity, great for Pinot Noir. A vintage with ‘stamina’ that ‘shows its freshness intensely.’ At Roederer, 1996 was a year of change, ‘a transition to a reductive world.’

1997 ‘If 1996 was a gifted child, 1997 was the ungifted,’ Lécaillon said. ‘A difficult season which thankfully ripened at the end. It is firm, almost austere.’

1999 A hot year with lots of summer storms, rain and sunshine, resulting in lower acids and ‘juicy fruitiness.’

Beyond bubbles

‘These are original disgorgements,’ Lécaillon noted, stressing the difference between pre-and post-disgorgement ageing.

Ageing Champagne on lees acts like a tonic of youth for late-disgorged wines. Maturing wines without this tonic exposes their intrinsic ability to age.

‘With time, the bubbles are finer, creamier, softer and slowly disappear,’ Lécaillon said. ‘Then the magic happens. The wine shines and comes back. This is a good test for serious Champagne – is there any wine left when the bubbles are gone?’

However, Lécaillon noted that the longer-aged wines received a deliberately lower dosage. For instance, while being disgorged at the same time in 1997, the then-released portion of the 1990 vintage received 12g/L of dosage, while the 2022-release portion, which was left to age, received 8-9g/L.

An ode to energetic Verzy

Lécaillon explained the importance of one particular village in these vintages: ‘Our Pinot Noir fruit is mainly from Verzy,’ he said, where Louis Roederer himself had bought vineyards in the 1830s. ‘It has a singular position. It is at the highest elevation in Champagne and also is the village that has the most forest.’

For Lécaillon, this Pinot Noir has ‘the finesse of Chardonnay; it is more alive, more energetic. This kind of freshness from the forest is quite unique, we call it “le bouquet de la montagne”.’ The Chardonnay portion of the blends is mainly sourced from one plot in Chouilly in the Côte des Blancs.

Stupendous freshness and courage of colour

There was no doubt that these wines would be thrilling: few houses have been under such consistent and visionary stewardship as Roederer has been under Lécaillon.

Neither Roederer nor Champagne are strangers to late releases: Roederer’s own Cristal Vinothèque is usually late-disgorged, so is Bollinger’s R.D, Philipponnat’s L.V., and Dom Pérignon’s P2 and P3.

Releasing original disgorgements is different: you have to trust what was done decades ago without the final quality control afforded by late disgorgements where faulty wines can be discarded.

Charles Heidsieck has been doing it with its Collection Crayères, as has Piper-Heidsieck with its Hors Séries. These are courageous releases and a show of confidence that many others can only dream of – even if they had the means to hold bottles back.

This is a limited release with no more than 1,000 bottles and 500 magnums of each vintage. All vintages are priced equally at £270 per bottle and £550 per magnum and can be bought individually or as a set.

Tasted and rated: Five Louis Roederer Late Release Vintage Champagnes

Prices quoted are for 75cl bottles.

Related content

Don’t miss out tickets for the Louis Roederer Champagne Masterclass in June 2023

Charles Heidsieck masterclass at Decanter’s London Fine Wine Encounter 2022

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

Les Rendez-Vous de Billecart-Salmon No. 3 is the new release from Billecart-Salmon’s limited edition cuvée range.

Each release from this range showcases a single grape variety. The first two releases focused on Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir respectively, and this third iteration has put Pinot Meunier once again on a pedestal.

Scroll down to see the tasting note and score for Les Rendez-Vous de Billecart-Salmon N°3

The Pinot Meunier is sourced from the villages of Leuvrigny, Venteuil and Damery, in the heart of the Vallée de la Marne. The wine has a dosage of 2g/L and has spent 64 months ageing on lees. The base wine is 2015, with 33% of reserve wine from 2013.

Tasted side by side with the Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon Rosé 2008, the Rendez-Vous No. 3 is a more straightforward Champagne at first, with a surprising spontaneity. Its floral and vibrant bouquet, combined with a pleasantly saline finale, invites its consumption as an aperitif.

The cuvée Elisabeth Salmon was created in 1988 as a tribute to one of the house’s founders. It is a gastronomic Champagne that ages very well thanks to techniques such as cold settling, which prevents oxidation during fermentation.

2008 was a difficult vintage for Chardonnay, and the blend includes just 45%, a lower proportion than usual, compared to 50% in a classic vintage such as 2007 or 2006.

Pinot Noir (sourced from the Montagne de Reims and Grand Vallée de la Marne) accounts for the other 55%, which includes 9% of red wine from Valofroy, a south-facing parcel in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. 17% of the wine was fermented and matured in 15-year-old oak barrels with partial malolactic fermentation. The dosage is 7g/L.

Billecart’s style ‒ a tense and crystalline texture ‒ is a perfect match for food, including certain seafoods. Meat or fish will bring out the required thickness for a softer and more integrated acidity.

Les Rendez-vous de Billecart-Salmon N°3 tasted and rated:

Related content

First taste: Champagne Alfred Gratien’s 2022 releases

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

It is not often that one gets to taste the past, but the release of Charles Heidsieck’s latest La Collection Crayères afforded a rare opportunity to delve deep into the cellars and glimpse gloriously mature Champagnes.

This release includes both bottles and magnums of Charles Heidsieck Vintage 1982, originally released in 1989, and magnums of the house’s prestige cuvée Champagne Charlie, which was made in 1982 and originally released in 1990.

Scroll down see tasting notes and scores for Charles Heidsieck’s La Collection Crayères 1982 releases

The element of time

Heidsieck’s Collection Crayères 2022 is the sixth iteration of this late-release programme. ‘We have done it for the past six years and another one will come out next year,’ said Nicolas Marzolf, head of Champagne brands at Charles Heidsieck’s UK importer Liberty Wines at the tail end of 2022.

Previous releases were vintage wines from 1981, 1983 and 1985. The aim is to illustrate what time does to Champagne – why not show off when you have such magnificent, mature stock?

Marzolf explained that the wines are original disgorgements made in 1989 and 1990, meaning the wines have aged under cork for decades. This differentiates them from late-disgorged releases which benefit from the protective contact with lees in bottle.

Collection Crayères thus illustrates the more oxidative process of post-disgorgement ageing, prompting a different trajectory of tertiary flavour development. Brand ambassador Simon Stockton described 1982 as ‘an excellent vintage, rich but also elegant, fresh and high yielding.’

Extremely rare

Just 350 bottles and 120 magnums of the Collection Crayères 1982 Vintage were released globally – of which just 40 bottles and 12 magnums are allocated to the UK.

Champagne Charlie 1982 sees just 750 magnums released globally, with 70 allocated to the UK. ‘So, why release at all when only very few fizz geeks with ready money will come into contact with these wines?’ asked Stockton. ‘Because these releases are more than that – they are a testament to the ageability of Champagne,’ came his own reply.

Gastronomic wines

They are also testament to mature Champagne’s elevation to absolutely gastronomic wines. Marzolf noted that the release had waited until later in the year to take advantage of richer seasonal fare: ‘We wanted food that can compete in intensity with these rich wines,’ he said.

The wines indeed stood up to croquettes of pork, chicken and foie gras parfait, roast duck and mature Comté – the umami notions of Champagne and food absolutely on song.

There is a lesson here, too. If you still have a bottle of Champagne that has slumbered somewhere for years, chill it, open it carefully and, with any luck, you are in for a real experience.

Tasted & rated: Charles Heidsieck’s La Collection Crayères 1982 releases

Related content

Charles Heidsieck masterclass at Decanter’s London Fine Wine Encounter 2022

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

Champagne is one of the most fascinating wine regions of France, and it is also one of the most dynamic, as this is where tradition and change go hand in hand. It is technically just one large appellation, but multiple identities and stylistic expressions co-exist, adding to its dynamic force.

Still today, for many fun-oriented consumers Champagne remains synonymous with partying. They continue to adhere, if you will, to the ‘party line’ of most Champagne marketing campaigns from the 1980-2000 period.

For others, however, it is first and foremost a fine wine, and only secondly one with bubbles.

Momentum has bee growing for a now deep-seated trend towards the production of more terroir-focused Champagnes with clear identity markers of precise provenance. These are what some are calling in French Champagnes de lieux.

Two pioneers provided the driving force for the move to the production of wines from parcel selections: Francis Egly (Champagne Egly-Ouriet) and Anselme Selosse (Champagne Jacques Selosse).

Selosse drew inspiration from the Burgundian sense of place, which he observed during his studies in Beaune in the early 1970s.

This formed the foundation of his own approach to Champagne production. His deep understanding and painstaking cultivation of individual vineyard parcels owed much to the practices of the Cistercian monks in 12th century Burgundy.

Accordingly, after his return to the family estate, Selosse turned his back on the classic Champagne tradition of blending grapes sourced from all over the Champagne region. Indeed, he sought to capture the spirit of place in a bottle and enhance precise terroir expression. He felt sugar additions would not only mask terroir character, but also diminish the savoury salinity that he wanted in his wines, so he started using lower and lower levels of dosage.

Thanks to his thoughtful approach to wine production and outspokenness, Selosse proved to be a persuasive and visionary force for change that attracted a new generation of young growers who felt more attuned to his terroir focus than to the established codes of the big houses, which dominated Champagne production at the time.

Playing catch-up

For almost a decade around the 1980s, the well-established Champagne houses looked askance at this emerging school professing a philosophy of place, thinking that it would run out of bubbly steam as fast as it had seemed to burst onto the scene.

Their initial attitude could be explained by the simple fact that their large-scale operations did not easily lend themselves to such pinpointed production.

The big houses own hundreds of hectares of land and/or buy grapes or finished wine from a large number of grape growers. On such a scale, the Champagne production process is unsurprisingly more industrial than artisanal, and so it seemed to be next to impossible for them to make terroir-based cuvées released in limited quantities.

However, the success of the terroir-focused Champagne growers, or récoltants-manipulants – whereby the same pair of hands that grows the grapes also handcrafts and sells the Champagne directly – did not wane.

On the contrary, the winds of change that these producers incarnated brought greater freshness in their wake, both in the Champagnes themselves and in attitudes and viticultural practices.

Among a circle of informed consumers there is still a cultish devotion to the highly sought-after Champagnes of both Francis Egly and Anselme Selosse, and to the wave of innovators that followed, including Cédric Bouchard, Jérôme Prévost, Olivier Collin, Frédéric Savart and many others.

The high prices these bottles fetched on the international market created a stir among the big houses. Revolution was in the air, even if grower Champagne represented only a fraction of total Champagne production.

The traditional houses could not ignore this unexpected, even astonishing, competition from within the region itself, and to their credit, they mobilised their forces to raise their own game. They began by analysing the strengths of the new players on the scene and seeking areas where they could improve the quality of their products even further.

This created a healthy dynamic of lucidity and emulation in the region, and the vineyards were the major beneficiary of such change. Enhancement of terroir expression begins with high level, precise viticulture.

Credit: www.selosse-lesavises.com

Champagne’s new age

The major houses joined ranks with the growers when it came to being more attentive to the quality and care of the vines.

This was a significant turnaround from the infamous period between the 1970s and 1990s which saw widespread dumping of urban waste – the so-called ‘boues de ville’ or city mud – onto vineyard soils to fertilise them. Traces of plastic residue can still be seen here and there, although the regional wine council, the Comité Champagne, banned this practice in 1998.

In time, most of the actors involved in Champagne production came to understand how important it was to harvest quality grapes if the goal was to produce quality wine. But it was the most forward-looking and reactive houses that began to convert their vineyards to organic, and sometimes biodynamic, farming.

Another innovation spearheaded by grower-producers was providing dosage information and disgorgement dates on the labels. The traditional houses soon adopted this practice too.

They followed suit again when it came to releasing site-specific bottlings, which that growers developed to reveal terroir nuances within a single village and which a number of houses have also emulated.

This could be seen as a fleeting, even deplorable, trend, but it is beneficial for Champagne production as a whole. The revolution underway in the region has brought in its wake a vital momentum for improvement and innovation that has stimulated the Champagne market – which needed it.

This includes encouraging producers to rethink their approaches to dosage and disgorgement dates while also providing more information to the consumer about grape sources and terroir origins.

This latter aspect is clearly inspired by the Burgundian benchmark for respecting vineyard specificity and identity. More and more Champagne cuvées highlight a singular style or perhaps a grape variety, including those neglected ones that do not belong to the hallowed trio formed by the two Pinots and Chardonnay.

A bright future

Consumers and collectors all over the world have shown how receptive they are to this brave new world of Champagne production, and they are snapping up the most prestigious cuvées from the likes of Selosse and Egly, with speculation adding its own outrageous dynamic to the market.

Other growers aspire to achieve the same degree of desire and renown enjoyed by these two role models. Meanwhile, the traditional houses are starting to release more exclusive cuvées produced in minute quantities for the happy few able to afford the very high prices. I call this the ‘Burgundy effect’. The more intimate and select the cuvées, the higher the prices tend to be, and this leads to them becoming objects of speculation.

The quality of Champagne has undoubtably risen over this time, and winegrowers and houses are increasingly attuned to their vineyards and seek to put the spotlight on terroir character in their Champagnes.

Both camps are also taking advantage of global warming to propose a different approach to dosage and introduce new styles, but also reveal the powerful potential of terroirs (such as the Aube) that were once overshadowed by the big guns such as the Côte des Blanc and the Montagne de Reims.

All this is very positive and will enable Champagne to be what it should always have been: a wine and not a party drink.

Related content

First taste: Champagne Alfred Gratien’s 2022 releases

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

Hot on the heels of the release of the 2008, the sister house of Piper-Heidsieck has declared a new vintage rosé cuvée, ‘the third of a series that started with the 2007 vintage,’ announced Maud Rabin, Global Director of Rare Champagne, during our video tasting.

Although Piper-Heidsieck and Rare Champagne share the same cellar master, ‘since 2008, Rare Champagne has evolved to become a separate entity with its own production,’ stressed Rabin.

