Champagne

Most Champagne carries no year at all. The houses blend across harvests to keep a style steady, and only in the years good enough to stand alone do they declare a vintage. When they do, they put it on the label in plain figures. That is why a vintage Champagne is such a direct gift: the year is printed on the bottle itself, where everyone at the table can see it.

Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs, Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims, Pinot Meunier from the Marne valley. Declared years worth knowing: 1955, 1964, 1976, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1996 and 2002. With age the mousse softens and the wine moves towards toast, hazelnut and dried apple. Some very old Champagne is barely sparkling, which is not a fault. It is simply what happens.

The other side of that rule is worth saying out loud. Several harvests were passed over almost entirely: 1965, 1968, 1972, 1977 and 1984 among them. If your year is one of those, there is very little vintage Champagne to be found anywhere, whoever you ask, and we would sooner send you to another region than sell you a bottle with no year on the label.

Champagne is the format most affected by storage, so we are particular about it. We look at the cork, the level and the capsule, and we ask where the bottle has spent its life. Anything from before 1990 is sold as a collectible item, without a guarantee that it will still be lively. On request we will send photographs and a condition report of the actual bottle before you buy.