Not more than 80 percent of any year’s harvest may be sold as vintage Champagne, so at least 20 percent of the best years’ harvests are conserved for the future blending of nonvintage wines. Some houses stick rigidly to declaring a vintage in only the greatest years, but many, sadly, do not, which is why we have seen vintage Champagnes from less than ideal years such as 1980, 1987, and even 1984. Most coopératives and a large number of growerproducers produce a vintage virtually every year, which is possible, of course, but rather defeats the object and debases the value of the product. However, even in great years, a vintage Champagne is more the result of tightly controlled selection of base wines than a reflection of the year in question, and this makes these wines exceptionally good value. The character of a vintage Champagne is more autolytic, giving it an acacialike floweriness, than that of a nonvintage of the same age because it has no reserve-wine mellowness. If you like those biscuity or toasty bottlearomas, you should keep vintage for a few years. For those who have read about me trumpeting Henri Giraud’s 1993 Fût de Chêne, despite its ludicrous price (five euros ($6.50) more than Cristal, at the time of writing), I have not tasted another vintage from this producer that comes remotely close to the special quality of his 1993.
I Billecart-Salmon (Cuvée Nicolas-François Billecart) • Bollinger (Grande Année)
• Deutz • Alfred Gratien • Krug • Lanson • Pol Roger • Louis Roederer • Veuve Clicquot • Vilmart & Cie (Grand
Cellier d’Or)
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