The 2012 is paler in colour than the 2008 iteration, and Emilien Boutillat, chef de cave for Rare Champagne since the recent retirement of Régis Camus, whose stellar reputation and award-winning track record can be rather intimidating, confirms that this is the style they want for Rare Champagne. It has a tenser and more crystalline style than the 2007 rosé, the first opus of this cuvée.

Scroll down see the Rare Champagne Rosé 2012 tasting note and score

This third opus of Rare Rosé is composed of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir from 12 crus, of which eight are classified as premier and grand cru. The Chardonnay grapes were sourced from Villers-Marmery, Vertus, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Oger, Chouilly and Avize, and the Pinot Noir from Verzy, Aÿ, Verzenay, Ville-Dommange and Ambonnay.

The Pinot Noir part of the blend includes 8% vinified as red wine, whose grapes came from Les Riceys, in the Aube department, instead of Bouzy, in the Marne, which was the case for the previous vintage (2008). ‘Les Riceys grapes have more acidity, and with a vintage like 2012, which is dense and powerful, they are more suitable,’ says Boutillat.

Broadly speaking, the 2012 vintage started badly but ended well. ‘Fortunately, the end of the season was hot and sunny,’ says Boutillat. This allowed the grapes to reach ideal ripeness.

For me, the Rare Rosé has a singular style: smoky and concentrated, with an endless finish.

There is a distinctive aromatic signature, showing notes of pastry, nuts, smoke and guava that really sets it apart from the classic white Rare Champagne. They share, however, the house’s fidelity to full malolactic fermentation, which imparts a deep, fleshy texture that will offer greater ageing capacity and will gratify consumers who enjoy Champagnes with bottle age.

Art de vivre

This Champagne house is a keen promoter of the arts, and in 2022 commissioned the artist William Amor to create a label for the six-litre Methuselah format of this newly released cuvée.

Amor’s idea for the design draws on the house’s recent B Corp certification, which recognises those making strides towards an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy. Amor states: ‘Everything is beautiful. Nothing is discarded, everything can be transformed. Each of us has to work on bringing beauty to it.’

Only 5,000 bottles of this Champagne are to be released. It was disgorged in 2021, with a dosage of 7g/L (the lowest in the short history of Rare Champagne rosé).

Yohan Castaing’s Rare Champagne Rosé 2012 tasting note and score:

Related content

First taste: Champagne Alfred Gratien’s 2022 releases

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

The list below is a compilation of the best Champagnes tasted by our experts in 2022 – the cream of the crop of new releases, as well as mature bottles that are ready for enjoying now.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the Champagnes which achieved 97 points or more in 2022

The selection is littered with some of the grandest houses in Champagne, although the appearance of smaller, independent growers such as Jacques Lassaigne demonstrate that it’s not all about history and prestige.

Louis Roederer’s Late Release Vintage series is well represented throughout, with the 1996 edition claiming one of the top spots alongside its sister wine, Cristal, a pair of Krug Champagnes (one of which featured in our Best Christmas Champagnes: vintage and non-vintage bottles to buy), a Taittinger Comtes de Champagne and Charles Heidsieck’s recently released, 1982 La Collection Crayères Champagne Charlie.

See all the Champagnes tasted this year in score order

Recommendations for mature Champagne include a Lanson Noble Cuvée from 1979, Pol Roger’s legendary Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill from 1982 (which you can also find in Charles Curtis MW: my top 10 wines of 2022), and a relatively youthful, 1994 Philipponnat Clos de Goisses.

Two rosé Champagnes appear on the list below: Krug’s 25th edition and the Elisabeth Salmon cuvée from Billecart-Salmon, which was described by Yohan Castaing as being ‘wonderful and elegant, with a vinous texture and a superb, calcareous finish,’ when he tasted it at our Vintage rosé Champagne panel tasting.

Decanter’s best Champagnes of 2022

More Champagne highlights

Top-value supermarket Champagne

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

This year, Champagne Taittinger has decided to release two bottlings of its iconic Comtes de Champagne: the classic Blanc de Blancs from the 2012 vintage, and a rosé Champagne from 2009.

As is well known, the Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs is made exclusively with Chardonnay, using grapes from five specific terroirs of the Côte des Blancs sector: Avize, Chouilly, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and Oger.

The Côte des Blancs is a strip of land stretching some 20km south of Épernay that is celebrated for its chalky bedrock, which leaves a pronounced imprint on its Champagnes.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Taittinger Comtes de Champagne new releases

2012 has turned out to be an excellent vintage in Champagne, but as Taittinger sees it, it was a year of contrasts, as it was ‘marked by a succession of extreme climate incidents that proved to be particularly trying on the vines,’ the house reported.

There were outbreaks of frost in February, followed by a period of mild weather in May, which was marked by hailstorms that randomly hit the area from April to July. ‘Then came a spell of sunshine without excess, and this, along with low yields, enabled the grapes to reach a rare level of ripeness,’ says Taittinger.

The consensus opinion is that the 2012 vintage is of very high quality and has produced wines with great ageing potential. This is certainly true for the Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 2012, which unquestionably has the capacity to not only last but also improve over the next 15 to 45 years, or even more for the most patient and daring consumers.

As for the pink-hued Comtes de Champagne 2009, it is, of course, produced using a mix of grape varieties. For this vintage, it is a blend composed of 30% Chardonnay sourced from grand cru villages in the Côte des Blancs sector and 70% Pinot Noir from similarly ranked villages of the Montagne de Reims area, of which 12% is Pinot Noir from Bouzy vinified as red wine.

The 2009 vintage is perfectly representative of the continental climate that prevails in Champagne. A very cold and dry winter was followed by a sunny summer with almost no rainfall during August and September.

These weather conditions enabled the vines to produce healthy and impeccably ripe grapes. The result for the Comtes de Champagne Rosé 2009 is a relatively dense, even perceptibly tannic Champagne that leads to a delicate, airy finish with a flourish of mouthwatering salinity.

Just as is the case for the Blanc de Blancs version of this luxury cuvée, this is a Comtes de Champagne that will keep well for a long period between 15 and 40 years.

Yohan Castaing rates Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne new releases:

Related content

First taste: Gosset Celebris Blanc de Blancs 2012

First Taste: Champagne Leclerc Briant Abyss Rosé 2018 and Le Clos des Trois Clochers 2016

Charles Heidsieck masterclass at Decanter’s London Fine Wine Encounter 2022

Initiated in 2021 with the 1971 vintage, Piper-Heidsieck’s Hors-Série collection unveils its latest opus. For this new rendition, cellar master Emilien Boutillat has set his sights on the 1982 vintage.

Scroll down to see the tasting note and score for Hors-Série 1982

In Champagne , ‘1982 can be compared to 2022,’ says Boutillat. ‘This is a hot, dry year with a delicate, early season. Fortunately, July and August were sufficiently dry and sunny to allow an early maturity, such as was rarely seen in Champagne at that time.’ So, the 1982 vintage can be summarised as having given both quantity and quality thanks to sunny and warm temperatures.

After 39 years in the house cellars (ageing under crown caps), 3,000 bottles were disgorged, with a dosage of 4g/L. The blend is 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Chardonnay, with ‘an important part of the Pinot Noir sourced from Montagne de Reims,’ added Boutillat. The remaining Pinot Noir grapes were sourced from the villages of Verzy and Verzenay, and the Chardonnay grapes from Trépailles.

At that time, the chef de cave was Claude Demière. ‘The role of the cellar master in those days was very different, but it is appropriate to pay tribute to him,’ said Boutillat. An additional 500 bottles will be offered in a dual box with a bottle of Cuvée Sauvage 1982, the original cuvée from which the Hors-Série is derived.

The bottles of Sauvage were disgorged in 1992 and have 30 years of bottle ageing. By contrast, Hors-Série 1982 was disgorged in January 2022 and aged on the lees for 39 years. This has brought additional texture and amplitude to the acid spine that was already evident in the Sauvage cuvée.

Yohan Castaing rates Hors-Série 1982:

Related content

First taste: Gosset Celebris Blanc de Blancs 2012

First Taste: Champagne Leclerc Briant Abyss Rosé 2018 and Le Clos des Trois Clochers 2016

Charles Heidsieck masterclass at Decanter’s London Fine Wine Encounter 2022

Champagne often plays a leading role at Christmas, so below are some top examples that reflect current drinking trends.

Champagne is used to being a major player during end-of-the-year festivities, but the game this year revolves around the revolution the region is undergoing, both qualitatively and economically – one that will reshuffle the cards for the entire region for years to come.

Scroll down to see our selection of the best Christmas Champagnes

Quality

A key trend today is that sub-regional terroirs, designated vineyards and, most glamourous of all, the rare clos (walled vineyard) plots, are increasingly marketed not only by the small, independent growers but also by the big Champagne houses.

The latter seek to up their game by adding more examples with terroir distinction to their range, alongside the traditional blends that personify the ‘house’ style that has long been their mantra.

Even if the stylistic signature associated with leading brands remains a commercial goal, the increasing number of special ‘terroir cuvées’ has revitalised the sector.

The trend has been led by the growers who are finely attuned to their terroir of origin, making Champagnes that are more precise and incisive. Their pure style stands out all the more so, as they often favour a lighter hand when it comes to applying the regional practice of ‘dosage’, the addition after disgorgement of a mix of sugar and wine known as the ‘liqueur d’expédition’ to balance the acidity.

Economy

At the same time, an economic revolution is underway in the region, propelled by the commercial pressures coming from the increasing appeal of Cava, Prosecco and English sparkling. Champagne producers are aware that they are faced with the challenge of reinventing themselves while becoming more attuned to consumer demand. And that means more organic products, more vintage Champagne and a better price-to-quality ratio.

Below are Decanter’s latest Champagne recommendations, all from bottles tasted and rated this year, meant to reflect the latest trends among the leading producers.

Some have the cachet of rarity and so belong to the ‘money-no-object’ category, but we have also included regular non-vintage bottlings from houses, supermarkets and small growers that have stood out in recent years in their push for even greater quality.

Christmas Champagnes: top rated and good value

Related articles

First taste: Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

Great restaurant Champagne lists

Alfred Gratien is a traditional Champagne négociant, founded in 1864 and based in Épernay. One of the singularities of the house is that for four generations, all the chefs de cave have been members of the same family.

The first was Gaston Jaeger, who began in 1905. Today’s chef de cave is Nicolas Jaeger, who started working with his father Jean-Pierre in 1990 and took over the cellar in 2007.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Champagne Alfred Gratien’s 2022 releases

To celebrate those 17 years of collaboration, father and son decided to create a special cuvée, Cuvée Passation, from the 2008 vintage. This is a very good, classic vintage, with a late ripening period that produced both quantity and quality across all grape varieties.

Cuvée Passation is a blend of 65% Chardonnay and 35% Pinot Noir, with a dosage of 8g/L.

Alfred Gratien only owns 1.56ha of vines, so purchases the vast majority of its fruit. The Chardonnay came from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and the Pinot Noir from Bouzy. Only 410 magnums were produced.

The Memory cuvée is very different; its name is the best explanation! It is produced from only the best vintages of the house. The bottles are aged in its underground cellars, remaining on the lees and disgorged when required, so as to obtain differing styles of the same wine throughout its life.

The 1999 vintage was not a great one in Champagne, which perhaps makes it a surprising choice. It was a year ‘of storms and tempests,’ according to the Comité Champagne. The harvest began in the rain but some areas were particularly well preserved.

Alfred Gratien bought in most of its grapes that year, so could choose the best fruit from the finest terroirs. Thanks to this, the Jaeger family was able to produce stunning Champagne in 1999.

Memory 1999 is a blend of 65% Chardonnay, 20% Pinot Meunier and 15% Pinot Noir, with a dosage of 6g/L. It retails at €350.

The last cuvée released by Alfred Gratien in 2022 is a Blanc de Blancs made from grand cru vineyards in Avize and Cramant. 2015 was a hot, dry year that produced great, ripe, fruit-driven Champagnes, and Alfred Gratien’s offering encapsulates this characteristic.

Yohan Castaing rates Champagne Alfred Gratien’s 2022 releases:

Related content

First taste: Gosset Celebris Blanc de Blancs 2012

Regional profile: Champagne’s Côte des Bar

A restless innovator: Champagne Jacques Lassaigne producer profile

Champagne Ayala is always a very good source of value in Champagne. As Bollinger’s sister company, it produces fresh, fruity Champagne, perfectly balanced and equally at home as an aperitif or on the table, and in a style that is both elegant and precise.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases

This year, Caroline Latrive, chef de caves since 2012, decided to leave the house to join another famous house, Deutz. She has been replaced by Julian Gout, deputy cellar master at Ayala since 2018 who has previous experience working with Champagnes Henri Giraud, Jacques Selosse, and Taittinger.

Ayala is well known for its Blanc de Blancs, but this year it released the third opus of Collection Ayala, a unique Champagne line-up produced in small quantities and released only when they reach their peak.

This includes a rosé Champagne from the 2014 vintage elaborated with grapes sourced from five grands crus (Aÿ, Chouilly, Cravant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and Verzy), each in equal parts.

This vintage was marked by drosophila flies causing damage (sour rot) to Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir grapes, yet still produced some very fine wines in many houses thanks to a warm, sunny and dry September.

The production is only 7,235 bottles and the cuvée is a blend of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir, with 5% of red wine from Aÿ and a dosage of 5.3g/L.

Alongside this limited cuvée, Ayala presents its new Blanc de Blancs vintage, 2016. This 100% Chardonnay is composed of grapes from three grands crus: Chouilly, Cramant and Oger, and is aged for six years on lees before receiving a dosage of 6g/L.

