This is the most exciting moment in years to buy Champagne - here are 12 new releases to prove it

There are rich pickings for fans of vintage and prestige Champagne this summer as wines from one of Champagne’s few trilogies – sequences of three fine seasons where single-vintage wines are widely produced by the houses – start to hit the market.

A stellar trio

2018, 2019 and 2020 all featured hot, sunny weather, with subtle variations in rainfall and temperature meaning each has its own character.

For the time being it’s the 2018s that are starting to trickle through.

‘It was a fantastic vintage,’ says Charles-Armand de Belenet, managing director of Champagne Bollinger, which launched the 2018 La Grande Année in both white and rosé editions this spring.

‘After the nightmare of 2017, we had perfect weather, with lots of rain at the start of the year and then beautiful sunshine.’

There will be very few Champagne producers who did not make a 2018 vintage, not only because of the quality but also because the yields were among the most generous ever recorded.

The question marks in this vintage are in terms of depth, concentration and low acidity. The wines are instantly delicious, but are they sometimes a bit too easy-going?

As demonstrated, though, by this fine pair from Bollinger, as well as the latest vintage releases from Louis Roederer and Laurent-Perrier reviewed below, this is a year that, while certainly warm, sunny and approachable, offers more elegance than previous heatwave summers such as 2015, 2009, 2006 or 2003.

Pol Roger’s vintage rosé from the following year, 2019, widely viewed as the most complete and perfect of the trilogy – may be the most impressive rendition of this cuvée yet.

Unexpected stardom for an underrated vintage

It’s not only widely the fêted vintages to look out for, though. Charles Heidsieck offers only the fifth vintage of its prestige blanc de blancs, Blanc des Millénaires from 2017, a year widely regarded as a disaster in Champagne thanks to fast-moving acetic rot at harvest.

‘In mid August, the talk was of the vintage of the century,’ says Charles Heidsieck cellar master Emilien Erard, ‘but two weeks later, it was a disaster’.

A disaster, that is, almost everywhere apart from the chalky Côte des Blancs, where the resilient Chardonnay grapes on fast-drying soils escaped much of the rot and offered up a harvest of fine intensity and quality.

With the exception of isolated growers and an excellent, if low, production of Dom Pérignon, blanc de blancs will be the best style of the vintage – and Blanc des Millénaires will prove among the very finest.

Heading back in time

Two fine releases from Billecart-Salmon from the late-ripening 2013 season proved that this vintage, despite its bright acidities and reputation for relative austerity, can still yield quite approachable, welcoming wines in comparison to higher-acidity vintages of the past.

These are impeccably built cuvées that, while ready to drink in terms of balance, will gain much in terms of complexity from further cellaring.

In the meanwhile, enjoy more approachable releases such as Lanson’s excellent Noble 2012, as well as Henriot’s Cuvée des Enchanteleurs 2015, which reverts back to its much-loved historical name before the change to Cuvée Hemera in 2005.

Finally, after a Comtes de Champagne Rosé 2012 that was arguably the finest ever release of this lesser-known Pinot Noir-dominant rosé prestige cuvée comes the 2013.

An entirely different vintage in character yet one that, especially given a little patience, will prove this cuvée just as deserving as its more famous blanc de blancs sibling.

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