Prestige Champagnes
Vintage image sourced on Pinterest
Prestige Champagnes. The name alone says it all. This is a splurge of a tasting. If you’re the type to pop fancy bubbly on New Year’s Eve, this tasting will be right up your alley. If you, like me, prefer a low-key New Year’s Eve, a quieter way to reflect upon the year that’s passed and usher in the one to come, this tasting might be something you tackle at a different time of year, bringing some luxury and “special-ness” to less-traditional seasons. However you do it, I just hope you savor it. These are Champagnes that are quite literally years in the making.
Stuff to know
If you saw the name of this tasting and thought, “but aren’t all Champagnes prestigious? Isn’t that the whole Champagne thing?” just know that you’re not alone. Aside from the fame (and infamy) that Dom Pérignon and Cristal enjoy, most prestige Champagnes aren’t all that well-known beyond the “wine people” community. You’re probably familiar with the Champagne houses Pol Roger, Taittinger, Perrier-Jouët and Veuve Clicquot, but could you name all of their prestige cuvées? (They’re Sir Winston Churchill, Comtes de Champagne, Belle Epoque and La Grande Dame respectively, if you’re the type who needs to check your answers).
In theory, these wines are the best of the best, the “tête de cuvées,” which translates roughly to top blend. In atypically French fashion, there aren’t many rules around what qualifies as a prestige Champagne though. Some are vintage wines, some are blends from multiple vintages. Some age for four or five years, some age for eight or more. Most are white wines, though there are some rosés, too. Some use mostly Pinot Noir in the blend, some use mostly Chardonnay, and some change their blends from year to year based on the vintage’s results. Some are sourced only from vineyards deemed Premier or Grand Cru, and some are cagier about their sourcing, leaving out a specific rule to allow some flexibility based on the vintage.
So are prestige Champagnes just hype? I won’t lie, marketing in Champagne is very much a thing, and it absolutely drives costs up overall. But, the production costs for these wines is also very high, especially when the grapes are from expensive vineyards and the wines remain on site for long periods of time, requiring management and storage and all the rest. Making a prestige Champagne is, in many ways, a gamble, since the return on investment usually comes many years after the costs have been incurred, and who knows what the marketplace will be doing by the time the wine is released.
In my own experience, the wines that qualify as prestige Champagnes have generally been outstanding wines, even when they aren’t my top pick style-wise. If you’re feeling extra dubious, you could approach this tasting differently, selecting 3 houses’ nonvintage entry Champagnes and tasting them side-by-side with their respective prestige Champagnes.
Beyond the nebulous category that is prestige Champagne, this tasting covers single vineyard Champagne, a category that is growing as grower Champagnes become increasingly popular, and late disgorged, recently released Champagnes, which can require even higher risks production cost-wise than prestige Champagnes.
To me, these styles of Champagne are all knockout, crazy memorable wines that everyone should get to experience at least once. That said, rarity is luxury, even when it’s not to your personal taste.
What to look for in this tasting
All of these wines should be decadent, rich, powerful Champagnes. Please, please taste these wines in regular wine glasses or even better, Champagne tulips. There’s a tendency to think of Champagnes as bubbly, forgetting that these are first and foremost wine. As stylish as they are, flutes and coupes are actually terrible for smelling Champagnes, since there’s no head room in the glass to capture all of those precious volatile aromas and guide them toward your schnoz.
These Champagnes will have flavors that range from brioche, toasted hazelnuts, fresh cream, pecan praline and raspberries to raw mushrooms, oyster shells, lemon zest, saline, golden apples, gunpowder, honey and more. Some aromas and flavors will burst forth, demanding your attention, and others will be quieter, waiting to make their entrance. These are wines that have been carefully crafted by cellar masters whose noses and palates have been honed for years to be able to identify potential flavor development long before the reality shows up in the young wines pre-aging.
Beyond what you smell and taste, take note of the finishes on these wines. They should linger, coating your palate and blending with whatever you taste next.
The wines
#1: Prestige Cuvée Champagne
I’m calling these prestige cuvées to differentiate from the other styles of prestigious Champagnes here, but you could also just call them prestige Champagnes, têtes de cuvée or just the top-of-the-line Champagnes. This is a category of Champagne that isn’t the easiest to define, since there are no set rules per se. These are Champagnes that are usually produced by the grandes marques, AKA the maisons or the “houses” that can afford to invest in Champagnes whose production requires the meticulous cultivation of quality above all only because their nonvintage blends create sufficient cash flow.