Yohan Castaing rates Champagne Ayala’s 2022 releases:

Related content

First taste: Gosset Celebris Blanc de Blancs 2012

First Taste: Champagne Leclerc Briant Abyss Rosé 2018 and Le Clos des Trois Clochers 2016

Charles Heidsieck masterclass at Decanter’s London Fine Wine Encounter 2022

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon, chef de cave at Louis Roederer since 1999, describes the unpredictable 2014 vintage as a ‘weather waltz’: an unusually warm spring, almost like summer, was followed by a cool, somewhat autumnal August, and finally a sunny and dry September that was almost like summer again.

In the face of such whimsical patterns, the winemaker needs to be on their guard. More importantly, says Lecaillon, one needs to have complete confidence in the land itself.

He describes his 2014 Cristal as ‘a wine of soil, and not a wine of climate’, adding that ‘climate plays an increasingly unpredictable game’.

‘Chalk is, and always will be, the essence of Cristal’, he says.

Scroll down for the tasting note and score for Louis Roederer Cristal 2014

Biodynamic approach

Louis Roederer only uses fruit from its own 45 plots to make Cristal. These vineyards are all farmed organically, and in 2021 they achieved biodynamic status.

These practises have been in place since 2014, allowing the vines’ roots to dig deep and to counter the potential problems provoked by what Jean-Baptiste describes as summer’s ‘oceanic’ weather.

He didn’t encounter any problems with the notorious Drosophila Suzukii fruit fly either; ‘organically-grown skins are too thick for them,’ he says, extending the putative protection to all threats from moisture and more specifically, botrytis.

All the more important because 2014, unlike 2013, enjoyed a long growing season, with all fruit picked during the seven days after 20 September.

And the results? Fabulous! Lecaillon describes the ‘density, radiance and elegance’ of the 2014, and one is disinclined to disagree.

Winemaking

There is great purity too, maintained by minimal intervention in the winery, altough there is the occasional experimentation with yeast (the black box of the winery) and oak. One third of the 2014 was fermented in large oak casks. Malolactic fermentation was suppressed and the dosage, as usual, was around 7g/L.

The plots (39 of the 45 available were used this time) are vinified separately and then blended – a process that Lecaillon prefers to describe as ‘composition’, the art of fine-tuning to make sure, in his words, ‘that we do not lose the essence of this great domaine’.

The emphasis is on dry extract – which denotes the viscosity or body of a wine – allied to low pH. He describes the juxtaposition of these two factors as a wine’s ‘passport to ageability’.

Gastronomic wine

Or indeed a passport to perfection, one might say. Poetic to the last, Lecaillon reminds us that Cristal, which dates back to 1876, recalls the epoch of Baudelaire and Matisse’s ‘luxe, calme et volupté’.

‘Consider this’, he says, ‘100 years ago, Champagne was a dessert wine; 50 years ago, it was an aperitif. Now it is a fully fledged gastronomic wine, its texture and complexity unchallenged. There can be no better example of this than Cristal 2014’.

Louis Roederer Cristal 2014 will launch on the UK market in mid-February, with a retail price of around £260-£270 per 75cl bottle.

Stockists include Berry Bros & Rudd, Harrods, Selfridges and The Finest Bubble. It will be available in Waitrose and Majestic from early March.

See the tasting note and score for Louis Roederer Cristal 2014

Related content

Best Champagnes tasted by our experts in 2021

First taste: Salon 2012 and Delamotte 2014

First taste: Louis Roederer Collection 242

Non-vintage Champagne accounts for nearly 80% of total production, and it’s this category of Champagne that takes up the most space on the shelves of wine merchants and supermarkets.

Although the category offers plenty of sub-£30 value, the best non-vintage Champagnes can command a hefty premium.

What is non-vintage Champagne?

Producers hold back a proportion of wine from every vintage to maintain their stocks of reserve wines.

Non-vintage (or NV) Champagnes are made by blending some of these reserve wines with wines from the most recent harvest, enabling subtle fine-tuning to achieve a ‘house style’ that reflects the philosophy of the producer.

Scroll down for our roundup of the best non-vintage Champagnes you can buy

Buying Champagne from supermarkets

Supermarket shelves are dominated by the most famous Champagne brands who produce enough volume suitable for large-scale retailers – among them Veuve Clicquot, Moët & Chandon, Laurent-Perrier, Taittinger and Bollinger. Supermarkets will also stock own-brand Champagnes sourced from co-operatives and growers.

Own-brand Champagnes are rarely the last word in quality as they are made with a very competitive price-point in mind. The worst examples are probably a waste of your cash, but the better examples offer genuine value for money. We have included some of our favourite supermarket own-label examples in the list below.

Given that the UK has the biggest market by volume but the lowest average bottle price, according to the Comité Champagne, it pays to do your research when buying Champagne in supermarkets and in the UK more generally. There may be a lot of Champagne available, but quality will be lower and more variable.

See also: From non-vintage to multi-vintage: Champagne rips up the rule book

Buying Champagne from wine merchants and online specialists

Venture into an independent wine merchant or visit an online specialist’s website and you’ll find much more strength in these offerings compared to the supermarkets.

Independents and small chains have smaller customer bases, enabling them to stock Champagnes from lower-volume producers, many of whom create terroir-driven examples that contrast with the blended approach of the big houses.

Can you age non-vintage Champagne?

Most non-vintage Champagne is designed to be consumed as soon as it is released. Having already been aged on its lees for at least 12 months and blended to accomplish the desired house style, once bottled it is meant to be ready to enjoy and is not necessarily expected to have the same longevity as top vintage Champagne.

That being said, good non-vintage Champagne will last, and indeed could benefit, from three to five years ageing in your cellar.

Since non-vintage Champagnes tend to sell for lower prices than vintage Champagnes, why not stock up on a few bottles and see how they age over the next few years; if not necessarily an investment opportunity, at least an interesting experiment.

Ask Decanter: When should I open my non-vintage Champagne?

Champagne: The facts

301.9 million bottles produced, of which 52% is exported

Non-vintage Champagnes account for 64.9% of exports by value, and 78.5% by volume

The UK and USA are Champagne’s largest export markets

Source: The Comité Champagne (www.champagne.fr) – 2020 harvest

The best non-vintage Champagnes to buy:

You may also like:

Non-Vintage Champagne: Panel tasting results

Insider tips for pairing Champagne with food

Simon Field MW, Alan Bednarski and Tim Hall tasted 93 wines with seven Outstanding and 64 Highly Recommended

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their most recently released white vintage Champagnes

Vintage Champagne panel tasting scores

93 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 7

Highly recommended 64

Recommended 19

Commended 2

Fair 0

Poor 0

Faulty 1

The words vintage and Champagne make for a felicitous and evocative juxtaposition. One would have been very surprised if James Bond had offered one of his many inamoratas a glass of non-vintage Champagne.

Yet tradition and glamour belie the hard facts of the market. Non-vintage (NV) Champagne has long dominated proceedings, built out of an aspiration for a consistent style, year in year out – something achieved only by blending different grapes across different villages and different vintages.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the top-scoring vintage Champagnes

But now ripening grapes is becoming less of a problem, and more and more Champagne houses are declaring a vintage, running the meteorological risks of the year in question with increasing confidence. The category must be on the up, surely?

The facts gainsay this assertion, however. The Comité Champagne (CIVC) numbers for 2020, a tricky year for many self-evident reasons, reveal that NV Champagne shipments made up 78.5% of the market by volume and 64.9% by value (see ‘Champagne rips up the rule book’, December 2021 issue).

Vintage’s equivalent numbers are rather feeble: 1.2% and 1.5%. Part of the reason for this is that there is a separate, largely vintage category, ‘prestige’, which accounts for 4.9% by volume and 16.5 % by value. With the other classifications (rosé, non-dosé) also on the march, there seems to be a squeeze on the ‘normal’ vintage Champagnes – trapped between the Scylla of NV volume and the Charybdis of prestige’s ever-present flirtation with luxury and aspiration.

It was high time for a tasting, then, and for some reassurance of the quality latent in this category. And quality we found aplenty, with seven wines of the 93 tasted rated 95 points or above and another seven scoring 94pts.

Testament indeed to the sheer class of some of the vintages on display, 2012 primus inter pares winning four of the top slots, and honourable mentions to that classically constructed vintage, 2013, and the older gems, 2008, 2006 and 2002.

Tim Hall, Champagne guru nonpareil, was especially enamoured of 2012, which he described as ‘majestic and concentrated’.

Indeed, all of the vintages tasted met with his approval: ‘The majority of these wines impressed with their definition and intensity, and their distinctive vintage character.’ Something, in other words, to lift them above their NV siblings.

See all 92 wines from the vintage Champagne panel tasting

Some terrific wines, then, although there may be a debate as to whether some of the entrants may have actually belonged in the prestige category.

It is sometimes hard to separate the vintage from the prestige, it has to be admitted, and this may be an issue in promoting and marketing the former.

Where, for example, do the superlative Rare 2008 (an almost embarrassingly frequent winner on the blind-tasting podium) and the wonderfully impressive Ayala, La Perle 2012 belong? Hard to say. No one, however, would deny their quality. The same point may be made about Perrier-Jouët’s Belle Epoque and the Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs.

No matter: what is in the glass has demonstrably trumped any pedantry over definition. Alan Bednarski gave us the expert sommelier’s perspective by underlining that so many of the wines were both fantastically approachable and yet worthy of extra ageing too – not mutually exclusive qualities, for sure.

For Bednarski, the tasting offered proof, should it be needed, that ‘Champagne is by far the best-quality sparkling wine in the world’.

The competition is hotting up just as the temperature is heating up; but on the basis of a tasting such as this, we can rest assured that vintage Champagne is definitely still a force to be reckoned with…

Best vintage Champagne: See the top-scoring bottles from the panel tasting

Wines listed scored 90 points or above.

The judges

Simon Field MW is the DWWA Regional Chair for Champagne. A Berry Bros & Rudd buyer for more than 20 years, he now consults on areas which particularly interested him in that time, with Champagne topping the list in France.

Alan Bednarski is a wine consultant, a Court of Master Sommeliers advanced sommelier, and a DWWA judge. He moved to London in 2015 and has held positions at prominent venues including head sommelier at Texture. In 2019, he came third in the UK Sommelier of the Year competition.

Tim Hall is director of Scala Wine, importing single-estate Champagnes to the UK and running guided trips to Champagne and Bordeaux. He won CIVC’s Champagne Ambassador UK award in 2013, and is a Chambellan of the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne.

You may also like

Dom Pérignon Rosé 2008 released

Champagne Day: 96+ point wines to try

Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque: brut vintage and blanc de blancs vertical tasting

The famous Dom Pérignon luxury Champagne brand, so closely associated with the legendary village of Hautvillers in the Montagne de Reims sector of the region, has just released two Champagnes from two very different vintages: 2012 for the regular bottling and 2003 for the special rarefied, long-aged edition known as P2.

Scroll down to see Yohan Castaing’s tasting notes and scores for the Dom Pérignon new releases

P2 2003

P2 stands for the Second Plentitude series in which some Dom Pérignon is held back from joining the general release for further cellaring on its lees to obtain different expressions of the same wine through its lifetime and let time work its magic to achieve additional complexity.

The regular bottling of the very singular, even controversial, 2003 vintage first arrived on the market in 2010.

‘2003 was in its way an experimental vintage that helped us to better understand what awaits us in the future’ explained Vincent Chaperon, the cellar master of Dom Pérignon.

‘We understood on August 15 that we had to pick just four days later. We then did some daring, incredible things. For example, we let the juice oxidise ever so slightly in the press machine to limit the concentration of polyphenols, which were quite high in this vintage.’

No one can forget that 2003 was a year marked by deadly hot weather in France, and an end to the growing season that caught many winegrowers by surprise in the Champagne region.

‘2003 was a year when the grapes attained ripeness in August, which had never happened in Champagne since 1822,’ added Vincent Chaperon, but it was also a case of ‘fast and concentrated ripening.’ He pointed out that ‘we have been looking forward for some time now to the P2 edition of this vintage, because we knew that the wine had the right stuff to follow a trajectory toward greatness’, which seems to be a hint that there might be an even rarer P3 version of this vintage in a few more years.

It must be said that this P2 2003 is indeed a very singular Champagne that stands out for its stunning harmony. It possesses the very ripe white fruit, concentration, and exotic allure of hot vintages, but it also conveys an almost tannic sensation on the palate, as well as a chalky and saline effect that is customarily more of a sign of cooler vintages.

2012

As for the highly praised, high-quality vintage of 2012, Chaperon sees it nevertheless as a one ‘belonging to the lineage of 2003’.

There is no doubt that the winegrowers have learned from the high temperatures of recent past vintages how to adapt their vineyard management and winemaking processes in such a year that began in hell before finishing in heaven.

Unlike 2003, however, 2012 was, in Chaperon’s words, a ‘slow-ripening year’ with a longer growing cycle that benefitted from fine fall weather that preserved a good amount of racy acidity, which resulted in vibrant, fresh, and precise Champagnes with crunchy textures.

The connection that 2012 has with 2003 is the apparent need for Champagne producers to adapt their traditional grape growing and pressing strategies in a manner that will enhance the expression of different terroirs.

The Dom Pérignon 2012 is a racy thoroughbred that can hardly contain its palpable energy and vivacity, so quite distinct from the creamy style of the 2003 while possessing the unmistakable Dom Pérignon personality, the hallmarks of which are autolytic aromas of hazelnut and pastry.

It is as if this Champagne points the way to a whole new dimension of possibilities without diminishing the brand pedigree.

For a long while, legend had it that Dom Pérignon was the inventor of Champagne sparkling wine. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, he was indeed an innovator when it came to the work to be done in the vat room, including the blending of different lots of wine in a way that lets diversity express itself within a common framework.

This is exactly the sort of challenge that Vincent Chaperon is now facing. So things are turning full circle in a return to the house’s roots.

