Champagne’s ‘Magic Window’ to a Fresh Future

It was Bastille Day, France’s national holiday celebrating the start of the French Revolution, and the main street of the Champagne city of Epernay, Avenue de Champagne, was filled with several hundred people dressed in white, holding Champagne flutes and drinking from late afternoon until the early hours of the following morning.

At the office building of Champagne de Venoge, a DJ perched on a balcony of the majestic house slowly turned up the volume, pausing for the fireworks at 11 p.m. By midnight, you might have mistaken the centuries-old courtyard for an open-air nightclub.

It's a good time to be celebrating with a glass of Champagne. Regardless of the downturn in the wine market, the quality of wines from the region is higher than ever, and our tastings of hundreds of bottles of Champagne alongside three dozen winery visits in mid-July highlighted this. With two superb vintages coming  to the market – 2018 and 2019 – there’s no shortage of great bottles. In total this year, we rated nearly 1,000 Champagnes, our largest amount ever.

However, few of the producers we met and interviewed during our trip seemed to be celebrating. At best, they seemed cautiously optimistic. Total Champagne shipments from the region were down by 9 percent in 2024, and they dropped again by 1.2 percent in the first half of 2025, according to official figures from the Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne (CIVC). It’s difficult for Champagne producers to forget good years like 2021 and 2022, when shipments grew to around 330 million bottles.

Yet, they know they are making one of the most exciting wines in the world. And they have an edge on other wines. Champagne encompasses not only wine and vineyards, it also embodies a great way of life and celebration.

“Champagne is the magic window for wine,” said Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon, the technical director at Champagne Louis Roederer. “You hear about the problem that wine is facing in the world but I see young people are still excited and fascinated with wine, particularly Champagne. We need to deliver even better quality.”

A duo of fantastic vintages – the warm but balanced 2018 and 2019 – is certainly going to deliver. It is still early for some houses to release these vintage wines, but the wines that we tasted from 2018 and 2019 so far show fantastic concentration and balance. And 2020 is showing promise.

“These three are great vintages,” said Mathieu Roland-Billecart, the CEO of Billecart-Salmon, comparing the trio to 1988, 1989 and 1990. “The word on the street is that 2019 is the best,” said Roland-Billecart, adding that he liked 2018 for its balance of ripeness and delicacy, compared with the powerful 2019.

Two young vintage Champagnes in the top 20 wines of this report are the racy and refined Dom Pérignon Champagne 2018 (to be released next year) and the structured, intense Cattier Champagne Blanc de Blancs 400 Ans 2018, a tiny production, magnum-only Champagne to celebrate the house’s 400^th anniversary. They also make the Champagne of Armand de Brignac, better known as "Ace of Spades."

"2018 was a rich vintage with high quantity – the game was to find concentration and make a selection,” said Guillaume Lete, the winemaker at Barons de Rothschild.

By comparison, Lete said that 2019 “was a very good vintage, after a difficult spring with some frost,” which factored into their decision to separately bottle and release a single-plot cuvee, Le Grand Clos 2019, for the first time. It’s a limited production (1,788 bottles) of 40-year-old chardonnay vines planted in their small, walled vineyard in the premier cru village of Vertus. The wine is powerful, compact and concentrated, with plenty of toasty and buttery richness from vinification of chardonnay in oak.

Older Champagne houses have fewer single-parcel cuvees, which are often released after a longer period in the cellar. Billecart-Salmon’s Le Clos St.-Hilaire, for example, spends 15 years on the lees before disgorgement and is only released in high-quality vintages. In contrast, grower-producers like Champagne Marguet and Laherte Frères are releasing single-plot Champagnes from the 2020 and 2021 vintages. The wine styles are different, and we like them both.

“I'm not looking for long autolysis for single-origin wines,” said Benoit Marguet of Champagne Marguet in Ambonnay, where we did a 100-wine tasting comparison from the two grand cru villages of Ambonnay and Bouzy, which are known for their concentrated pinot noir but also some chardonnay.

Marguet believes that while beneficial for prestige, multi-origin Champagnes, spending longer time on the lees hides the terroir character of his single-vineyard Champagnes. He doesn’t want excessive yeastiness or autolysis character in his wines, which are bone-dry, expressive and spicy, and bottled with zero dosage – a more common tack for grower-producers than Champagne houses.

Some Champagne houses such as Billecart-Salmon, on the other hand, increased their lees-aging during the Covid-19 period. “Time is life’s ultimate luxury,” Roland-Billecart said as we tasted his racy vintage blanc de blancs, the Cuvée Louis Salmon 2013. “With grand cru chardonnay, you can’t cheat with time.”