The wines themselves often carry the names of their respective houses, but not always. Dom Pérignon, the very first prestige cuvée, was launched by Moët & Chandon in 1936. You’ve probably heard both of those names, but you might now be aware of the connection. The same is true for Cristal, a wine by Louis Roederer. Krug and Jacquesson, on the other hand, create only prestige Champagnes. Numbering their non-vintage blends, these houses are known for carefully selecting from amongst top cuvées only from multiple vintages (as opposed to creating an annually consistent “non-vintage” blend) to craft wines that defy easy categorization.
Many of these wines are vintage wines, like Dom Pérignon, but they don’t have to be. If you aren’t sure if a wine qualifies as a prestige Champagne, ask your local retailer. I’ve included some well-known options below, but please feel free to venture beyond the expected.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternative(s): Stick with a prestige cuvée like Dom Pérignon, Cristal, Sir Winston Churchill, Comtes de Champagne, Belle Epoque, La Grande Dame, Jacquesson, Krug, Grand Siècle, Cuvée 1522, Blanc des Millenaires, Rare or Cuvée Nicolas François.
#2: Single Vineyard Champagne
Champagne, in sharp contrast to its neighbor to the south, Burgundy, isn’t known for its single vineyard wines. Even wine nerds would be hard-pressed to remember the names of top single vineyards in Champagne beyond Clos du Mesnil and Clos des Goisses, myself included. Most Champagnes are blends. Blends of vintages, blends of grapes, blends from various vineyards throughout Champagne. Masterful blending is taken to extreme heights in Champagne.
But there are always exceptions. The first - and most famous - is Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses, from a steeply sloped, walled vineyard in Mareuil-sur-Äy, first released in 1935. While it’s unlikely that it was the first-ever single vineyard Champagne, it’s the first to be recorded and remembered as such, and was produced at a time when it was unusual and therefore distinctive.
Single vineyard Champagnes can be nonvintage or vintage-dated, and can be made from any of the approved Champagne grapes. While it’s much more common to introduce a single vineyard Champagne today than it was mid-century, rarity is still a factor, since these are wines sourced from particular - and usually small - plots of land. While houses like Krug, Philipponnat and Jacquesson create single vineyard offerings, it’s more common to see single vineyard Champagnes from growers, or Récoltant-Manipulants.
As grower Champagne has become more popular, the concept of highlighting and celebrating specific terroir has become more widely accepted in a region that has historically was focused first and foremost on consistency, or house styles. Some producers today even make only single vineyard Champagnes, choosing to differentiate their wines more by place than by vintage or aging.
When you consider that not all that long ago, Champagne’s vineyards were either pummeled with pesticides or used as a dumping ground for Parisian trash, the shift toward focusing on terroir and using sustainable, often organic or biodynamic practices in Champagne demonstrates respect for the region’s distinctive characteristics that deserve to be carefully preserved for generations to come.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternative(s): Stick with a single vineyard (or single terroir) Champagne from producers like Krug, Philipponnat, Jacquesson, Cattier, Pierre Péters, Drappier, Tarlant, Egly-Ouriet, Ulysse Collin, Cédric Bouchard, Larmandier-Bernier, Jacques Selosse, Jérôme Prévost, Agrapart et Fils, Billecart-Salmon, Benoit Déhu, Deutz, Leclerc Briant, Pommery and others
#3: Late Disgorged, Recently Released Champagne
Unfortunately, a “late disgorged, recently released” Champagne doesn’t sound anywhere near as appealing as a prestige cuvée. Not to mention that the word disgorged has a bit of an ick factor. Describing these wines requires a bit more wine geeky-ness, too, since the process of Champagne production must be understood in order to get why these wines are different and special. In Sparkling Wine Essentials, I cover what traditional method sparkling wine production entails, so to keep it brief here, most Champagnes undergo some period of lees aging, during which the lees, a collection of spent yeast cells, sink down to the bottom of a bottle, creating what looks a bit like a fuzzy underwater blanket of sediment. That sediment of lees is carefully managed, usually slowly shifted up toward the neck of a bottle to eventually be disgorged (removed) before the final bottling and either further cellar aging or release for sale.