See Yohan Castaing’s tasting notes and scores for the Dom Pérignon new releases

You may also like

Producer profile: Dom Pérignon ChampagneDom Pérignon 1990-2009: ‘The mother of all DP tastings’First taste: Krug new releasesFirst taste: Louis Roederer Cristal 2013

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon took the reins as chef de cave at Louis Roederer in 1999, and has spent the last 22 years building his reputation as the finest craftsman in Champagne.

He is excited about the 2013 vintage release – very excited – describing it as ‘2008 + +’, exciting indeed for those of us who felt that the 2008 was flirting perilously close to perfection. 

Scroll down for Simon Field MW’s Cristal 2013 tasting note and score

In 2008 only 40% of the vineyards were certified as biodynamic; in 2013 they all are, and the difference is palpable. ‘2013’, he maintains, ‘has everything that 2008 had; precision, racy chalky purity, brightness and finesse… with a little extra fleshy ripeness for good measure’.

He describes the wine, memorably, as ‘half chalk, and half sunshine’. In 2008 the metronome swung towards the chalk; in 2012 it veered towards the sunshine. In 2013 it is deftly poised in the middle, perfectly harmonious in other words.

Wonderfully eloquent

Praise indeed from a man not given to hyperbole. But to what extent does this brightly fizzing liquid support his claims?

With unnerving fidelity, it turns out. 2013, many will remember, was a year when spring took forever to emerge; the late cycle meant that the recent spring frost issues of 2021 and 2017 were largely avoided, and, at the other end of the season, an Indian summer guided the vines to full maturity with great relish.

The harvest, late and protracted by today’s standards, was brought in between 27 September and 15 October, only the Pinot Noirs from the Montagne de Reims (Verzy and Verzenay in particular) threatened by the prospect of botrytis.

The ‘A Team’ of pickers were therefore sent out to sort the fruit in these vineyards. As usual in Cristal, the Pinot edges the Chardonnay in a 60% / 40% blend, but both are wonderfully eloquent.

Acidity and sweetness mirror 2008, but lower yields and the legacy of the sunny mid-season have raised the pH a little, reducing the malic acid and prompting Lecaillon to dispense with the malolactic fermentation.

A generous texture, bolstered by the one-third oak used for the first fermentation, is not thereby jeopardised; on the contrary, the richness of the wine is seemingly enhanced by its grip of freshness and taut acidity.

Tension is all in Champagne, a region of marginal climates and the need for precision in winery and vineyard alike. The wine was disgorged last autumn, and given a dosage of 7.5g/L.

Radical departure

The traditional Champagne philosophy of consistency of style above all is turned on its head here by Lecaillon.

Now, finally, this beguilingly brilliant winemaker has the confidence to maintain that the identity of the vintage and of the terroir itself must trump that of the house. An uncontentious statement in many fine wine regions, maybe, but in Champagne it signals a radical departure.

Who better than Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon to herald a brave new era? With the outstanding 2013, he has laid down a template with great gusto and authority.

The wine

In the UK, Louis Roederer Cristal 2013 is available to order from fine wine merchants including Harrods, Selfridges, Fortnums, Hedonism, The Champagne Company, and Harvey Nichols. The recommended retail price is £220.

See Simon Field MW’s Cristal 2013 tasting note and score

You may also like:

How Champagne’s 2020 vintage is shaping up

First taste: Perrier-Joüet Belle Epoque 2013

Expert guide to Pinot Meunier Champagnes

An important chapter in the history of the Perrier-Jouët Champagne house ended in November 2020, and a new exciting chapter began.

After 37 years of service for the house so well-known for its stylish art deco label, cellar master Hervé Deschamps retired, thus opening the door for Séverine Frerson to become only the eighth cellar master since the creation of the house in 1811.

Frerson had joined the team at Perrier-Jouët in October 2018, so was able to work alongside Deschamps for two years before her promotion.

Scroll down for Yohan Castaing’s Belle Epoque 2013 tasting note and score

The 2013 vintage Belle-Époque is thus the first vintage to be presented by the new cellar master on her own.

It is a cuvée from a vintage that Frerson describes as ‘atypical, because it is the last vintage of recent years for which the harvest took place at the end of September or ‘beginning of October.

Freezing winter, late harvest

The winter was cold, with freezing temperatures in March. On 16 March, the mercury dropped to -16.5°C in Mailly-Champagne.

However, ‘the spring was wet with mild temperatures, which delayed flowering until early July. When it finally came, the flowering was rapid during a lull in the rain.’ Then, as noted by Frerson, ‘the summer was dry and sunny’.

In contrast to 2020 – when the region experienced, on 17 August, the earliest start for the harvest in the history of Champagne production – 2013 was the latest harvest in recent times.

Picking for the 2013 Belle Epoque began on 30 September for the Chardonnays and ended on 1 October with the Pinot Noirs and Pinot Meuniers.

Joint effort

From the start, after her arrival in 2018, Séverine Frerson participated in the blending process with Hervé Deschamps.

‘This is a vintage Champagne crafted by four hands. 2013 is the transition vintage in which Hervé did the blending while we worked together on the disgorging liqueur.’

The 2013 is composed of 50% Chardonnay, 45% Pinot Noir, ‘especially from the Montagne de Reims sector including the villages of Mailly-Champagne, Verzenay, and Ambonnay’ and 5% Pinot Meunier.

Frerson affirms that this vintage Champagne has ‘benefited from lovely, fruit-driven Chardonnay that provided structure and textural richness,’ while the Pinot Noir was ‘less full-bodied and big-shouldered than it can sometimes be,’ but imparted a certain dimension that she likens to verticality.

The dosage is 8g/litre with a liqueur made from reserve wines kept in stainless steel vats. Ageing took place entirely in stainless steel

The wine

In the UK, Perrier Joüet Belle Epoque 2013 is available to order from fine wine merchants including Harvey Nichols, Fortnum & Mason, The Master of Malt and The Champagne Company. The recommended retail price is £160.

See Yohan Castaing’s Belle Epoque 2013 tasting note and score

You may also like:

How Champagne’s 2020 vintage is shaping up

Louis Roederer reveals new still wines from Champagne

Expert guide to Pinot Meunier Champagnes

The bronze bust of Lilly Bollinger looked on approvingly as we entered the inner sanctum of Maison Bollinger, albeit by Zoom, to experience the latest in the series of RD wines which she initiated in 1967, with the launch of the first vintage (1952).

Scroll down for Simon Field MW’s Bollinger RD 2007 tasting note and score

At the time, the concept was shocking and counter-intuitive, not least the mere six grams of sugar by way of dosage. The norm then was closer to 20g/L.

With this latest release, the 2007, it is 3g/L, putting the wine firmly in the Extra Brut camp.

This is the 26th release of RD, which is always a vintage of Grand Année that has been held back and given extended ageing on lees in the Bollinger cellar  – 14 years, compared to seven years for the Grand Année. The initials RD stand for ‘récemment dégorgé’, or ‘recently disgorged’.

The company closely guards the amount made in any given vintage, but both the vintages are rare and quantities are small.

The raison d’être behind RD chimes perfectly with the Bollinger house philosophy, namely the creation of a supremely elegant yet magisterially powerful wine, a wine able to rise to the challenge of extended lees ageing.

There is not, as yet, a third ‘plénitude’, à la Dom Pérignon, but who knows: the wine seems to age in such a magnificently mysterious fashion, that there could always be an argument for taking the next step. 

Ageing potential

By way of demonstration, the deputy cellarmaster Denis Bunner, who was joined in the presentation by Bollinger’s general manager, Charles-Armand de Belenet, had sent over two ‘mystery bottles’ to accompany the RD 2007.

What could they be? Hard to say, but one thing was clear: the cork of sample one was almost impossible to pull! Some resorted to garden implements, or worse – all was ultimately well worth the effort and all completely fascinating; it turned out that both bottles were from 1976 (older readers may well remember the endless summer that year), but one had been disgorged in 2020, the other in 2014.

Counterintuitively, the more recent disgorgement initially tasted fully mature, almost maderised, beguilingly so, and the older disgorgement was whistle-fresh, with flinty acidity and inordinate complexity immediately evidenced. A mere 30 minutes later, although not quite a reversal of fortune, it was extraordinary to witness the rejuvenation of the first sample, now alarmingly fresh and completely delicious. Sadly neither wine is commercially available.

New label design

The 2007 RD is made up of 70% Pinot Noir, dominated by fruit from Verzenay (usually Aÿ takes the lead), and 30% Chardonnay, sourced mainly from Cramant.

In youth the style plays on poise and tension, the sheer power latent yet never far away. The fruit is sourced from 14 key vineyards (sometimes this number goes up to 25), 91% of which are grand cru.

The wine has been fermented in barrel, aged on natural cork for the 14-year period, and then disgorged in July 2021, the date clearly inscribed on the front label, which has been redesigned using the original aluminium alloy and same lettering as for the 1952.

The 2007 vintage in Champagne was perceived as somewhat lacklustre by some, its harvest brought in relatively early in September after welcome sunshine in late July and August. Some may have questioned whether it was even a year to contemplate an RD release, yet Bollinger – with characteristic verve and undeniable panache – has produced an outstanding wine, a little more reserved than some maybe, but with plenty to give over the medium-to-long term. 

The wine

In the UK, Bollinger RD 2007 will be available to order from fine wine merchants from 9 March, at £625 per 6 x 75cl case IB ex VAT.

See Simon Field MW’s Bollinger RD 2007 tasting note and score

You may also like:

How to store Champagne at home

Louis Roederer reveals new still wines from Champagne

Best Champagnes of 2020, tasted by our experts

Delamotte has marked its 260th anniversary with the release of its 2012 vintage blanc de blancs, a triumph over adversity in the context of the apocalyptic weather conditions that Champagne suffered until the summer of that vintage.

The first vintage release since 2008, the wine is one of just four cuvées in Delamotte’s range – the others being the Brut NV, the blanc de blancs NV and the rosé NV.

Scroll down for the tasting notes and scores of Delamotte’s Blanc de Blancs 2012, 1999 and NV

Blend of grands crus

A blend of six Chardonnay grands crus, there are grapes from Oger, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Avize, Cramant, Chouilly and Oiry. ‘It was always my dream to blend these grands crus,’ says Delamotte’s Didier Depond, who created this blend for the first time in the 2008 vintage.

Le Mesnil is the heart of the blend, contributing chalky acidity, minerality and a saline hint. Avize gives balance and structure to Oger’s ripe fruit, while Cramant gives smoky minerality. Chouilly adds structure and length, Oiry roundness and acidity.

Oiry is probably the least known of the six, but Depond insists it plays a valuable role: ‘It’s not a famous, trendy area – it has a fairly low profile – but I love the grapes, which are similar to those from Le Mesnil,’ he says.

Vinification took place in stainless steel tanks, with the wine going through malolactic fermentation before the second fermentation in bottle. The wines were left on their lees in the cellar for seven years before disgorged in October 2019 with a dosage of 5g/L.

Vintage style

When asked to articulate the character of the 2012 vintage release, Depond describes it as ‘linear, precise, fresh and clean – a Champagne for Champagne lovers.’

2012 has similarities with 2008, he comments, but is more feminine in style than either the 2004 or 2008 releases. Around 70,000 bottles of the vintage blanc de blancs are made, modest compared with the output of the larger houses in the region.

Founded in 1760, Delamotte is the fifth oldest Champagne house. The current chapter in its history opened in 1988, when it was integrated into Laurent-Perrier group. A few months later, Laurent-Perrier acquired Delamotte’s neighbour in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, the tiny Champagne Salon. Both have been managed since 1997 by Depond, who is president of both houses.

See the tasting notes and scores of Delamotte’s Blanc de Blancs 2012, 1999 and NV

You may also like:

Best Champagnes of 2020 tasted by our experts

Champagne vintage guide

Has the Champagne price bubble burst?

The 2012 vintage stands out for the quality of the Champagnes, but also for an apocalyptic growing season that ended in heavenly conditions for the harvest.

Scroll down to see a selection of top-scoring 2012 vintage Champagnes worth seeking out 

The vintage conditions were hellish from the start, marked by winter and spring frosts, torrential rains and hailstorms. An outbreak of fungal diseases including oidium, a cold snap during the crucial flowering phase, some hydric stress and scorched berries during the summer leading up to the harvest made for an ongoing battle fought by wine-growers.

Didier Mariotti, today the cellarmaster for Veuve Clicquot but holding that post for GH Mumm back in 2012, confesses that already in February, ‘it was a particularly complicated start for the season’.

Denis Brunner, deputy cellarmaster for Bollinger, evokes a biblical scene when he declared that ‘we were confronted with the seven plagues of Egypt’. A major blow was the drop in winter temperatures to as low as -20°C, which could prove harmful for the budding phase.

Fortunately, March was comparatively mild, and budding was in the end quite early, especially for Chardonnay. Then drama struck on the morning of 17 April when temperatures plummeted to -5°C in the vineyard – but even as low as -7.7°C in the city of Reims – causing significant damage to younger vines.

Record rainfall

From April to July, rain drenched the region, with June marked by a cumulative rainfall twice as high as normal for the month – in fact, an all-time high since 1961. Hail joined in the havoc, affecting nearly 1,000 hectares, mainly in the Aube to the south.

Under such wet conditions, fungal diseases, including both downy mildew and powdery mildew – which rarely strike at the same time – were particularly virulent. Wine-growers had to redouble their efforts to combat such scourges and preserve the harvest.

It was under these cold and rainy conditions, as noted by Denis Brunner, that flowering began on 19 June, leading to incidents of couture, or shatter, in which some berries failed to set or even fell off the bunch, but also millerandage, which is poor fertilisation resulting in small grapes without seeds, although retaining the capacity to ripen at a different pace. 

Fortunately, the rain stopped in mid-July in the aftermath of a few hailstorms, giving way to a hot and dry August, but one without heat spikes. There was, according to Dennis Brunner, ‘some hydric stress, but not that much, thanks to some welcome rain at the right moment, so the harvest was able to begin 90 days after flowering, which conformed to the 10-year average.’

