What happened to vintage Champagne? The value cuvées hiding in plain sight

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? [subscriber-content] 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. [breakout] 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). [/breakout] 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 [caption id="attachment_564359" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Is vintage Champagne getting squeezed out?[/caption] 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. [/subscriber-content] Top 15 vintage Champagnes to seek out: [wine-collection] Related articles Does affordable Champagne still exist? 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