Unlike Non-Vintage Champagne, which typically draws on wines from multiple harvests, Vintage Champagne is made exclusively from grapes harvested in a single year.
Producers choose when to release a vintage according to the character and quality of a particular harvest, making each bottling an expression of both the growing season and the producer's individual style. The result can offer a fascinating point of comparison across vintages, particularly among houses with a long history of vintage releases.
What Defines Vintage Champagne?
Several factors distinguish Vintage Champagne from its Non-Vintage counterparts.
A Single Harvest
All grapes used in a Vintage Champagne must come from the year stated on the bottle. While producers retain their own stylistic signatures, differences in temperature, rainfall, ripeness and harvest conditions can give each vintage a distinct character.
Extended Ageing
Vintage Champagne must be aged for a minimum of three years before release, considerably longer than the minimum required for Non-Vintage Champagne. Many producers extend lees ageing well beyond this, building greater texture, complexity and depth before disgorgement.
Cellaring Potential
Vintage Champagne is often particularly well suited to further ageing. Over time, youthful citrus and orchard-fruit characters can develop towards more complex notes of brioche, toast, nuts, honey and dried fruit, while retaining the acidity and structure that give Champagne its longevity.
Exploring Vintage Champagne Styles
Classic Vintage Cuvées
Vintage releases provide an opportunity to see how a producer's established house style responds to the conditions of a particular year.
Bollinger La Grande Année, Veuve Clicquot Vintage and Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage are among the longstanding examples, with successive releases offering distinctly different expressions of their respective harvests.
Dom Pérignon takes a different approach. Produced only as a vintage wine, each release interprets a single harvest through the distinctive style of the house.
Prestige Vintage Cuvées
Many of Champagne's most recognised prestige cuvées are vintage wines.
Louis Roederer Cristal, Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill and Taittinger Comtes de Champagne are produced from individual vintages and released only after extended ageing. Salon takes the concept further, producing a single Blanc de Blancs Champagne from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and releasing wines only from selected years.
For collectors, comparing different releases from the same producer can reveal as much about the vintage as it does the evolution of the wine itself.
Vintage Blanc de Blancs & Rosé
Vintage Champagne also provides some of the region's most distinctive Blanc de Blancs and Rosé expressions.
Blanc de Blancs, made exclusively from white grapes and most commonly Chardonnay, can combine freshness and precision with considerable ageing potential. Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs and Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs are established examples.
Vintage Rosé can offer greater structure and vinous character, with wines such as Billecart-Salmon Cuvée Elisabeth Salmon and Dom Ruinart Rosé demonstrating the more gastronomic side of the category.
Vintage Champagne in Large Formats
Vintage Champagne is also produced in Magnums and larger formats, although quantities can be considerably more limited. Large-format bottles are particularly sought after for entertaining, gifting and long-term cellaring, with Magnums offering a slower evolution of the wine due to the relationship between bottle volume and oxygen exposure.
Buy Vintage Champagne Online at Kent Street Cellars
Our Vintage Champagne collection spans current releases, mature vintages, prestige cuvées and harder-to-find bottles from established houses and independent producers.
Explore Vintage Champagne from Bollinger, Dom Pérignon, Louis Roederer, Moët & Chandon, Pol Roger, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot and more, with Australia-wide delivery and same-day delivery available across Sydney.