Didier Mariotti observed that the harvest proceeded without a hitch and was relatively ‘carefree’.

Purity and potential to age

‘2012 is a vintage marked by a slow-ripening crop in which the three classic grape varieties attained the same level of maturity and retained satisfactory acidity,’ is Denis Bunner’s appraisal. He added that ‘it is a great vintage that has produced generous Champagnes offering aromatic panache, textural density, and a similarity to those of 2002.’ 

It is easy to agree with him when tasting Champagnes that offer both immediate gratification but also ageing potential, as evidenced by the crystalline and incisive palates that distinguish many of the samples from this vintage.

Indeed, the best 2012s should reveal their greatness even more over time and demonstrate the qualitative progress that continues to be made both in the vineyards and in the cellars throughout the Champagne region.

Stylistically, the slow ripening of the grapes in 2012 was a key factor in producing an alluring array of radiant and vivacious Champagnes endowed with bright, white fruit and floral scents.

Overall

The overall character is definitely less sun-drenched than that of recent heatwave vintages with their spicy, pastry notes. This difference of character is just as apparent on the palate, with 2012s marked by crisp purity, fresh aromatics and impressive length, all boosted by racy acidity.

The frost, hail and wet conditions during the growing season certainly lowered yields, but also led to more concentrated grapes for the remaining crop, hence the marked density of texture for these Champagnes, while the degree of ripeness enabled by the warm summer ensured their potential for ageing.

In the end, against all expectations during the run-up to the harvest, 2012 turned out to be a great vintage, especially for Pinot Noir, another key element for producing Champagnes that will stay the distance.

Fresher and less solar in style than those of 2010, the wines also surpass those from 2013 and will rival the best examples produced in certain sectors of the region in 2014. There is nevertheless one significant downside, which is a certain heterogeneity in quality due to the challenging weather throughout much of the growing season.

See a selection of top-scoring 2012 vintage Champagnes worth seeking out 

The following Champagnes have all been recommended on Decanter Premium during the past 12 months.

You may also like

Best Champagnes of 2020 tasted by our expertsRelaunch: Charles Heidsieck Mis en Cave ChampagnesNon-Vintage Champagne: Panel tasting results

Simon Field MW, Anne Krebiehl MW and Tim Hall tasted 68 non-vintage Champagnes with two outstanding and 51 highly recommended.

Entry criteria: Decanter invited producers in Champagne to submit their main white, brut non-vintage cuvée, with a particular focus on members of the Union des Maisons de Champagne.

The verdict

Champagne houses face unprecedented challenges, agreed our panel, from sales in decline due to Covid and from climate change, but an impressive set of wines were fielded.

A very positive showing, from a region in turmoil, concluded our tasters. Only 14 of the 68 wines tasted scored lower than 90 points – a significant achievement for this entry-level, though hugely important category.

‘I was impressed by the general classic character of most of the wines we tasted,’ said Tim Hall. ‘There’s no question that Champagne is getting riper and fuller bodied, but this tasting showed that producers are making great efforts to preserve freshness and balance, and to combat the effects of climate change.

Scroll down for the top scoring Non-Vintage Champagne panel tasting notes and scores

‘The practice of what goes on in the face of climate change will take years to come to fruition,’ he continued, ‘but I was encouraged by these early efforts.’

‘There are two key factors when it comes to the quality of brut sans année [non-vintage],’ said Simon Field MW: ‘how much reserve wine a producer adds, and the dosage regime employed. The corollary to this is the ripeness of the fruit, which is increasing as the climate gets warmer. Dosage is unquestionably coming down, because the fruit is getting riper. At the same time, the percentage of reserve wine used has generally been increasing.’

Most of the wines tasted here probably had frost-affected 2017 as their base year, said Field. ‘It was a horrendous year,’ added Hall, ‘and the producers of the best wines here would have compensated by upping the level of reserve wines from 2013, 2015 and 2016 – maybe even fractions of the wonderful 2012 vintage.

‘There’s a massive surplus of reserve wines in Champagne at the moment, and we’ll see the proportion used increase, which is not necessarily a bad thing for the basic non-vintage offering of every major house.’

Both Field and Anne Krebiehl MW commented on the stylistic diversity on show. ‘There really is something for everyone,’ enthused Krebiehl. ‘And most of these were a pleasure to drink. I relished the freshness, the autolysis – even if it wasn’t pronounced – and the roundness.’

Krebiehl felt the Pinot Noir-based wines performed best – the best Chardonnay is probably used in other cuvées, she speculated. Field was also full of praise for these wines: ‘The Pinot Noirs excelled,’ he agreed, ‘the ripe, forward, red-berry character suiting the autolytic development.’

Hall emphasised the need for the Champagne houses to send a clear and different message to wine lovers this Christmas – 50% of Champagne is sold between September and January, he pointed out. And a wine that is associated primarily with celebration has suffered more than any other category in this pandemic. ‘Covid is providing Champagne with its biggest negative challenge in history,’ Hall said. ‘The region is sitting on five or six years of stock, when they’d like to be sitting on three. We’re about to see a period of dumping.’

While Hall advised consumers not to be seduced by discounts, Krebiehl was more upbeat. Why not take advantage of the deep discounting and buy non-vintage Champagnes to lay down for a couple of years, she suggested. ‘Maybe the message to consumers should be around using Champagne to make home and family socialising very special,’ said Hall.

Krebiehl was buoyed by the quality on display – ‘they tasted satisfyingly of Champagne’ – and remained positive about the future. ‘Champagne is the wine with the greatest resilience. No one can replace 200 years of solid marketing. In every city in the world, you’ll find Champagne on the wine list. What other region has this advantage?

Discussion copy by Amy Wislocki.

See all the wines from the Non-Vintage Champagne panel tasting

The NV Champagne scores:

68 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 2

Highly Recommended 51

Recommended 14

Commended 0

Fair 0

Poor 0

Faulty 1

Champagne: The Facts

Vineyard area: 34,300ha

Area by variety: Pinot Noir 13,034ha, Meunier 10,976ha, Chardonnay 10,290ha

Sub-regions: Montagne de Reims, Côte des Blancs, Vallée de la Marne, Côte de Sézanne and the southernmost Côte des Bar

Villages/crus: 319 – grand cru 17, premier cru 42, the rest classed as AOP Champagne

About non-vintage Champagne

Champagne is serious business – despite the high jinks eternally associated with it. Its annual sales, totalling £4.25 billion, are the economic motor of the region. While Champagne’s 34,300ha cover just 4% of France’s national vineyard area, the wines are responsible for a whopping 20% of the country’s wine revenue and 22% of its wine exports.

Most of the bottles made, shipped and drunk – a little more than two-thirds in fact – are so-called ‘brut sans année’, or brut (dry) non-vintage wines.

While most of the column inches given over to Champagne focus on prestige cuvées and single vintage releases, the entire industry actually hinges on these less exalted, high-volume bottles.

Tasting brut non-vintage may not be as thrilling as tasting vintage Champagnes, or the celebrated têtes de cuvée deluxe and prestige bottlings, but it is far more telling. These wines are, after all, the calling card of each house. The NVs give clues about quality and are the key to the style of a house. It is their consistency and reliability over the long term that is decisive and forges a house’s reputation.

Those of us who always keep a bottle chilled just in case we need a little pick-me-up will have one of these in the fridge – and hopefully more in the cellar. These are the go-to bottles which do the heavy lifting for Champagne as a whole.

Grandes Marques

A huge part of that market has traditionally been cornered by the so-called grandes marques, or ‘big brands’. This self-styled name harks back to the Syndicat de Grandes Marques, which today has been subsumed into the Union des Maisons de Champagne organisation. Previously, the Syndicat had grown gradually out of a group formed in 1882 to protect the name of Champagne in the era before French appellation law existed.

Over time, however, they dedicated themselves to furthering the prestige of Champagne in the world. This illustrious bunch, with chairmen from the likes of Veuve Clicquot, Pommery, Louis Roederer and Taittinger, was clearly effective: the world still refers to grandes marques – brands whose wines promise consistency year-in, year-out, no matter where in the world you buy a bottle.

Quite a number of big names entered their wines into our blind tasting of almost 70 wines, but there were also many other producers that are not necessarily household names – thus it held many surprises. Some of my favourites were indeed rewarded, while new names popped up to buy. We three tasters did not always agree, but this only goes to show how important it is to find a marque that really suits your own preferences.

It is clear that good blanc de blanc Champagnes are hard to find at this level, while blanc de noirs had an easier run. In effect, however, it was Champagne’s prized art of blending all three varieties that shone. Just as it should be with brut sans année.

The art of ageing Brut NV Champagne

Time is a key element in making Champagne. By law, non-vintage Champagnes have to spend at least 12 months on their lees (the expired yeasts used in the second fermentation in-bottle) before being disgorged (the removal of those yeast deposits). They then need a further three months’ post-disgorgement. Most of the better NV wines exceed this legal minimum, while vintage and prestige cuvées age far longer.

Special late-disgorgement releases clearly illustrate the difference between pre- and post-disgorgement ageing. While nothing can replace pre-disgorgement ageing in terms of mousse and texture, a little post-disgorgement ageing (ie, time in your cellar) works absolute wonders for NV Champagnes. When I was younger and poorer, I would make use of pre-Christmas discounts and just leave the bottles in my cellar (the benefit of a draughty Victorian ground-floor flat). Twelve months later, much more rounded, suave Champagnes would emerge.

I now age much finer bottles, but always have NV bottles in the cellar, too, simply because they gain so much by being aged.

Two or three years should be no problem at all for a NV Champagne, and the really good ones easily stretch to five years. So stash some away in a cool, dark spot. Quite apart from ageing, it is always good to have Champagne in the house.

See the top scoring Non-Vintage Champagne panel tasting notes and scores

The judges

Simon Field MW

Field was a buyer for London-based wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd for more than two decades, and now works as a consultant on areas which particularly interested him during that time, with Champagne topping the list in France, along with Rhône and Languedoc. He is also a Decanter World Wine Awards judge.

Anne Krebiehl MW

German-born but London-based, Anne Krebiehl MW is a widely published freelance wine writer, educator, competition judge and consultant. A contributing editor for Austria, Alsace and English wines for Wine Enthusiast magazine in the US, she also has a particular speciality in all things sparkling and Champagne.

Tim Hall

Hall owns and runs Scala Wine, importing selected small-grower Champagnes into the UK and running events and trips. Promoted to Chambellan of the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne in 2019, in 2013 he won the CIVC’s UK Champagne Ambassador competition and was runner-up in the European final held in Champagne.

Read next:

Champagne 2020 to make rare ‘trilogy’ of top vintages

Women of Champagne

Has the Champagne price bubble burst?

A new release of Clos du Mesnil is always a special moment for the House of Krug. And the latest release is all the more significant, as 2006 is the year that Julie Cavil – appointed as Krug’s new chef de caves, or winemaking director, in 2019 – first joined the production team at this venerable house.

On her arrival back then, she never imagined in her wildest dreams that one day she would be appointed to the pivotal position of cellarmaster and be the one to present this unique vintage some 14 years later.

Scroll down to see Yohan Castaing’s Krug 2006 tasting notes and scores

Cavil remembers 2006 as being ‘a very hot year in Champagne, with nearly 20 days marked by temperatures above 30°C. It was also a capricious year, because we had the equivalent of two months of rain in the span of 15 days during the month of August.’

But September brought more sun and heat, and a protracted harvest unfolded under ideal conditions. The criteria were therefore met for all the members of the tasting committee, including Éric Lebel, the chef de caves in 2006, Olivier Krug, the director of Maison Krug, Maggie Henriquez, President of Krug, but also Cavil herself, to decide to produce the famous Clos du Mesnil, which only happens in exceptional vintages.

Clos du Mesnil is a small vineyard plot of just 1.84ha, located in the heart of the village of Mesnil-sur-Oger. First belonging to an abbey, It dates back to 1698 and was surrounded for a long time by other vineyards.

Over the centuries, as the village expanded, houses sprang up all around the vines. Acquired by Krug in 1971, this prestigious enclosed parcel is planted entirely to Chardonnay.

‘Thanks to the houses that surround the vineyard,’ explains Cavil, ‘there is a microclimate that makes it one of the earliest-ripening plots, an exception being 2020, a very atypical year.’ Micro-parcels within the walled plot are harvested and vinified separately, so ‘we can thus make five or six different wines, before deciding whether or not we will produce a separate Clos du Mesnil cuvée. When we choose not to do this, the production is blended into the other Krug Champagnes.’

The first vintage of Clos du Mesnil was 1979 and this 2006 is Opus 19 of the series. It remained in the Krug cellars for nearly 13 years before being disgorged at the end of 2019 with a dosage of 4g/l.

From soloist to orchestra

Alongside the 2006 Clos du Mesnil, Krug has released its regular 2006 vintage cuvée. If you consider Clos du Mesnil a soloist – a Champagne produced from a single terroir, a single grape variety and from a single vintage – the 2006 Krug cuvée is more like an orchestra. Indeed, the three major grape varieties of Champagne are united, each coming from different terroirs.

‘What surprised and enchanted us was the fact that in 2006, all three of the classic Champagne grapes showed beautiful ripeness in all our selected plots,’ says Cavil. ‘It was a year in which the Pinot Meunier had remarkable balance, while the Chardonnay was so elegant with ample aromas. As for the Pinot Noir, from the start it revealed promising structure and great potential.’

This new cuvée is a blend of 48% Pinot Noir with a majority originating from the northern part of the Montagne de Reims but also from Les Riceys, while the Chardonnay, comprising 35% of the blend, comes from the Côte des Blancs sector. As for Pinot Meunier, it was sourced from the terroirs around the villages of Leuvrigny and Sainte-Gemme and makes up for 17% of the blend. This Champagne was aged for almost 12 years before disgorgement at the end of 2018.