The three 100-point wines in this year’s report are later-released Champagnes from the classic vintages of 2008 and 1996. The Dom Pérignon Champagne P2 2008, aged on the lees for 16 years before disgorgement, is magical – both floral and umami in character. And the two perfect wines from 1996, the vivid and compact Charles Heidsieck Champagne Blanc des Millénaires Brut 1996 and the multilayered, complex Bollinger Champagne R.D. Extra Brut 1996, reminded us of the heights that great Champagne can reach after years in bottle.

We were left speechless by the longevity and incredible complexity of many more Champagnes – some late-disgorged – that we tasted on our trip, including a 1911 Champagne from Pol Roger that remarkably was in perfect condition both in regular-bottle and half-bottle format. These wines have not been released but were shared over a special dinner.

Also check out the flinty, smoky Pol Roger Champagne Cuvée de Réserve Vinotheque Brut 2002, the 1,000-bottle release of De Venoge Champagne Louis XV Brut Réserve 1996 and the other Bollinger R.D. Champagnes that James tasted – the 2008, 1988 and 1976 are all among our top 15 wines.

Finding Good in Global Warming

Global warming has had its effects on the Champagne region, which can be seen in earlier harvests – the average starting date is now two weeks earlier in September compared with four decades ago – and higher sugar levels in grapes, but the producers that we spoke see a silver lining.

“Forty years ago, the potential alcohol in grapes was 9.3 percent; today it’s 10.3 percent on average,” said Charles Philipponnat, the president of Champagne Philipponnat. “We're not afraid of global warming; we look for ripeness. So far, I think it's helping us.”

We tasted a vertical of Clos des Goisses, his single-site bottling from a steep, sunny and south-facing vineyard in Mareuil-sur-Ay, where he said that they rarely pick grapes below 11 percent of potential alcohol. And yet the wines taste superbly fresh and mineral, despite the richness and concentration, thanks to a salty minerality that Philipponnat attributes to the chalkiness of the soil.

“We’re at the limit of stopping chaptalization. Some areas might become too heavy or too vegetal, but I think it's not a problem in premier cru and grand cru areas where the soil is very calcareous,” Philipponnat said. “So in the next 20 to 30 years, I think the best terroirs will speak for themselves.”

One of the hottest vintages in the last couple of decades was 2015. According to some producers we spoke to, those who picked too early that year based on sugar content rather than waiting for physiological ripeness – in aroma and tannin – made Champagnes with “green” characteristics. We mostly didn’t find that in the wines.

Producers and growers agree, however, that they have learned from such early harvests to wait for full physiological ripeness. They are prepared for the upcoming 2025 harvest, which is expected to start in August.

“We made the decision to start in September and I will do it again this year,” said winemaker Rodolphe Peters of Pierre Péters, who is based in the grand cru village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. “2025 is clearly the same profile as 2020.”

He said that grapes grown on his chalky terroir reach a sugar plateau and that it is both rewarding and important to wait for full ripeness before picking.

While the blanc de blancs Champagnes remain in demand and are fantastic from areas like the Cote des Blancs, we found that the blanc de noirs category of Champagne stood out in our tastings, alongside coteaux Champenois, or still wines. We particularly liked the single-village wines that we tasted from the grand cru villages of Ambonnay, Bouzy and Ay, along with the unique southern village of Les Riceys, famous for their still wine from pinot noir, rosé de Riceys.

“I think there is a big comeback on pinot noir in the blanc de noirs and pure pinot noir category,” said Marguet, of Champagne Marguet. “With this weather getting hotter, I feel a revitalization of pinot noir. It remains elegant.”

In fact, we tasted several excellent Champagnes made from alternative varieties, like the Tarlant Champagne BAM! Brut Nature NV – a blend of pinot blanc, arbanne and petit meslier – as well as six- or seven-varietal blends from Chateau de Bligny, Alexandre Bonnet and Laherte Frères, all of which we rated 95 points or above.

“I believe diversity in plants is a key to being more resilient to climate evolution,” said Benoit Tarlant of Champagne Tarlant, which has increased its plantings of petit meslier – a resilient, late-ripening and acid-retaining variety.

It’s these new developments that make Champagne such a compelling wine. They are complex but retain freshness and wonderful drinkability. Most are still at around 12 or 12.5 percent alcohol, and they are refreshing and inviting to drink compared with so many wines with high alcohol and lower acidity.

“Champagne offers a choice that is so large,” said Edouard Cossy, the global director for Laurent Pierrer’s Grand Siècle. “You have so much. You have the grape type, the terroir, the vintage, the blend, the time on the lees, the dosage... You have something from beginning to end.”

Some of the above, of course, may have been forgotten by some members of the JamesSuckling.com team and a number of other early-morning revelers on Avenue de Champagne on the morning after Bastille Day in Epernay. But we were back tasting and visiting wineries by mid-morning on July 15, showing our unbridled interest in Champagne and the freshness and brightness of its wines.

– Claire Nesbitt, Staff Writer & Critic, with James Suckling

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