The vintage

1981

The year before the great one

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The 1981 vintage, rated

The year before the great one

In 2026 a bottle from 1981 marks a 45th birthday or anniversary

The vintage

Good · 3/5

A decent Bordeaux vintage with the bad luck to be followed by 1982. Early October rain diluted what could have been very good, the wines were always medium-bodied, and most have now had their day. Champagne, by contrast, was excellent: a small, concentrated crop that produced some of the finest vintage bottlings of the decade. Burgundy suffered hail and rot, and Piedmont was patchy.

What we would buy, and why

Buy Champagne rather than claret. A 1981 vintage Champagne from a serious house is one of the best buys of the decade and shows exactly what forty-five years in bottle does to a good one. If it has to be Bordeaux, stay with a first growth or a top Pomerol in sound condition, because the middle ranks are tired. Expect €250 to €600 for the Champagne, and check the fill level before anything else.

1981 in the world

Charles and Diana married at St Paul's on 29 July in front of an estimated 750 million television viewers. MTV launched three days later with a song about video killing the radio star, and Columbia had become the first space shuttle to fly that April.

Best bets for 1981

  • Krug 1981, the outstanding wine of the vintage and worth the stretch
  • Dom Pérignon 1981 or a Pol Roger vintage for the same idea at a lower price
  • A 1981 Rioja Gran Reserva from La Rioja Alta or López de Heredia, still remarkably alive
  • Château Cheval Blanc or Ducru-Beaucaillou 1981 if the year must be red

How we grade a bottle

Fill level, label, capsule and cork, then provenance. Every bottle is checked by hand by people who have handled thousands of old bottles, and we write down the flaws as well as the good news. What the fill levels mean · How to choose a birth-year wine

Real people, not a chatbot

Ask a person about this year

The people who answer are the same people who check and pack the bottles. Ask for photographs, a condition report or advice on a year and you get a straight answer from the ANNO team, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 18:00 CET.