In addition to these two Champagnes from the 2006 vintage, Krug also provided for this Decanter tasting the 162ème Édition of its flagship Grande Cuvée, made with a base wine from the same vintage, 2006, as well as the Clos d’Ambonnay 2002, the fifth vintage of this Champagne produced since 1995. An added rarity was the Krug Collection 1988 cuvée. Tasting notes for these three Champagnes are also provided below.

See Yohan Castaing’s Krug 2006 tasting notes and scores

You may also like

First taste: Bollinger PN VZ 15 – first new cuvée in over 10 yearsFirst taste: Dom Pérignon 2010First taste: Les Rendez-Vous de Billecart-Salmon No.1First taste: Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires 2006

The release of a new vintage of Charles Heidsieck’s famous Blanc des Millénaires is always a privileged moment, as this is such a special, rare cuvée. The latest is from the 2006 vintage, a year that was marked by frost and thunderstorms in the spring, followed by beneficial weather during the crucial flowering period of flowering.

Scroll down to see the Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires 2006 tasting note and score

Record-breaking heatwaves during July gave way to a rainy, cold August with sunshine and dry conditions prevailing by the start of September leading up to a harvest that began around 10 September in the Champagne regions where the grapes tend to ripen earlier.

Slow ripening made it possible to conserve acidity while also preserving the fruit for the future base wines. As a result of this growing season, the Champagnes from the 2006 vintage tend to be fruity but also lively and fresh in style, and certainly less powerful than those from 2005.

This is one of the reasons why Charles Heidsieck decided to release a 2006 vintage for the exceptional – and much sought-after – Blanc des Millénaires cuvée. According to Cyril Brun, the current cellar master, ‘the Blanc des Millénaires is an unchanging recipe, the idea being to capture the spirit of the Côte des Blancs sector from which the grapes are sourced but also achieve the quintessential expression of each specific terroir.’

Thus, the Blanc des Millénaires contains ‘20% of each of the best terroirs of the Côte des Blancs’, explained Brun.

• Cramant; characterised by eastern exposure but also a significant amount of flatter terrain than those of the more typical hillsides, produces precisely textured, limestone-driven Champagnes with a touch of salinity.
• Avize; higher in altitude, tends to produce Chardonnay of a more generous character, including some exotic fruit notes.
• Oger; the most atypical of the grand cru villages, presenting a bowl-like geological amphitheatre with a south/south-east orientation that fully embraces the sun whenever possible, making for a riper, fruitier and more immediately appealing style.
• Le Mesnil / Oger; has a terroir famous for producing long-lived Champagne with a lively character often described as having minerality, as well as a salty, iodine-like tang on the palate.
• Vertus; the sole premier cru, which produces Chardonnay destined for wines that have an appealing roundness to them.

This 2006 vintage will resonate strongly as the sixth opus of the cuvée that began with the 1983 vintage released in 1993. The vintages produced so far are: 1983, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2004 and now 2006.

‘The 2006 is probably the most open in its expression early on, in a style that is reminiscent of the 1995,’ said Brun. ‘It incarnates a real break with the 2004, which was extremely mineral, tense, smoky and roasted in character. This one is riper, so more generous and powerful, but also possessing a beguiling bouquet’, he continued.

At the same time, Charles Heidsieck also released its Brut 2012 which Brun concluded had ‘a more than challenging growing season, as we were assailed by all the plagues of Egypt, but in the end, thanks to a magnificent late season, it is a vintage that produced racy, generous wines’.

See the Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires 2006 tasting note and score

You may also like

First taste: Dom Pérignon 2010First taste: Bollinger PN VZ 15 – first new cuvée in over 10 yearsPerrier Jouët: Producer profileVillage profile: Cramant, Champagne

Launching Dom Pérignon’s new 2010 vintage, chef de cave Vincent Chaperon was bathed in a bright light, the result of Hautvillers sunshine rather than from the virtual effects of Zoom one feels.

His suit is sober and dark, possibly a little better cut than Dom Pérignon’s Benedictine habit, but he looks the part, managing, with great panache, to meet the challenges of being LVMH’s ambassador for this flagship brand, and at the same time to communicate the passion of the dedicated winemaker as the latest in a long line going all the way back to the Dom himself.

He could not be in a better place.

Scroll down to see Simon Field MW’s Dom Pérignon 2010 tasting note and score

Seldom has this passion and dedication been more important, however; even the press release describes the 2010 vintage as ‘harsh, contrasted and perilous’ and Chaperon pulls no punches.

This is a triumph out of adversity story for sure, ‘exploring new frontiers’ and therefore not quite a classic DP vintage in the vein of 1990, 2002 or 2008. An interesting and somewhat unusual overture…

Challenging conditions

The vintage is sketched out through a three-phase trajectory.

Phase one was the coldest, driest winter since 1996. Phase two the dry, dynamic mid-season – the engine room, as it were. And Phase three: the cooler but dry and sunny September… so far, so good.

But into this equation one must throw two days of torrential rain on 14 and 15 August. Two months’ worth of rain fell in two days, and the effects were only really fully recognised 2.5 weeks later, a resulting attack of severe botrytis, most especially in the Pinot Noir vineyards. Thereafter, plenty of anxiety, painstaking, plot-by-plot enquiry and, ultimately, a 15% reduction in the Pinot crop, the cut being made with great precision over 800 different plots. 

Such was the drastic remedial action that the grapes, which were finally brought in, actually resulted in musts with the third highest sugar levels of the last decade (after 2002 and 2003) and the second highest potential acidity (after 2008).

A bold wager, says Chaperon, but one which, for him, has paid off. Indeed, he relates how his predecessor, Richard Geoffroy, has described the Chardonnay, itself untouched by rot, as the best that he has seen in over 40 years.

After deliberation, some of which promoted the Chardonnay to 60% of the blend, the final assemblage is 54% Chardonnay and 46% Pinot Noir; anything too far apart is just not DP, says Chaperon. The dosage is 5g/l and the wine was disgorged in February 2019.

So, a risk, but one that has paid off it seems.

It is interesting to note that of the releases since 2000, only two years have not been made (2001 and 2007) and although Chaperon refuses to be drawn on the destiny of 2011’s potentially tricky crop, he does reiterate that ‘our aim is to make a Dom Pérignon every year’.

The incredible skill brought to bear on this most challenging of vintages goes some way to vindicate such a bold statement.

See Simon Field MW’s Dom Pérignon 2010 tasting note below

You may also like

Blanc de noirs vs blanc de blancs: What’s the difference?Has the Champagne price bubble burst?First taste: Gosset 12 Ans de Cave a Minima BrutPerrier Jouët: Producer profileVillage profile: Cramant, Champagne

Pinot Noir

5/5

Chardonnay

4/5

Recent reports confirm that the 2018 vintage is truly exceptional for Champagne. Special mention goes to the Pinot Noir, which ripened perfectly, but the Chardonnay is also outstanding. Initial results are wines that are dense yet fresh and should be long lasting.

2018 is destined to be remembered for producing both quality and quantity, but it’s also a game-changing vintage. This current assessment is in striking contrast to the feeling of trepidation felt during the heavy rains, leading to the need for constant vigilance and a substantial increase in the amount of work to be done in the vineyard in order to prevent the outbreak of fungal diseases such as mildew or powdery mildew. A few isolated hailstorms led to crop loss, notably in the Côte des Bar sector in the southern part of the region.

Fortunately, early summer was accompanied by a welcome change in weather, bringing hot, sunny, and, importantly, dry days. Occasional showers brought welcome relief to the parched vines, and kept hydric stress at bay, allowing for optimal ripening at a gradual pace in ideal conditions that resulted in an early harvest, commencing on 20 August.

It was also, in the end, a relatively stress-free vintage for the producers. Gilles Descôtes, Bollinger’s cellarmaster, relates his personal experience of the 2018 season: ‘I experienced this vintage as a relief. As in 2017, we began picking in August, but this time, everything was superb. 2018 is my 26th vintage and I have never seen anything like it.’

Such favourable climatic conditions produced not only a ripe and clean crop but also a generous harvest, leading the CIVC to authorize quite high yields of 10,800 kilos of grapes per hectare.

Red grapes – both Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier –, which can struggle to ripen in some years, seemed to have had a slight advantage in the context of the summer heat in 2018 and so achieved a remarkable level of ripeness. Enthusiasm was particularly high at the end of the harvest for the Pinot Noir at the Henri Giraud Champagne house based in Ay: ‘We achieved excellent phenolic maturity, so the tannins are impeccable,’ declared Claude Giraud.

Chardonnay struggled to maintain acidity a bit in the heat, but the results are nonetheless excellent, albeit without reaching the exceptionally high quality of the Pinot Noir grapes.

Gilles Descôtes characterises the singularity of the 2018 vintage: ‘It is the synthesis of several contrasting vintages; 2003 for its precocity, 2004 for its quantity, and 2002 for its analytical profile [degree of alcohol, acidity and pH].’

Changing strategies

It is becoming clear that in the context of global warming, vineyards located in eastern France – in which achieving ripeness was often a challenge – are now enjoying nearly optimal growing conditions. Grape growers used to be compelled to constantly adapt their viticulture to the climatic conditions in order to obtain acceptable ripeness levels but today, they are obliged to change their strategy completely now that the priority is to protect the vines from summer heat and hydric stress.

The most significant impact of climate change will be on grape quality. Henceforth, the two aforementioned red grapes will achieve optimal maturity, and so will be less prone to the sharp, at times jangly, acidity that in the past needed to be corrected by dosage.

Not only are they now riper, they retain good, balanced acidity while also possessing impressive density, which is having an effect on Champagne styles for a number of producers. Harvesting ripe grapes is the new paradigm for the region.

Claude Giraud admits that ‘Champagne producers will have to call into question their whole outlook on how they make it, so there will need to be a sea change in our mindset.’

You may also like:

Champagne brands to buy: Over 100 vintage & non-vintage bottles rated

Champagne: Magnum Vs Bottle: Panel Tasting Results

When Joseph Krug set up his own house in 1843, he began creating a Champagne quite unlike any other. 176 years later, nothing fundamental has changed in Krug’s precepts of winemaking.

In the 1970s, several Reims & Epernay houses completely abandoned wood for stainless steel in the first fermentation, chasing volume in expanding international markets.

Krug, however, stuck resolutely to oak because the micro-aeration that barrels provide resulted, paradoxically, in protecting the infant wine from oxidation, while also enabling additional flavour complexity.

Krug is always careful to only make a vintage bottling in years that genuinely merit the ‘vintage’ tag. Historically, the house has always been open minded , even maverick, about the source of its grapes and what stands out is the team’s attachment to its favourite parcels across Champagne, which it buys year after year.

It’s a great champion of Pinot Meunier, which gives a little extra fruit and mouthfeel, even to its top vintage cuvées. Take the 1981, one of the greatest years of the 20th century, which has no less than 20% Pinot Meunier in the blend.

And so to 2006 and the latest vintage to be released by Krug. It was a hot summer in Champagne with extreme highs and 23 days over 30°C. The mercurial climate swung from hot, dry periods to intense rainfall in August. Vitally, the sun shone throughout September, making Pinot Noir – from the Montagne de Reims but also Les Riceys in the far Aubois south, and representing almost half the blend – the star of the show.

The vintage is a real charmer with its silky roundness and classic texture, to be enjoyed from 2020 in the full impact of its seductive fruits. In comparison, the 2004 is statelier, marked by great Chardonnay of fine structure.

After the first fermentation, the wine is stored in stainless steel vats for optimal freshness – a crucial issue in our current crisis of climate change.

Tasting Krug 2006:

You may also like:

Dom Pérignon 1990-2009: ‘The mother of all DP tastings’

Tasting Bruno Paillard’s flagship Champagne: Nec Plus Ultra 2004

How good is Jay Z’s ‘Ace of Spades’ Champagne?

2010 is justly celebrated in many regions of France; Bordeaux and The Rhône Valley, to name but two… but in Champagne? Probably more of a fair-to-good rather than great year, the unpredictable weather patterns and somewhat disappointing summer temperatures bequeathing wines that were far less ripe than 2009 and far less complex than 2008.

But what of Clos des Goisses, which is, to be fair, something of an anomaly in Champagne, its steep south-facing slopes usually a degree or so higher in temperature than elsewhere, its 5.5 hectares a contiguous chalky bloc which reflects the River Marne which flows at its feet?Charles Philipponnat, one of Champagne’s great ambassadors, is far from dissatisfied; the fact that the conditions were not ideal is translated into the revelation that only five of the fourteen plots were called to action, thereby reducing the quantity made from 30,000 to a mere 5,000 bottles. Low quantity, maybe, but very high in quality; Charles compares it to a ‘ripe Burgundy’ rather than the Chablis which one may have expected, given the prevalent conditions.

A most commendable effort, pleasure redoubled by the release of a superb Rosé Goisses from the seminal vintage that was 2008. Finally, for the connoisseurs, an impressive brace of LV (Long Vieillissement) cuvees from the early nineties, the House borrowing from the Plénitude and RD concepts with a couple finely honed and mature gemstones.

Simon Field MW reviews the Clos des Goisses new releases

The 167th manifestation of Krug’s celebrated multi-vintage Grande Cuvée is based on the challenging 2011 vintage, with 42% of Reserve Wine added from a further twelve years, the oldest dated 1995. Nothing if not complex, in other words, and the art of blending is, as always with Krug, absolutely key to the process.

The wine is symphonic in scope; no fewer than 250 manifestations of the base year have been blended with a further 150 versions of the Reserve Wine (all kept separately in stainless steel tanks of varying sizes) to create this latest expression of Grande Cuvée. A large orchestra, to borrow Krug’s preferred metaphor, or a choir with many different voices.

A lengthy orchestration too; Eric Lebel, the Chef de Caves, stresses the need for patience during the ageing on cork, with this latest release disgorged in January 2018 and then given further post-disgorgement ageing to ensure a perfect integration of its wonderfully diverse components. The result is rich and powerful yet does not lack for focus or precision on the palate.