However, with late disgorged Champagnes, the lees are left hanging out with the wine for really long periods of time. Years and years. Right before being released for sale, the lees are finally gathered in the bottle necks to be removed. This long aging on the lees affects the wines, giving them a yeasty (surprise!) richness that is often described as a brioche-like bready-ness, or a hazelnut-y flavor. The wines’ texture is richer, and there’s an umami element that isn’t easy to describe. In theory, late disgorgement makes the wines fresher, since the presence of the yeast creates a reductive environment that allows less oxygen ingress. The absence of sugar from dosage during cellar aging also changes the way these wines taste.
My husband and I spent our first Christmas together during Covid, and we got lucky timing-wise and escaped to Saint Martin for an island Christmas. While there, I bought a Jacquesson Dégorgement Tardif from a yacht supply shop…and it was completely oxidized. It tasted like flat old apple cider. I hope I’ll get to try the wine again sometime in proper condition, but I’m sharing this story because these wines can be particularly prone to oxidation, and should usually be drunk fairly quickly after they’ve finally been released. It’s worth considering the source and buying from a retailer you know and trust.
What to ask for: Ask by name
Alternative(s): Stick with a late disgorged, recently released Champagne like Bollinger’s R.D., Jacquesson’s Dégorgement Tardif, Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée, Dom Pérignon Plénitude 2, or other prestige cuvées known for long lees aging
Tasting tips
The eats
If you’re having this tasting around New Year’s, by all means, bust out the oysters, blinis with caviar and all the fancy finger foods that absolutely comprise a “real” meal when eaten in succession. And yes, even if they’re all purchased in the frozen food aisle, they still count as fancy. If Picard, a frozen-only food store that I discovered while living in Dijon, can be incredibly popular in France, the country that defines luxury, I feel strongly that we can all embrace easy-fancy, especially after the time-on-your-feet-in-the-kitchen marathon that is Christmas.
If you’re having this tasting at another time of the year, bringing some luxury to an otherwise not-so-festive season, I’m a big fan of a high-low approach. Somehow, eating fried chicken, french fries or popcorn with the fanciest of fancy Champagnes invites more honest appraisal of the wines. The casual food offers permission to relax, indulge and taste what really works for you. Besides, fried stuff and Champagne just works.
The prep
Sometimes, you have to break the rules. Even your own rules. In this tasting, instead of my usual 6 different styles of wine, there are only 3. I’ve done this for two reasons:
If you choose to have 6 wines, and assign each of these styles to 2 different guests, you’re unlikely to have 2 of the same Champagnes, since there are many options with very different production approaches and taste profiles.
This is a splurge of a tasting, and for many of us, it’s unrealistic to splash out on Prestige Champagnes, especially right after the high-spending season that is Christmas. To make the tasting more accessible, you can choose to split the bottle costs 2 or 3 ways, inviting 6 or 12 guests to taste 3 wines together. If you split the bottle costs 3 ways, I just recommend supplementing your tasting with a few less-expensive bottles to enjoy together after tasting the Prestige Champagnes, since portions will be smaller per person.
This is one of those tastings where a bit of extra equipment will go a long way in making the experience better for you as a host. Two items that I highly recommend having on hand:
Ice buckets. With sparkling wines, properly chilling isn’t just about the tasting experience. It’s about safety. Chilling sparkling wines reduces the pressure in the bottles, so that the risk of a rogue cork and wasted wine is dramatically diminished. Taking a few extra minutes to chill: worth it.
Sparkling wine stoppers. If you can swing 6 of these, fantastic. Mine somehow always go missing, so I’m not even sure how many are left in my liquor cabinet at the moment. Once all of your bottles are opened for tasting, bubbles will leak out, flattening the wines. If you put these stoppers on between pours, you can dramatically extend the life of the wine and its bubbles.
I didn’t mention champagne flutes or coupes here, and that was intentional. I recommend using white or universal wine glasses unless you have tulip-shaped sparkling wine glasses. Not only will it save you the money and storage space for extra glasses, it’s actually a better tasting experience, giving you plenty of room at the top of your glass for the wine’s aromas to come through clearly.
If you’re interested in digging deeper into Champagne, check out Champagne Essentials, or start with all the other bubblies at Sparkling Wine Essentials.
