What Is Non Vintage Champagne

Every year producers hold back a proportion of wine to maintain their stocks of reserve wines.

What is non vintage champagne.

The goal is to produce a wine that is the same every year despite differences in grapes grown during different seasons due to differences such as rainfall hail sun temperature and more. Three years is actually standard and some houses including laurent perrier age their non vintage champagne for even longer. A wine that is labeled as vintage refers to a wine produced with varietals of a particular harvest year thus a non vintage wines is the opposite. Vintage doesn t actually mean that the champagne is old just that it s made from grapes from one single year.

By comparison non vintage champagne has a 15 month minimum. Vintage champagne must be made 100 from the year indicated on the label. This doesn t mean that non vintage champagne is only aged for 15 months. The champagne houses and growers provide a continuous house style through the blending of various vintages to create the yearly non vintage champagne.

Speaking to insider alongside francoise peretti founder of peretti communications and director of the champagne bureau uk le mailloux said what you probably have sitting on your shelf is a non vintage champagne which is a blend of several different harvests. Whereas a good quality year will produce a typically fuller deeper champagne making it a vintage year. Non vintage champagne is simply made from grapes from a variety of vintages or growth years. Non vintage champagne on the other hand is a blend from harvests from different years.

What is non vintage champagne.