Equally impressive is the Rosé, now in its 23rd Edition, rosé having for a long time been shunned at Krug for not being ‘serious’. Nothing could be further from the case here, an astonishingly robust and savoury wine, its pedigree oozing from every pore, its indulgent price point fully earned. It is also based on 2011, but with over half of the final blend (56%) from Reserve Wine, this time dating back to 2000.

Olivier Krug does not believe in hierarchy in wine ranges – Krug has long since postulated the ‘first among equals’ role of its celebrated Grande Cuvée, and was way ahead of the game in its advocacy for the multi-vintage blend, now modish.

Indeed, non-vintage Champagne has, over the last decade or so, seen a gradual rise in the percentage of reserve wines in its blends.

Krug has now taken this a step further, underlining inherent complexity and the inevitability of chronological releases by re-naming the wines as numerical ‘Editions’, essentially in deference to forebear Joseph Krug who, in 1847, advocated the concept as a matter of philosophy. Only the best would do for each release. Cheers to that.

Krug Grande Cuvée, 160th Edition

So here we are, just over a century-and-a-half later, with the 160th manifestation of this magnificently complex blend, taken from 12 vintages ranging from 2004 back to 1990.

Non-vintage Champagne should be consistent, but also consistently different, and herein lies the paradox: using a musical analogy, the same instruments and musicians will produce varying performances every time.

Exotic Chardonnay traits are perfectly emboldened by Pinot power and the balm of a generous proportion of reserve wines to add depth and wisdom to the 2004 kernel.

Krug Grande Cuvée, 166th Edition

It’s instructive to compare the 160 to the current release, 166th Edition Grande Cuvée, composed around the 2010 harvest. The latter is more focused on finesse and pinpoint purity, while the 160th Edition based on the 2004 vintage is assertive with a generous, ripe profile.

Krug Grande Cuvée Rosé, 22nd Edition

There was also a glimpse of the latest release of the Rosé, now on its 22nd outing, or ‘Edition’. Olivier describes it as ‘unconventional’, his main aim betraying almost vinous aspirations, with gastronomic potential the key.

To this end, the two plots for the red wine in Aÿ are fundamental and will contribute anything from 8-12% of the final blend. There’s a discrete power here, the fruit character anything but confected, and almost Burgundian in stature. Its 45 different wines go back to 2002 and underwrite an unparalleled complexity.

Krug 2004

After the bizarre conditions of 2003, with its challenges from frost and then hydric stress, the vines regrouped and produced a late, large crop of a very high quality in 2004, with Chardonnay the most successful of the varietals.

The Indian summer with its cool nights nurtured wines of great complexity and agility, their character described by Krug’s chef des caves Eric Lebel in terms of a ‘luminous freshness’. The wines from 2004 share honest aromatics, finely etched acidity and a harmonious fruit profile. Here, citric rigour combines with indulgent power.

Michael Edwards, who first reviewed the Krug 2004 vintage for Decanter said of the year:

‘Autumnal early morning mists were ideal conditions in which to make particularly fine Chardonnays and fragrant Pinot Meuniers, as the vineyards regenerated themselves after the devastating spring frost and summer heatwave of 2003.’

Krug Clos du Mesnil Blanc de Blancs 2004

The 100% Chardonnay Clos du Mesnil 2004 is typically enigmatic; its smoky stone-fruit character evolving magically and majestically in the glass.

Dosage has not changed much over the years, and here again the Krugs have been ahead of the pack; the main development of late has been the introduction of many more smaller tanks for the reserve wines. Complexity just got more complex. A most impressive feat for this consistently impressive house.

Latest Krug tasting notes:

Grande Cuvée 167th Edition and Grande Cuvée Rose 23rd Edition were tasted 18th June 2019

Releases from October 2018

You might also like:

Krug’s Clos du Mesnil: 1979 to 2003

Best white Burgundy: Top-rated & top value

View all Decanter Premium content

Where is your money best spent? John Stimpfig reports...

Following on from my report on the non-vintages, below are my vintage fizz tasting notes from a recent clash between England and France.

In all, 24 wines were poured in three categories: NV, Vintage and Rosé. When it came to the vintage category, Champagne took the lion’s share of the top spots – perhaps not surprisingly when you factor in the likes of Dom Pérignon, Bollinger’s Grande Année and Louis Roederer.

But the Nyetimber 1086 2009  and Coates & Seely La Perfide Blanc de Blancs 2009 performed admirably, picking up very good scores in the mid-90s. Moreover, it’s worth pointing out that many of the Champagnes on offer were significantly more expensive than their UK counterparts.

Closing the gap

There were some notable disappointments: I was underwhelmed by the Vilmart Coeur de Cuvée 2005. And I was surprised that the Taittinger Comtes de Champagne 2006, one of my favourite Champagnes, didn’t show better than it did.

Perhaps you could argue that this tasting maintains the supremacy of Champagne, but the gap is definitely closing. That can only be seriously good news for wine lovers.

English sparkling wine vs Champagne: Vintage

You might also like:

Premium English sparkling wine to try

Most exciting sparkling wines of 2018

Top-rated Crémant from France

Champagne Henriot has launched a new prestige cuvée, Hemera, starting with the 2005 vintage.

Henriot Hemera, taking its name from the Greek goddess of daylight, has been launched as the house’s new top Champagne and replaces Cuvée des Enchanteleurs.

Hemera 2005, the debut Champagne in the new range, has a relatively low dosage of 5g per litre and has been aged on lees for 12 years, according to Henriot, which officially launched the new cuvée on 15 July.

It is made from 50% Chardonnay and 50% Pinot Noir and carries a recommended retail price of £180 per bottle.

Decanter expert Michael Edwards was impressed after tasting the wine for the first time this month, praising it as a ‘perfectionist creation of Henriot’s villages, all grands crus’.

Premium members can read Michael’s full tasting note below

Henriot said that it will only make Hemera in certain years and that the wine is a blend of six grand cru Champagnes.

Chardonnay grapes were drawn from the Côte des Blancs, specifically from Chouilly, Avize and Mesnil-sur-Oger. Pinot Noir grapes were from the north of the Montagne de Reims, from Mailly Champagne, Verzy and Verzenay, said Henriot.

There has been a lot of excitement around the Champagne 2005 vintage in general.

A Decanter vintage report from the time reported that harvesting took place in September ‘in ideal conditions with sunny days and cool nights’.

Weather was also kind to vineyards during the crucial fruit-set stage in June, despite a relatively slow start to the growing season thanks to a cold winter.

Family-owned Maisons & Domaines Henriot made news headlines in 2017 after it bought a majority stake in Oregon Pinor Noir producer Beaux Frères, via its American subsidiary.

It also owns Chablis producer William Fèvre and Burgundy merchant Bouchard Père & Fils.

Champagne Henriot was founded in 1808.

See full results of Decanter’s vintage Champagne panel tasting

Published online exclusively for Premium members in December 2017

A bottle of the limited edition 1966 World Cup Champagne, signed by eight members of that year's winning England team, is to go on auction next month.

Humbert & Ellis, auctioneer in Northampton, England, has said it will be auctioning the magnum of Champagne on 2nd August.

The opening price is £1,800, although it is estimated that the wine will sell for between £3,000 – £4,000.

It is a magnum of Champagne Jacquart NV, signed by eight members of England’s triumphant 1966 World Cup team, including Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles, Geoff Hurst, Gordon Banks, George Cohen, Ray Wilson, Martin Peters and Alan Ball.

As no England fan will need reminding, particularly after this week’s loss to Croatia in the Russia 2018 World Cup semi-final, the 1966 World Cup was the last time the England team got through to the final, in which they beat West Germany 4-2 after extra-time.

See also: World Cup wine quiz – test your knowledge

‘It’s a very “a la mode” item,’ Jonathon Humbert, from Humbert & Ellis, told Decanter.com. ‘In the midst of the post-England defeat, it’s a tangible reminder that England have been World Cup winners.’

‘A corking reminder of our last – a “Magnum Opus” – moment of footballing history!’

Only 1,966 of these bottles were produced, and this bottle is number one of the 1,966, according to the auction house.

You can find the lot and bid on the Champagne here.

Another lot in the same auction comprises five souvenir bottles of wine from the 1990 Italia World Cup.

The bottles are in the shape of the World Cup trophy, and there are two Chardonnay, two Castel del Monte Rosato and one Barbera d’Asti.

Football wine auctions

In 2002, Sotheby’s auctioned the last remaining bottle of Heidsieck Dry Monopole Champagne, from a case given to the winning team in 1966 for their victory.

In 2014, ex-Manchester United manager, and avid wine collector, Sir Alex Ferguson auctioned off hundreds of bottles of wines at Christie’s.

2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 20072006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 20001999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1990 19891988 1986 1983 1982 1979 1978 19761975 1973 1971 1970

2013

The reverse of the Champagne 2012 vintage, a Chardonnay year par excellence; Ay Pinot Noir was also successful.

4/5

Weather Conditions

One of the latest harvests since 1988, caused by delayed flowering into July. A warm rainless September saved the day. The reverse of 2012, a Chardonnay year par excellence; Ay Pinot Noir was also successful.

Best Champagnes

Krug Clos du Mesnil: Pierre Péters Cuvée Spéciale Le Mesnil; Roger Brun La Pelle Ay Grand Cru.

2012

Keep

An outstanding but small crop of Pinot Noir; Chardonnays big & foursquare are not in same league.

5/5

Weather conditions

A brilliant August and warm September made for an outstanding but small crop of Pinot Noir, best since 1952. Chardonnays big & foursquare are not in same league. Aube badly hit by hail.

Best Champagnes

Roederer Cristal; La Grande Dame; Gosset Brabant Noirs d’Ay; Vilmart Grand Cellier d’Or

• See top rated Champagnes from 2012

2011

Drink Soon

Hollow mid palate even from top growers.

1/5

Weather Conditions

An even weaker year, rain at wrong moment. Hollow mid-palate even from top growers.

2010

Keep

Not vintage quality but Chardonnay is stalwart of NV blends.

2/5

Weather Conditions

Intense mid August rainfall damaged prospects for black grapes. Not vintage quality but Chardonnay is stalwart of NV blends.

2009

Drink soon

Generous elegant fruit expression in all three varieties.

4/5

Weather Conditions

Dry winter led to a deficit in the water table.

Fresh showers in spring put the vegetative cycle to rights. Flowering was fine but a chaotic stormy July saw landfalls in Ay. August was warm and sunny, with cool nights. Not a drop of rain in the harvest from mid September. Generous elegant fruit expression in all three varieties.

Best Champagnes

Fourny Monts de Vertus; Marie Lancelot, Cramant; Armand Margaine Club, Villers Marmery; Drappier Millésime d’Exception.

2008

Keep

Something special: powerful fruit and scintillating acidity.

5/5

Weather Conditions

After an icy December (07) January was cold and raw temperatures continued in spring when there was some frost damage.May was warm, flowering satisfactory.

Summer outbreaks of oidium and mildew were quickly mastered. August was overcast and cool. Settled harvest from mid September, the health of the grapes perfect. Something special: powerful fruit and scintillating acidity.Real keepers.

Best Champagnes

Agrapart Avize ‘Vénus’; M-N Ledru Cuvée du Goulté

Champagne brands to buy: Over 100 vintage & non-vintage bottles rated

2007

Keep

Most producers say it is too early to determine whether vintage Champagnes will be made from the 2007 harvest. Management of individual vineyards is likely to prove the deciding factor.

3/5

Weather Conditions

The season kicked off hot. April saw unusually high temperatures and flowering arrived a month early, in May. But it was far from homogenous, with differences arising even between parcels. Rain followed, and then a cold, wet summer which continued the vintage’s ‘uneven’ theme. Ripening was patchy, and the high humidity made rot a constant threat.

On 24 August, good weather returned, together with a drying east wind, and most houses began picking soon after, earlier than normal. Despite the cloudiest summer since records began, the mild winter end and early flowering shifted the whole season – and harvest – forward.

Hail decimated some localised areas in the run-up to picking in the southern Aube area, driving down quantities still further after unripe and rotten fruit was removed.

Chardonnay was the least affected by the chaotic weather and uneven ripening and is the most consistent in terms of ripeness. The maturity of both Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir is more varied as the varieties suffered from attacks of mildew and botrytis in several spots. Potential alcohol is slightly below the average since 2002, yet acidity is higher than normal, but not alarmingly so.

Growers who held their nerve and picked later because of uneven ripeness in the vineyard are likely to be rewarded with better quality and maturity.

2007 is the first year under Champagne’s newly installed maximum yield of 15,500kg/ha, but most growers will not have attained that level.

2006

Keep

Producers are hesitant to declare a vintage Champagne will be made in 2006, but most are pleased with the quality so far. Wines are showing clean aromas, rich fruit and promise finesse and balance.

3/5

Weather Conditions

The 2006 vintage was distinguished by an unusually dry and sunny June and July – promoting excellent flowering and good, steady ripening – followed by a rainy and humid August which threatened to obliterate the early-summer promise; growers suddenly feared mildew and botrytis.

But September brought more sun and heat, and a protracted harvest unfolded under ideal conditions – sunny days and cool nights – from 8 September (Chardonnay in Sézanne) to 2 October in Mailly.

A few thunderstorms at the start of July resulted in isolated hail damage, but since there was none of the variable ripening of Bordeaux nor the rot of Burgundy in 2006, the appellation brought in its maximum allowed yields of 13,000 kilos/hectare.

Grapes attained optimal physiological maturity and thanks to cool September nights retained a good balance between ripeness and acidity.

The Chardonnays combine richness with freshness, and both Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier were picked with minimal botrytis – any affected grapes were sorted out.

Acidity levels are a little down on normal, averaging around 7g per litre. It’s possible winemakers will ncrease Chardonnay percentages to balance the richer style of the year’s Pinot.

