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)
No wine depends upon the winemaker’s blending skills more than nonvintage Champagne, which accounts for more than 75 percent of all Champagne sold. Although nonvintage Champagnes are not usually the finest Champagnes, they are capable of being so. Their base wine, to which reserve wines may be added, will always be from the last harvest. Most producers make up between 10 and 15 percent of their blends from reserves from the previous two or three years, but some utilize as much as 40 percent, while a few will add much less reserve wine in volume, but from a greater number of much older vintages. Many growers have no reserve wines, thus their nonvintage will in fact be from one year, but of a lesser quality than the cuvée selected for their vintage Champagne. All but the most dynamic coopératives typically make up just 5 percent of their blends from reserves from the year immediately preceding that of the base wine—and they seldom excel.
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