Old Champagne, and the date that is not the vintage.
Champagne carries two dates. One is printed on the label and the other decides how the wine tastes.
Champagne is the only fine wine whose ageing happens in two separate phases with a violent event in between. The wine spends years on its lees in a chalk cellar, sealed under a crown cap, protected from oxygen. Then it is disgorged: the deposit is frozen and expelled, a dose of wine and sugar is added, and the bottle is corked. From that moment it ages the way any other wine ages, and quickly.
The date on the label is the harvest. The date that decides what is in the glass is the disgorgement.
What a declared vintage means
Most Champagne is non-vintage by design: a blend across years that keeps a house style constant. A vintage is declared only when the house believes the year can stand alone, perhaps three times a decade, and in some decades less.
That is why the gaps in a Champagne vertical are meaningful in exactly the way they are for Monfortino. An undeclared year is a judgement, not an accident.
Salon takes this furthest. It is made only from Chardonnay in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, only in declared years, and the house has produced something in the order of forty vintages in a century. There is no non-vintage Salon to fall back on: in an undeclared year the house sells the wine away.
The great old years
1964. One of the outstanding post-war Champagne vintages, ripe and generous, and remarkably long-lived.
1966. Firmer and less celebrated, which kept it affordable for far longer than it deserved.
1976. A drought summer gave unusually ripe grapes and low acidity. The wines were extraordinary at twenty years old and have matured faster since, which makes condition everything.
1985. A February freeze killed a tenth of the vineyard, and what survived ripened in a fine autumn. Small, concentrated and very slow, and one of the best vintages to buy now.
2002. The modern benchmark: weight and acidity together, and still climbing.
2012. Frost, hail and rot cut the crop, and then a hot, dry August rescued what was left. Small and outstanding.
Three bottles here, and what each one is
Louis Roederer Cristal was created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II, who wanted a clear bottle with a flat bottom so that nothing could be concealed inside it. The clear glass is a security feature that became a signature, and it is also why the bottle must be kept in the dark: clear glass gives no protection against lightstrike.
Louis Roederer Rosé 1974 is the house's first rosé vintage. 1974 was a difficult, wet year declared by very few houses, and that combination, a poor year and a first vintage, is why the bottle is looked for.
Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises comes from tiny plots of ungrafted Pinot Noir in Aÿ and Bouzy, vines that never met phylloxera, planted in the old en foule manner rather than in rows. Production is measured in a few thousand bottles a year, and in some years none at all.
Buying and keeping old Champagne
Four practical points.
- Ask for the disgorgement date. Recent houses print it. For older bottles, ask; a late-disgorged bottle
of a 1985 is a fundamentally different wine from one disgorged in 1993.
- Level is measured differently. Sloping shoulders mean centimetres from the cork, not anatomy. See the
- Light is the enemy, particularly for clear-glass bottles. Store and transport them boxed. The
transport note covers why.
- Expect less pressure. Old Champagne loses mousse steadily. A fifty-year-old bottle should open with a
sigh rather than a report, and a bottle of that age that pops aggressively is more likely to be a problem than a triumph.
Why does the disgorgement date matter on Champagne?
Until disgorgement the wine ages slowly under a crown cap, protected from oxygen. Afterwards it ages like any other wine. Two bottles of the same vintage disgorged fifteen years apart are genuinely different wines.
What does a declared vintage mean in Champagne?
That the house judged the year good enough to bottle on its own rather than blend into its non-vintage wine. Declarations happen perhaps three times a decade, and an undeclared year is a judgement rather than an accident.
Which old Champagne vintages are still worth buying?
1964 and 1966 among the post-war years, 1985 for slow, concentrated wines, 2002 as the modern benchmark, and 2012. 1976 is excellent but matured quickly, so condition decides it.
Why is Cristal in clear glass?
It was created in 1876 for Tsar Alexander II, who wanted a clear, flat-bottomed bottle so nothing could be hidden inside it. Clear glass offers no protection from light, so the bottle must be kept boxed.