2005

Keep

As we write, we believe the 2005 harvest will provide the opportunity of making some superlative blends… and probably vintage champagne

4/5

Weather Conditions

Following a cold dry winter, bud break began in April. Moderate temperatures and rainfall from April to June supported good growth with flowering in mid-June. Fruit set quickly due to the extremely fine weather.

Without being an especially hot summer in general, July 2005 was quite warm but wet, while August was dry but cooler than usual. These conditions helped steady healthy vine development and then a very hot period from the 26th of August led to acelerated ripening. Harvesting in September took place in ideal conditions with sunny days and cool nights.

Initial tasting sessions have confirmed that the Chardonnays are indeed excellent wines with very. The Pinot Noirs are and are particularly first-rate from the grand cru vineyards where they were able to ripen perfectly.

2004

Keep

Outstanding quality with excellent balance of fruit and acidity

4/5

Weather Conditions

Budburst began on 10 April followed by flowering towards the middle of June. Berry set started soon after flowering and was unaffected by any incidence of shatter (poor or non-setting of fruit). Crop thinning occurred in many vineyards to reduce high yields of the bumper crop which was evident.

The drought in 2003 followed by low rainfall in the winter and spring of 2004 meant low ground-water levels throughout the Champagne area that promoted ripening and helped reduce fungal infection, limited to a few cases of powdery mildew among some of the Chardonnay plantings.

August by contrast was exceptionally wet and cool but returned to sunshine by the end of the month, ripening berries and enhancing sugar concentrations. Low rainfall and cool nights made for ideal weather conditions for September, when harvest ensued.

2003

Keep

A very ripe year for Champagne with good aromas and fruit concentration

3/5

Weather Conditions

After a cold winter, March was warm and budburst began in April. After this bright start, heavy frosts struck the week of 7-11 April with snow on the evening of 10 April. Widespread bud destruction occurred. Fortunately, the weather that ensued helped base buds develop which, although less fruitful, compensated for some of the lost crop. May and June were warm and flowering took place early and quickly – by 9 June.

June was one of the hottest ever recorded in Champagne and saw some hail storms but some vineyards were spared hail damage. July and August remained very hot and dry causing rise in sugar and drop in grape acidity.

Picking thus began late August in ideal weather (sunny days and cool nights) and was carried out very quickly (ten days or so instead of the usual two weeks) since the outstanding condition and ripeness of the grapes meant that no sorting was necessary.

2002

Keep

Excellent quality wines with a relatively ripe character for Champagne

4/5

Weather Conditions

This year was generally a dry, warm year. Though August began with bursts of rain followed by high temperatures then thunderstorms at the end of the month. Rain continued though early September followed by clear skies that lasted throughout the harvest with the exception of light drizzle from 22 to 23 September.

Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, winemaker at Champagne Louis Roederer describes the vintage as ‘an early-maturing year brought about by dry soil conditions that accelerated ripening.’

2001

Keep

Rather dilute wines lacking strength and vinosity.

3/5

Weather Conditions

After a very wet winter, budburst began but was about 15 days later than usual. After this late start, ideal conditions ensured in May and June, which were sunny flowering occurred satisfactorily. Rains and storms in July prompted many growers to green harvest. Then, véraison (ripening – change of colour of the grapes) began beautifully in August but sky high temperatures helped the vines ripen well and vineyards remained quite healthy.

Wet cold weather followed for the first three weeks of September, hindering ripening, diluting the grapes and causing some rot. The harvest started late September and ensued without sunshine. Selective picking was necessary to avoid rotten and under ripe fruit.

2000

Keep

the harvest remained of remarkable quality from beginning to end

4/5

Weather Conditions

Spring began well with excellent growth showing by the end of April beginning of May and flowering in early June. Rainfall in July was four times higher than average and a hailstorm hit, destroying many vines but August was sunny and dry.

The wet weather though meant vines were slow to and acidity was low by end of August but good weather throughout September helped ripen the fruit more fully and the sugar and acid levels were registering about 9.5° and 10°, and 7.5 and 8 respectively, so things looked up.

The vintage started in mid-September and the sun shone for the duration of the picking which lasted two weeks, and the harvest remained of remarkable quality from beginning to end

1999

Keep

Straightforward wines with a clear varietal character

4/5

Weather Conditions

This year showed higher temperatures and more rainfall than usual throughout the growing season and vineyard conditions remained healthy. After a mild winter, bud burst began well in the spring with growth quickening throughout May with full flowering in June. July and August was hot, allowing for excellent véraison and the harvest began on September 15 under mainly sunny skies.

1998

Keep

Quality and quantity of the harvest surpassed expectations with grapes showing good health, sugar and acid levels

4/5

Weather Conditions

First rain and cool temperatures prevailed in July. Rot threatened but never actually materialised. Then, during the first 10 days of August, a heatwave began scalding some of the clusters of grapes. In September, persistent torrential rains caused the grapes to swell to such a degree that excessive sugar dilution and loss of acidity seemed inevitable.

A return to sunny, windy weather around September 15 allowed the ripening process to resume and the vintage began in most parts, shortly thereafter. Staggered picking helped growers select for ripe fruit. Quality and quantity of the harvest surpassed expectations with grapes showing good health, sugar and acid levels.

1997

Keep

Another remarkable year. The third of an excellent trio

4/5

Weather Conditions

Frost and hail marred the growing season, and uneven ripening caused further problems. After a wet June, the summer was dry until the end of August, when heavy rain returned. Better weather in September saved the year from complete disaster, but the wines lack acidity and this is unlikely to be a vintage year.

1996

Keep

A vintage of outstanding quality which produced classic wines

5/5

Weather Conditions

A dry summer with long bursts of sunshine produced a very high quality harvest of slightly above average size.

As in Burgundy to the south, the grapes combine high levels of ripeness with high levels of acidity. Some cellar masters at major houses are perplexed that the young wines seem to developing quite rapidly, despite their high acidity. Others believe it will be a classic vintage. Only time will tell.

1995

Keep

The first year widely considered good enough for vintage wines since 1990. A large crop

4/5

Weather Conditions

Very fine quality, especially for Chardonnay. Many vintage wines have been made, but only a few have been released.

1990

Drink Up

This year saw perfect conditions for vintage champagne. The wines were ripe and flavoursome

5/5

Weather Conditions

Almost half of the region was affected by the frosts that came in April, and cool conditions during the latter part of spring affected the flowering, which was prolonged. However, a hot, dry summer saw the development of a bumper crop and notably big grapes. The rain that fell in September was welcome, and helped the ripening process.

1989

drink soon

A hot summer produced rich wines slightly short on acidity. They will mature before the 1988s

5/5

Weather Conditions

Mild weather throughout much of spring saw the development of flourishing vegetation. However, the end of April brought with it some frost, which damaged a number of vineyards, reducing the potential crop. Temperatures picked up in May and the sun shone for much of the month, but a cold snap affected the flowering.

Hot and sunny conditions, interspersed by welcome showers, followed for the duration of summer, and the harvest began early (first/second week of September) on the Cote des Blancs and for the Pinot Noir. Due to the uneven flowering earlier in the year, there was a second harvest from mid-October until the start of November.

1988

keep

Classically structured, concentrated wines with sufficient acidity for long ageing

5/5

Weather Conditions

The spring was mild and flowering was completed without problems. July was cloudy but better conditions followed, although there was some heavy rain in mid-September.

Nonetheless quality proved excellent, and almost all producers released vintage wines. These are classic wines, characterised by their backbone and slight austerity. They will take longer to mature than the more opulent 1989s.

1986

keep

A number of vintage wines were released but quality was very variable

3/5

Weather Conditions

The weather this year was unpredictable and dramatic, to say the least. The winter was cold and the spring poor, yet the weather improved in June, and flowering was normal. The summer was warm and sunny, but rain in August and September marred the quality of the fruit, and induced some rot.

Many producers released vintage wines, but the wines have never had the allure of the 1985s, and have aged quite rapidly.

1983

drink soon

A good and reliable year rather overshadowed by the success of 1982

4/5

Weather Conditions

Winter was harsh, and conditions did not improve much in spring, which was cold and damp. As a result, flowering was late, although when it did take place it did so under ideal conditions. The sunny, warm weather continued throughout much of the summer, although enough rain fell to prevent the crop from drying out.

Rain – and the temperature – fell at the start of September, but conditions picked up in time for the harvest at the end of the month/beginning of October.

1982

drink soon

An exceptionally fine, rich vintage

5/5

Weather Conditions

Ideal weather conditions in 1982 led to a good vintage, a relief after a disappointing run. A cold and frosty winter gave way to a coolish spring, but temperatures picked up later in the season. The flowering conditions in June were ideal, and summer was sunny and dry. The grapes were ripe by relatively early on in September, and showers mid-month helped them achieve near-perfection. The crop was one of the largest on record.

1979

drink now

A vintage marked by impressive balance and longevity

4/5

Weather Conditions

A harsh winter was followed by a decidedly cool spring, with extreme frosts in May. Although these conditions slowed growth, flowering was good. The summer months saw a reasonable supply of sunshine and warmth, resulting in adequate ripening. The harvest took place fairly late in the season.

1978

drink now

The wines were lean and high in acidity

2/5

Weather Conditions

Flowering was uneven, and the growing season not helped by a cool summer. Conditions improved in September.

The wines were lean and high in acidity and are now in decline from their dubious best.

1976

drink soon

A very hot year produced soft, ripe wines, some of which have developed remarkable finesse

5/5

Weather Conditions

A long hot summer led to very early harvest that began right at the beginning of September.

The wine are very rich and low in acidity, and despite initial fears that they would become flabby with age and soon deteriorate, this has not happened with the best wines, which are still delicious. Krug is exceptional.

1975

drink soon

A classic vintage with wonderfully stylish and refined wines

5/5

Weather Conditions

Conditions during the early part of the year were unpredictable. Winter was damp and March saw snowfalls in the area. Temperatures picked up towards the end of April, and summer continued mainly warm and dry. Towards the end of September, however, the skies became overcast and rain fell quite heavily. The harvest was delayed until the start of October.

1973

drink now

Enormous crop, some well-balanced champagnes produced

4/5

Weather Conditions

The summer was hot and dry, but September rains, which caused some rot, marred a potentially great year.

The crop was enormous, and some vintage champagnes were produced, but they were medium-bodied and well balanced. Although most are probably past their best, Krug is still drinking well.

1971

drink now

A large vintage but the finest wines were marked by an elegance and delicacy of texture

5/5

Weather Conditions

Conditions unsettled throughout much of the year. An uneventful spring was followed by storms during May. June was cold and damp and much of August was stormy. By the end of summer, however, the temperatures had risen and most of September was sunny and hot.

1970

drink now

A classic year which produced finely structured wines with great depth of flavour

4/5

Weather Conditions

Flowering was late this year, due to a cold spring, but conditions improved until heavy rains fell during June. Summer was ideal: warm, sunny periods, punctuated by enough rain to keep the crop from drying out too much, lasted until the harvest.

Christelle Guibert visits Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle Reserve cellar to taste their latest releases...

Stepping into Laurent-Perrier’s Grand Siècle Reserve cellar you would be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered onto the set of the latest James Bond film by mistake.

Opened in 2012 to coincide with Laurent-Perrier’s bicentenary, the vat room and state-of-the-art tasting area with subdued lighting setting off the slick black, grey and chromes, strike a note of serious sophistication with just a hint of Bond villain menace.

Scroll down to see Christelle’s tasting notes & scores

This slick modernism is combined with plenty of reminders of the great house’s past. Vintage glass bottles, pictures and other memorabilia adorn the walls of the old brick cellars which have been tunneled out of clay.

The Champagne house, known as Veuve Laurent-Perrier, was founded in 1812 and bought by Marie-Louise Lanson de Nonancourt in 1939. She looked after the business with her two sons and in 1945 Bernard de Nonancourt was named CEO. Today, the house is run by the two daughters and includes 150 hectares of their own vineyards and 1250 hectares under contract with loyal growers.

The old pictures that adorn the walls are a reminder of Laurent-Perrier’s claims to innovation. One image from 1907 shows Champagne in wooden crates labelled ‘non-sucré’, a reminder that the current trend for brut nature Champagne has a longer history than you might think. Bernard de Nonancourt relaunched Ultra Brut in 1981, something of a pioneering move in the modern champagne production.Another key innovation was his design in the 1950s of a rounded black bottle inspired by an original from the period of Henry IV. This bottle design, as well as being iconic, also has a practical purpose. With a bottle neck measuring 26 millimetres compared to the standard 29 millimetres, the amount of wine in contact with air is reduced. This is in keeping with the house style of reductive wine-making, with exposure to oxygen minimised. Since the 1970s barrels have been replaced with stainless steel vats, and cold fermentation was introduced with the aim to respect the primary fruit.

Grand Siècle is de Nonancourt’s most famous creation. Technically a non-vintage, yet in reality a blend of three vintages, the cuvee, as the house are very keen to stress, is ‘an attempt to create the perfect year using the art of blending’.

1959 was the first Grand Siècle, based on 1952, 1953 and 1955. Each vintage brings something different to the blend, one vintage is selected for the freshness, the other one for the structure and the final one for the elegance and finesse. Only grapes from grand cru vineyards are used, and the Chardonnay always represents the majority with a typical blend of 55% Chardonnay and 45% Pinot Noir. The wine then spends an average of 8 to 10 years in the cellar before being released.

As of today, only 21 cuvée Grand Siècle have been released, and strangely enough the back and front label does not bear any mention of the blend, let alone the release number.

This of course makes it difficult for any wine lover to know which particular vintage blend they are buying and drinking. It only took a quick discussion with the cellar master Michel Fauconnet and the marketing team to see this is a sensitive subject, but they did imply future releases may carry an edition number on the bottle, so watch this space.

Tasting Grand Siècle

You might also like:

New Henriot Hemera vintage Champagne launched

First taste: Cristal 2008