Yohan Castaing: my top Champagnes of 2022

At present, the Champagne region is undoubtedly France’s most multifaceted and evolving wine region. Thanks to a few important wine growers (Anselme Selosse, Francis Egly, and others), it is experiencing significant dynamism and is forcing a revolution on some houses.

The rediscovery of terroirs is often at the heart of this stylistic metamorphosis now underway in Champagne. It has opened up a range of possibilities.

Scroll down for Yohan Castaing’s top 10 Champagnes of 2022

In order to keep up with this movement, Champagne houses, although still very traditional, are starting to release new wines, whether that be single-vineyard cuvées, cuvées from one grape instead of the usual assemblages, or terroir-based cuvées. All this generates healthy competition and benefits consumers.

However, dark clouds seem to be gathering over the region. The huge international demand at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic has put significant pressure on the markets, and as we know, as demand increases, prices tend to rise.

Winegrowers and wineries are taking advantage of this craze, offering cuvées that are singular and unique. This is certainly very interesting from a viticultural or aesthetic point of view, but often allows prices to soar.

The Champagne region is becoming one of the most economically stressed in France.

In my roundup last Christmas of top wines tasted in 2021, I wrote: ‘All of these changes are signs of the focus on excellence in this region as it embraces a wide range of differing visions and strategies.’ This has never been more true, but not in the way I expected.

The only thing we have to be happy about is the competition that the houses and winemakers impose on each other. This quest for individual cuvées leads to an increase in quality and a focus on terroirs. The houses have never before produced wines of such quality, while the smaller winemakers continue their quest for wines of even higher quality.

The selection below proves this. I did not want to gather the best notes of the year, but rather the Champagnes that seem to me to be representative of this evolution, both stylistically and economically. What I wrote last year still applies, ‘Together they constitute the DNA of Champagne, and together they are writing a new chapter of the long history of the region.’

I invite you to discover the following 10 Champagnes; five of which have not previously been mentioned in Decanter.

Yohan Castaing’s top 10 Champagnes of 2022:

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