Vertical tastings that begin with recent releases then stretch back to wines that are decades old reach their spectacular peak when the last wine is a century old. They are one of the exceptional experiences of professional wine tasting and they’re most often staged for tannic reds, like top Bordeaux.
Receiving an invitation from Champagne house Moet & Chandon to attend a vertical tasting last month that would stretch back a full century was particularly exciting. I can’t remember even reading about a tasting of that kind with Champagne. Amazing!
One reason for this is that the wine industry of the Champagne region, located less than an hour’s express train ride due east of Paris, is focused upon non-vintage (NV) wines. These multi-vintage cuvées are generally intended for consumption within months of release. Vintage Champagnes are exceptions to that rule – the icing on the cake produced only in the best years.
Then comes the fact that Champagne is the wine of celebration, its sparkling symbolic aura marking special occasions of all kinds. That’s a very different kind of wine consumption compared with a group of friends sitting down to share a handful of special bottles over a long evening. The latter is about the convivial appreciation of wine’s subtleties, whereas the former is all emotion.
The history of Champagne also plays a role. It wasn’t always a sparkling wine with six atmospheres of pressure in the bottle like it is today. And it only became a dry wine of the kind we recognize as Champagne toward the end of the 19th century.
For example, Moet & Chandon’s Brut Impérial NV was first released in 1869, the year the Suez Canal opened. The first releases of this wine weren’t as dry as they are today, but its lightness was widely praised and seems to be the reason for its commercial success.
Finally, few collectors focus on Champagne because the category doesn’t have a great reputation for aging. That’s why there is only a significant secondary market (back vintages at auction and in specialist stores) for a small band of prestige cuvées, like Moet & Chandon’s Dom Perignon brand.
Although Dom Perignon was launched with the 1921 vintage, the invitation made it clear that the tasting would be exclusively of Moet & Chandon Grand Vintage wines – their “regular” vintage Champagne. One question was at the front of my mind: could a 1921 Champagne still be drinkable? I had to go and find out.
At Grand Marques champagne houses like Moet & Chandon, nothing is done by halves, so the vertical tasting was conducted with theatrical style and organizational precision. However, there was also a practical reason it took place in the cellars deep below the company’s imposing headquarters in Epernay.
Many of the old vintages were disgorged á la volée, or directly before serving. The shorter the path from the cellar to glass, the better such old Champagnes tend to taste.
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BONE-DRY VIBRANCY
Of course, a 1921 and other vintages served in this way were not commercial products; rather, they had zero dosage, meaning these historic Champagnes were all bone-dry, unlike Brut Champagnes on the shelf, which have five to 15 grams of sugar per liter (usually added as cane sugar dissolved in wine).
However, in the case of the 1921 later at dinner, it was possible to taste a bottle disgorged properly in 2013 and given a small amount of dosage at that point. I actually preferred the bottle of Moet & Chandon Champagne Grand Vintage Collection 1921 I tasted in the cellar without any dosage. It was more vibrant in its bone-dry state.
Some relatively recent vintages, like 1985 and 1975, already tasted more developed than the impressive 1921 and stunning 1959. For Benoît Gouez, the charismatic cellarmaster of Moet & Chandon, the 1959 proved that the aging of Champagne does not just depend on acidity.
“With the highest alcohol content and the among the lowest acidity in history, it is an outstanding demonstration that the quality and aging potential of a Champagne cannot be summed up in an analytical report,” he said. “This wine impresses with its powerful body and heady nose, its rich and concentrated palate!”
He also confided that the early fading of the cellar reserve stock was the result of a technical issue that didn’t affect the commercial bottlings in the same way.
“We disgorged a lot of vintage champagnes from the 1970s and 1980s in 2002-2003 in order to save what we could,” he said. “I prefer the wines from the wonderful 1960s, and those from recent years.”
Certainly, the 1964 and 1962 were both full of character and astonishingly fresh for their age. Yes, the mousse was less pronounced than in a current release, but from 1964 back to the 1921, all of the wines tasted had enough mousse that it played a positive role in the taste experience.
1921 was another very warm growing season, with a very low crop level of grapes that came with moderate acidity. It was pretty conclusive proof of how, with ideal storage conditions, high-end Champagne can age for decades.
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Gouez also enthused about the 1921, calling it “an example of the balance and concentration that expresses the spirit of the roaring 20s: a certain carefreeness and joie de vivre.”
Clearly, the quality and age-worthiness of Champagnes cannot be linked in a simplistic way to analytical factors, even if winemakers need to keep one eye on them to avoid problems in the cellar. It’s all about balance and freshness.
Finally, if you want to mature vintage Champagne for a longer period, we strongly recommend you buy them on release, then store them at under 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit), avoiding light shining on the bottles. The latter is important, because research has shown that certain wavelengths of light on the bottle can damage wines made from the chardonnay grape. Most vintage Champagnes are 10 percent to 50 percent chardonnay, and blanc de blancs Champagnes are usually 100 percent chardonnay.
That said, we are not sure that you need to age them for a century to get the most drinking pleasure!
