What Is Vintage Champagne

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.

What is vintage champagne.

Some houses like dom pérignon only make vintage champagne but it s more common for producers to create both styles. Every year producers hold back a proportion of wine to maintain their stocks of reserve wines. Vintage champagne must be made 100 from the year indicated on the label. The champagne houses and growers provide a continuous house style through the blending of various vintages to create the yearly non vintage champagne.

Vintage champagnes can include any of the top three grapes featured in champagne chardonnay pinot noir or pinot meunier or other heritage grapes but must be aged for a minimum of three. Vintage in winemaking is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product wine see harvest wine a vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all or primarily grown and harvested in a single specified year. Every year may produce slightly different yields due to weather factors which influence the grapes so some vintages are considered more exceptional than others. Find ratings for recent vintages in france s champagne region summing up the quality and character of the sparkling wines.

What is non vintage champagne. In certain wines it can denote quality as in port wine where port houses make and declare vintage port in their best years. A vintage champagne is when 100 of the grapes come from one particular vintage year. Champagne vintage charts ratings back to french vintage chart.

Whereas a good quality year will produce a typically fuller deeper champagne making it a vintage year. Andrew jefford award winning wine journalist for decanter magazine and author of twelve books on wine including the new. By comparison non vintage champagne has a 15 month minimum. Plus recommendations for when to drink the wines at their best.

This doesn t mean that non vintage champagne is only aged for 15 months. Non vintage champagne on the other hand is a blend from harvests from different years. Vintage champagnes have been made since the early 1800s with the irrepressible madame clicquot leading the way her 1811 vintage is known as the comet vintage thanks to a comet which passed overhead and was said to have influenced the harvest.